I have said many times that I am a PC gamer but really, I should be saying I am now a Valve gamer, and the definitive versions of their games happen to be on the PC; everything else is just overlap. One might even go so far to say that I’m a fanboy, but an absolutely necessary part of being a Valve devotee is complaining very loudly when they make any sort of misstep, they listen to and even encourage such behavior, such feedback from the community strongly influences updates for their games. Valve also freely gives away their SDK (to anyone that buys one of their Source based games) and portions of their games’ source code so that if someone has a great idea for a mod, they can make it; if Valve particularly likes your mod (Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, Garry’s Mod) they will hire you and make your mod into a retail game. This does have actual bearing on consoles as Valve has fully supported the Xbox 360 with their last two games, Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 step for step with the PC version so they seem to be a genuine console developer now. The reason I am talking about Valve so much is not just because I adore their games and how they support them post-release (I do) but because they are one of the few (only, as far as I can tell) developers that are expanding their games and services onto more platforms, and those platforms are equal in their eyes, you don’t own TF2 for PC, you own TF2. What brought this thought was this piece of news:
[Link], shocking, no?
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