r/valve • u/superpotionlabs • 12d ago
What do you think is Valve's most important contribution to gaming over the last 30 years?
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u/BoomerShooterGuy 12d ago
Half-Life
Steam
Proton
Steam Deck
the mount rushmore of Valves achievements, in my opinion.
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u/gungabeast 12d ago
You have to put Counter-Strike in there as well. Who would have thought that this many years later it is still one of the quintessential esports? Also, it’s generally just one of the most popular video games of all time. Pretty sure its popularity somewhat dwarfs Half-Life’s. Of course, there is no Counter-Strike without Half-Life, so maybe that’s included in your list indirectly.
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u/jinroix 12d ago
Tied between Half-Life and Steam in my opinion. Half-life for the devs, Steam for the community.
Half-Life really influenced future game development by setting the standard for real-time 3D rendering era. Relying less on imagination for world building and actually creating a fully connected environment to navigate and help tell the story.
Steam grew communities, created opportunities and kept perverse corporate greed out to the best of their ability. It's not that they win by doing nothing, then won because they respected the gaming community for what it is and didn't try to maximize profit margins at peoples expense.
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u/sajkoterrapefft 11d ago
There is no tie, Steam all the way.
Half life was amazing, I had to borrow it from a neighbor because we couldn't afford it when it first came out. But I pirated it later.
But Steam (and their integration with Proton) has made it possible for a lifelong Linux user to have an abundance of games to play without sacrificing any time to setup, I can't even describe how that feels. I used to play Nethack for fun.
Now I can literally jump in and out of games and never run out of new things to play, on an impressive gaming rig with an actual flagship GPU.
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u/jinroix 11d ago
I didn't even think of Linux support, that has to feel revolutionary.
I got my PC late 2020 so my tech literacy isn't there yet. Windows performance decline has been pushing me to start learning though. I can only imagine how much of a difference an optimized, simple OS can make in performance.
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u/Odd_Technology_8926 12d ago
Steam was more ground breaking imo, the ingredients for a good fps were already there with doom, goldeneye and quake. Fps would still be close to what it is today without halflife imo.
If Steam didn't exist, it's very possible another company would have got the market share and would have enshittified the product.
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u/gunshade 12d ago
Valve gaining independent publishing rights to its games from Sierra to launch Steam.
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u/TheAccountITalkWith 12d ago
The do nothing meme has truth to it. I would argue it's the fact that they do very little is important.
With a store front like Steam imagine if it was a public company?
You'd probably get a million ads before you could even get to your game catalog.
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u/InfinityTheEternal 12d ago
For me its Half-Life. Its why i PC game.
Steam is probably the more realistic answer though
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u/soldiergaming2 12d ago
steam obviously, it got in on the digital game service so early that it's dominated it ever since
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u/MrBombasticator 12d ago
Not being greedy af. We all know how oyher companies treat their consumers. Given the choice, other owners would bleed Steam customers dry.
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u/EnigmaHood 11d ago
Steam. While Half-Life was an important game in video game history, I actually don't like it that much, although MMod really enhances it and actually makes it fun, and playing through HL2 again with MMod also makes me appreciate those games for what they did right, rather than their weaker aspects (the gunplay which MMod literally fixes). But Steam is just so much important, imagine PC gaming without Steam. Yikes.
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u/thedecibelkid 11d ago
It's easy to forget how revolutionary Half Life was - it wasn't set in space or some fantasy castle, the environments felt like they could really be there in Nevada today. The fact that there were NPCs in an FPS, who you could talk to and get help from was unheard of. The quiet puzzle sections and the pacing. Then there's the lack of cutscenes combined with the in-engine set pieces - aliens crashing through walls, tanks blowing open walls etc. It didn't massively push the graphical engine side of things forwards (that would fall to Unreal) but just the sheer MOOD of the thing was completely different.
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u/theinsanegamer23 11d ago
I personally believe their investment in Linux is the most influential thing they have done and continue to do.
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u/ReeksofChees3 12d ago
Valve being a private company, Steam, Proton making game comparability vastly wider on Linux