{"id":176,"date":"2021-03-07T06:46:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T06:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/?p=176"},"modified":"2021-03-07T06:46:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T06:46:07","slug":"the-end-is-nigh-because-of-valves-apathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/07\/the-end-is-nigh-because-of-valves-apathy\/","title":{"rendered":"The End is Nigh … because of Valve’s Apathy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in November of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GATHER AROUND MY FOLLOWERS!!! QUICKLY GRAB A FACE MASK AND ANTIBIOTICS!!!\u00a0 THERE IS A PLAGUE AMONG US!!!\u00a0 It started in July 2017, around the Seattle area.\u00a0 It slowly began to spread out and infect the rest of the world.\u00a0 I am sure many of you have encountered people infected by this disease.\u00a0 They become completely apathetic.\u00a0 Their desire to care about their jobs, friends, family, personal health, and of course, their own life completely vanishes.\u00a0 I am almost positive patient zero was an employee from Valve.\u00a0 Symptoms of the disease infecting the company came around the same time Steam Direct was announced and put into action.\u00a0 A move that released a torrent of games onto the Steam storefront.\u00a0 While gamers believed they would have unlimited choices, Steam soon became infected with asset flips, games that would spam achievements, and games designed to troll Steam users with controversial topics.\u00a0 It soon became clear that Valve had abandoned all sense of apathy.\u00a0 The disease soon began to spread as fast as stories of the infected.\u00a0 Police were going to the homes of crying infants only to find the parents turning up the volume on the TV.\u00a0 People stopping in the middle of the street only to be run over by a car driven by an infected person.\u00a0 People literally starving to death as their cabinets are stocked full of food.\u00a0 While we can do as much as we can to stem the tide of the disease, I have no doubt, in the end, it will claim us all.\u00a0 My followers, the end is truly upon us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many scientists will tell you no such disease exist, but it has to be the only reason behind Valve\u2019s decision to implement Steam Direct.\u00a0 Rather than have Steam users vote for indie titles they would like to see make it onto the Steam store page, Steam Greenlight, Valve decided a better barrier to the Steam Store Page would be a simple 100 dollars.\u00a0 As many could imagine, everyone raced to get onto the PC gaming gold mine set before them, leaving users with only algorithms and user curation as the tools to navigate the ocean of games.\u00a0 Many developers, including ones from Image & Form Games, developers who created Steamworld Dig 1 <\/em>and 2<\/em>, have been quoted saying Steam has become too crowded.\u00a0 In 2017, it was determined that Steam was on track to release more games in 2017 than all previous ten years, combined.\u00a0 To say Steam is flooded is an understatement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An oversaturated market was the least of Valve\u2019s issues.\u00a0 Asset flips and games that couldn\u2019t start due to missing executable files seemed to become the norm.\u00a0 Many developers looked for any way to shine the spotlight on them, even resorting to insidious methods.\u00a0 In November 2017, Valve had to remove a game called Piccled Ricc<\/em>, a game that blatantly infringed on copyright law with their protagonist being a shameless copy of the Rick and Morty <\/em>character Pickle Rick.\u00a0 In May 2018, a game called Active Shooter<\/em>, a game about being a school shooter, was pulled from Steam before it could be released.\u00a0 It was a bland asset flip that tastelessly followed the Stoneman Douglas school shooting.\u00a0 It gained mass media attention while making Valve look clueless.\u00a0 Now more recently, we have Bolsomito 2k18<\/em>, a side-scrolling beat\u2019em up where you play as a parody of Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro as you fight through waves of minorities and immigrants.\u00a0 Brazil\u2019s Public Ministry of the Federal District and Territories has reached out to Valve to have the game removed from the storefront.\u00a0 Along with the game\u2019s removal, the ministry is also planning to investigate the game\u2019s developers, Steam and Valve.\u00a0 The ministry felt the game falsely depicted one of the Brazilian candidates just days before the first round of the Brazilian election.\u00a0 Not a good look if you ask me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Valve\u2019s apathy has finally caught up to them.\u00a0 This strategy of removing the games after media outlets have run the story is not working.\u00a0 It does nothing but paint Valve as an incompetent company unworthy of the gold mine they have stumbled onto.\u00a0 Many might think the Brazilian ministry\u2019s investigation might not lead to anything, but there is always a possibility that Valve would not be able to operate Steam in Brazil.\u00a0 This could lead to other countries following Brazil as well, leading to a spiral of Steam being banned which could lead to the collapse of Valve as a company.\u00a0 I know some might say it is a stretch, but I am a doomsayer.\u00a0 Farfetched predictions are what I am all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now do games like Active Shooter <\/em>and Bolsomito 2k18 <\/em>have a right to exist?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 Do they have any right to be on the Steam store?\u00a0 I would say no.\u00a0 They can certainly be available on the developer\u2019s own website or even on Itch.io, but I definitely feel like some standards need to be set so Valve doesn\u2019t receive any more investigations.\u00a0 If I walked into highly rated restaurant\u2019s like Alden & Harlow or Area Four and asked them if I could make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for them professionally, they would turn me away.\u00a0 I could make the best PB&J sandwich I can, but customers at those restaurants have standards.\u00a0 Sure Valve says they don\u2019t want games deemed illegal or trolling, but those definitions are so loose, it has resulted in the same old story: games go on Steam, media is modified, Valve tries to stop the sinking ship by removing the game.\u00a0 Valve truly needs to get higher standards or else their end is most certainly nigh.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in November of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy. GATHER AROUND MY FOLLOWERS!!! QUICKLY GRAB A FACE MASK AND ANTIBIOTICS!!!\u00a0 THERE IS A PLAGUE AMONG US!!!\u00a0 It started in July 2017, around the Seattle area.\u00a0 It slowly began… Continue reading The End is Nigh … because of Valve’s Apathy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}