Are Valve Fanboys? Have they finally pushed PS3 owners too far?!

CommentNovember 8th, 2009 17:20

VALVEPS3

Valve are without a doubt, one of the most talented and exceptionally creative and gifted developers working in the highly contentious and competitive contemporary video game industry. I’ve used the word contentious because I think it’s more than fitting given that this generation of games is defined by this subtle (but not so bloody subtle!) battle that’s going between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. As each multi billion dollar company attempts to lure you into paying just a few measly hundred so you only really play what their machine has to offer, now more than ever, there’s really a big choice, a MASSIVE choice you have to make on what console you want to buy before you walk into Gamestop, HMV or Xtra Vision. Like I remember trying to decide whether to buy a Playstation or an N64 with a golden controller and thinking ‘this is such a hard decision’. Now, the decision is much harder.

What is a Fanboy?

So how does Valve fall into this? Well, this console battle or war, if you will, has been propagated and defined for the most part by the fanboys, the defiant opinionated console patriots, who believe they know everything and who spend more time slagging and ripping on their mate’s choice of console than they do actually playing the so called machine they love to love, praise and defend. A fanboy is a person considered to belong to a fandom to a point of obsession. Fanboys are persons who have an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking and enthusiasm for anything, in this instance, consoles. Fanboys have very little respect, be that online or anywhere else, mainly because it’s easy to hate them. They are so loyal to their brand that they don’t care about anything other than themselves and their own often indulgent opinions. Fanboys are a plague, a disease of opinions, facts and figures. They are a new strain of media who believe that what they say or do is Gospel. However fanboy-ism is real, uncontrollable and we’re going to have to learn to live with it and accept it. To prefer one console more than another is probably the most understandable and fundamental concept to any gamer. So then why must you make the person who prefers the other machine feel bad about themselves? How dare you? You don’t have the right! Ignorance makes us sick. And it would appear that many believe that Valve, for all their truly beautiful and genuine gaming achievements, have crossed the line into fanboy territory.

I’m not saying that I think Valve are fanboys. I’m really not. I’m not calling for a public stoning of Gabe Newell or a boycott of Half Life 2: Episode 3 (the latter would be particularly stupid) but TGL can understand why many game websites are really going for Valve’s jugular at the moment with claims that Valve encapsulate the disgusting symptoms which define the classic fanboy.

What have Valve actually said about PS3?

It’s no secret Valve don’t particularly like Sony’s Playstation 3. Other than a pretty poor, glitchy, late and freeze ridden version of the Orange Box which EA ported, Valve has literally had no interactions with Sony’s PS3. However, they do like to talk about PS3. In fact they love to talk about PS3. A lot!!! But they never say anything good about it, which is ok because, hey their entitled to an opinion right? Of course they are. But Valve’s opinions are so brash, so inherently brash in fact that they are really beginning to push PS3 owners over the edge. The more and more we hear from Valve, the less we here about actual games. Valve are beginning to think their developer royalty and they have every right to believe they are because well……they are. But nobody likes a bragger, a glory hunter, the girl that knows she’s good looking. Valve don’t talk about games anymore. They seem to be more interested in sly digs at PS3. Forgive me for saying it, but Valve are beginning to sound like fanboys.

Valve’s comments regarding the PS3 are now the stuff of legend and go so far and beyond anything any other respected developer has ever publicly said in sheer abhorrent and repugnant dislike of a home console. So what has Valve actually said about PS3?

Way back in October 2007 Valve’s Gabe Newel called the PS3 “a waste of everyone’s time”. Newell believed and probably still believes that the PS3 is;

“a disaster on many levels … I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it”. Strike One.

Valve’s Tom Leonard has said the hassles of programming on the console got in the way of creating memorable game experiences. Valve will not develop for PS3 until they can compile a designated PS3 development team which will probably never happen. Strike Two.

Then this week Left 4 Dead project leader Chet Faliszek has come out and said that the 360 community is “head and shoulders above the PS3” and that’s the main reason why Left 4 Dead, with its multiplayer impetus, will never arrive on PS3. When asked by interviewers CVG if Left 4 Dead will appear on Sony’s machine, Faliszek replied;

“Right now don’t not buy it on the 360 because you think it’s coming out on the PS3 – it’s not going to. Right? It’s coming out on the PC and 360. It’s going to be exclusive for that.” Faliszek continued; “In hooking up with your friends and the community aspects, I think the Xbox 360 is head and shoulders above the PS3”. Strike Three. Valve, you’re out!

PS3 fights back?

Since everyone is so uptight about fanboy-ism and defending their choice of console, as you can imagine, the web is abuzz with blogs and forum posts exclaiming that Valve hates PS3, that Valve are 360 fanboys and that PS3 owners should boycott anything Valve ever produce for PS3, should they ever do so. And would you blame them? Valve are acting like the irrational, smug, know it all fanboys that the internet loves to hate. And everyone hates smug people. Randy Pitchford over at Gearbox thinks Valve are fanboys and has openly expressed his grievances with the Half Life developers.

Pitchford told the Official Playstation Magazine; “I noticed something on the net not too long ago. Doug Lombardi had to take a swipe at the PS3 again, and I thought it was foolish, I read it the same way I read fanboys. Like there’s a guy who bought the Sony platform and he’s a Sony guy, so he decides he’s going to spend a certain percentage of his time bashing Microsoft. And there’s a guy on Microsoft doing the same thing. Those guys are childish and narrow minded, it’s the same kind of thing. Valve think their own stuff is the only stuff that matters, to the point where they have their own distribution platform. It’s like, I don’t care about retail, about Marketplace, or PSN, and I’m going to have Steam”.

Obviously Pitchford has more than a few underlying issues with Valve but what he’s saying is relevant and more than a few people would say ‘here here’ and wanna pat this guy on the back for his comments. People want to hate Valve now because they hate PS3. But does that make those who want to defend the PS3 as bad as the so called fanboys over at Valve? You could argue yes, but I think that’s not fair. Valve have no reason to have beef with PS3. They don’t develop for the machine and by the sounds of things are unaware as to what the machine is capable of. So then why do they have to come out and make outlandish and somewhat crude statements about a console that doesn’t affect what they do on a daily basis? The guys at Valve are geniuses but something tells me there the type of people who love to sniff the smell of their own farts. Your good at what you do Valve, great, brilliant in fact. But can you blame people for thinking that you’re acting like a bunch of spoilt, ignorant diehard fanboys? But you probably don’t care to even begin with?

I not trying to defend PS3, I’m not trying to discredit Valve or what they do and I’m certainty not suggesting that developers are not entitled to their own opinions. But Valve have crossed a line here. They are starting to sound like a bunch of self obsessed know it alls who find the need to constantly reiterate the fact that they think there brilliant. You are brilliant Valve, but you never hear Hideo Kojima coming out saying that MGS4 is only on PS3 because the 360 just can’t handle it or that to develop for the 360 is a waste of time. No. He has dignity and respect for the so called opposition. He will say that the PS3 is the only format that could handle MGS4 but will never take a direct swipe at the so called opposition. Valve need a lesson in respect. We’re all here to play games at the end of the day. Leave the fanboy crap to the people who buy the games not the people who make them.

When my mother is mad at me or anything I do or am not doing for that matter, she loves to use the phrase ‘It would be more in your line if……(insert text here)……..’. So given the circumstances Im going to use this phrase on Valve here. Valve, it would be more in your line to finish Half Life 2: Episode 3, release it and stop wasting time slagging off PS3, a console you know nothing about. Do you guys get any work done over there at all? Or do you just like to do anti-console interviews? What do you guys think of Valve’s comments?