The Generosity of Valve

The Generosity of Valve

I’ve been debating what to talk about in my latest blog, I thought I might just talk about some of the games I have been playing, but something else came to mind. The generosity of Valve.

Take Team Fortress 2 for starters, at the end of April they released the 119th update to the game. How many other developers (apart from MMO developers of course) will release this many updates for a game? Not many I would say, and when you take into account just exactly what we have seen added to the game since release. Numerous new maps along with new game modes like King of the Hill, Arena and Payload. Almost all of the classes have received extensive updates, we have seen Hats and unlockable weapon drops. Valve have even gone as far as to include bots in the game!

Their efforts don’t stop with Team Fortress, the Left 4 Dead series has seen a bunch of great new updates. Ignoring the petty rage of L4D2 we have seen the Versus game mode spread to all of the campaigns in the original title, survival mode, various other bits of free DLC including the Crash Course campaign and The Passing for L4D2.

As with Team Fortress 2, there will undoubtedly be more updates. You can’t ignore the new Mac support with Portal. It is simply amazing what Valve have done for free.

That isn’t all though, Counter Strike: Source, the old timer of the Valve portfolio has a new beta available. This will bring the game in-line with Day of Defeat Source and Team Fortress 2 with new achievements, stats and the domination and revenge system. All for free.

Looking at what Valve has done for its fans is fantastic, they have released so many updates, large and small for their titles for free. We should all recognise what Valve have done for us and be thankful.

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