lukaszthegreat: because i don't see that. I don't see changing your strategy to make more money as a bad thing or betrayal of a principle.
they still care about their customers, they still support their games after release... L4d2 is not a betrayal. concentrating on other things than on ep3 is not wrong either.
Please Navagon state what principle Valve went against?
If you don't see asking people to uphold certain principals and blatantly not doing so yourself as hypocrisy then what is your definition of the word and why does it differ so from what's in the dictionary?
Anyway:
Cheap games sell better, according to Gabe. He even lectured people on it. The argument was very convincing and well founded. Then we get L4D and L4D2 in rapid succession that SHOULD have been cheap given that they were effectively polished Source total conversions. But no, they were selling at full price.
So according to Gabe himself, selling L4Ds for less would have meant a lot more money overall. Especially given that they would hardly be required to give themselves a substantial cut of the Steam profits, like other publishers would have to. But despite this they still sell the games at full price, clearly paying no attention to their own words of wisdom.
They ask people to do one thing then do another themselves.
Then of course there's the rejection of console FPS and the outright condemnation of the PS3 and their subsequent support for the 360 and third party support for the PS3.
They ask Sony to scrap the PS3. They ask Sony themselves to not support their own console that they've invested vast, vast sums of money in, then they go and support it themselves with the Orange Box (through EA, but still).
They ask people to do one thing then do another themselves.
