It is refreshingly simple. The game warns you that it is not to be discussed publicly and why. If you discuss it publicly, or write and publish an article about it (kek), you get banned from current and future participation. Open and shut.
The cat is out of the bag so there's no real reason for Valve to hold you under a legal threat. They're confident that news won't really hurt them, and participation would be desirable. So they invite you quietly, and allow you to invite your friends. And when you break the arrangement they just ban you.
I have to admire the elegance.
But what kind of nutcase are you to literally put the disclaimer of "Don't share any details about this game with anyone" that the game shows you on every launch IN YOUR ARTICLE, and then glibly assert "But I didn't press OK, I pressed Escape, ha HA!" You want to live in a society where nobody trusts anybody, and this is the attitude that makes it so.
"I would like to enter your theme park."
"Okay, sign here."
"No."
"Understandable, come right in."
The only thing that contradicts that is some kind of "well everyone knows not agreeing to a EULA actually means agreeing" logic. Let me ask you this then: when presented with that UI, how do you refuse that agreement and close the game? Or is every possible action agreeing to their contract?
It's clear and obvious what is meant. You can argue semantics if you want.
Valve wasn't taking the guy to court though. They just banned him. Which they are allowed to do for any reason.
Alternatively, I'm not sure I can conceptualize the legal state of declining to fulfill a requirement for entry, and then... being faced with the consequence of... not being allowed entry somehow being the fault of the person setting the requirements.
Granted, on the one hand, he signed an NDA agreement, he should at least be bound by some degree of professionalism to honour it which shows you nobody hates journalists enough. On the other hand though, the 'secrecy' around game development has baffled the fuck out of me particularly when it comes to AAA studios.
I know I come across as majorly cocky sometimes, I'm not that lacking in self-awareness but I'm sure any programmer worth their salt will back me up in that even Valve can't produce anything that would remotely wow people anymore. There is no need to be so secretive, the only reason they do any of this crap is as a marketing ploy and honestly just from the screenshots the game looks thoroughly unremarkable.
If anything, when developers pull this crap and do the old marketing-fu it makes them look shady as fuck and they're almost certainly trying to cover up how bland or shit their game is. If I see a studio announce a game that's going to be release within a year and refuse to show anything beyond a teaser trailer, I'm assuming it's shit and they're hiding behind marketing hype.
The most Valve managed to do with their programming tech with CS:2 was the interactive smoke and in reality they were just a bunch of destructible textured cubes floating in the air to make the simulation a bit more believable. I saw a programmer in Godot quickly replicate it no problem so it's not as if they were that amazing.
People will play this game because it's Valve, just like people will play GTA because it's Rockstar, but overall I suspect the reception will be extremely meh.
but I'm sure any programmer worth their salt will back me up in that even Valve can't produce anything that would remotely wow people anymore.
That’s an absurd statement. You have no idea what the game plays like. It could be crap, but it could also be great. If you were saying “X company used to be great, but their recent products have been bad, so I don’t have faith in this,” that would be one thing, but you say “even Valve,” so it sounds like you think Valve is still great, but making something that wows people is just fundamentally impossible.
There is no need to be so secretive, the only reason they do any of this crap is as a marketing ploy and honestly just from the screenshots the game looks thoroughly unremarkable.
Maybe they want to get feedback on an early design without being committed to that design by hype? Maybe they’re concerned about someone making a shovelware clone and beating them to market?
If I see a studio announce a game that's going to be release within a year and refuse to show anything beyond a teaser trailer, I'm assuming it's shit and they're hiding behind marketing hype.
No idea where you’re getting this from. It has no official release date. It’s an early build. Hence that NDA. If you’re just “chatting generally” about hypotheticals, it shouldn’t have any bearing on this particular case.
The most Valve managed to do with their programming tech with CS:2 was the interactive smoke and in reality they were just a bunch of destructible textured cubes floating in the air to make the simulation a bit more believable. I saw a programmer in Godot quickly replicate it no problem so it's not as if they were that amazing.
I don’t know why you’re conflating “code complexity” with “fun mechanics.” Many people enjoy and play CS2. Is there some reason that the smoke was a particularly poor implementation of what they were trying to do? Perhaps you should explain that instead.
I'm not that lacking in self-awareness
You got sick of people pointing out your lack of self-awareness and annoying habits, so you started saying “I’m self-aware” without changing any of the stuff that made people say you weren’t self-aware. Hilarious.
Maybe they want to get feedback on an early design without being committed to that design by hype? Maybe they’re concerned about someone making a shovelware clone and beating them to market?
As if there aren't already a million hero shooter clones out there which have had varying degrees of success, nothing Valve is doing here is remotely unique. If someone fears shovelware outperforming their product it shows that they don't have any confidence in what they're making
I don’t know why you’re conflating “code complexity” with “fun mechanics.” Many people enjoy and play CS2. Is there some reason that the smoke was a particularly poor implementation of what they were trying to do? Perhaps you should explain that instead.
I never claimed it was a poor implementation, I simply pointed out it was nothing special, you just don't like that I'm critiquing Valve's work from a programmer perspective and I fully expect this hero shooter to be exactly the same
You got sick of people pointing out your lack of self-awareness and annoying habits, so you started saying “I’m self-aware” without changing any of the stuff that made people say you weren’t self-aware. Hilarious.
Take from that what you will, I can't stop you, there's a reason at times I post like I do and it's because when you read code on a daily basis you've seen it all and this is why even when it comes to old studios who have a pedigree I'm thoroughly unimpressed by what they put out considering these are companies with billions in profits. I don't care if it's Rockstar Studios or Valve, I call it like I see it, cry harder about it. It's even more embarrassing when you see companies with billions in backing and their games barely run even on high end machines along with being 100gb+ installation sizes. At least Valve hasn't reached that stage with their optimisation yet, but I wouldn't be shocked if they get invaded with DEI we'll start seeing that happen.
If you haven't already, you should watch the videos by the ex-Fallout dev. It's extremely eye opening that these companies have billions of dollars available to them and they take weeks just to write a few lines of code when an indie dev can poop out game features they brag about on a weekend just by speed running tutorials on a low end PC. This is the reality of the games industry now.
it's because when you read code on a daily basis you've seen it all and this is why even when it comes to old studios who have a pedigree I'm thoroughly unimpressed by what they put out considering these are companies with billions in profits.
You talk like an intermediate that thinks he's a principal.
I know I come across as majorly cocky sometimes, I'm not that lacking in self-awareness
Friendly suggestion: after you finish a post, re-read it and find any bits where you talk about yourself and simply delete those paragraphs.
Yes, sometimes personal experience is relevant to a post. But no, your programming experience or British citizenship is not relevant to every post. You'd be better erring on the side of caution and your posts will be better if you just leave it out.
Believe it or not I do at times, unfortunately owing to recent circumstances with my country burning itself down me being British is annoyingly relevant and I have to make the point because otherwise people won't realise yes I do actually live in the country being discussed because it happens to be trending constantly at the moment.
I'm sorry my country keeps getting in the news lol :( by the way it's not fucking over yet in the slightest, they're going full communist.
People will play this game because it's Valve, just like people will play GTA because it's Rockstar, but overall I suspect the reception will be extremely meh.
You never hear about it anymore. So no people will not play a game just cause of its dev name, although it will lead to a surge of initial players if they screw it, it will die.
Ex valve devs have commented on code maintainability and workplace mismanagement. Still, I wouldn't denigrate the technical prowess put into a successful twitch shooter sequel on a custom engine (or if they went the UE/Godot route) as beneath a moderate sized triple-a team. Did the Godot hobbyist come up with a superior smoke implementation? I have my own complaints outside the core gameplay, about the hidden away server browser and retarded official matchmaking systems, so I'm not giving Gaben special treatment, and have held my negative csgo review since trying cs2.
Triple-A gaming is far from the most secretive industry. Think of the secrecy measures put into a federal contractor like Palantir. Or even hardware companies like Micron or AMD. Would be an unnecessarily costly burden that constrains creative output.
but I'm sure any programmer worth their salt will back me up in that even Valve can't produce anything that would remotely wow people anymore
I would probably fall under that, but I would also disagree. Cause things that "wow" people are not things that a programmer does. It's what a designer does.
What wows a programmer is stuff like the magic number for fast inverse square root. But for a player that is irrelevant.
Stuff like the physic puzzles in HL2 are trivial and were trivial. We had physic simulation for ages and they're easy to implement. But putting them into a shooter? That was the wow factor.
I mean your CS2 example is great. Did the Godot programmer's version run at 240fps next to all the other code of CS2? Cause that was a requirement, cause CS nerds value their 240hz monitors. Not to mention they don't want any changes to the gameplay.
Sorry, I know you’re trying to be nice, but his example with CS2 was the worst part. He didn’t say anything about whether it worked well. You’re extrapolating that because you assume it wasn’t a retarded example. His actual complaint was that it wasn’t complicated or fancy. I even asked him to clarify if there was anything bad about it, because the complaint didn’t appear to make sense, and his response was:
I never claimed it was a poor implementation, I simply pointed out it was nothing special
In other words, it worked fine, it did what the game needed, but because it wasn’t done in a fancy new way that Valve invented themselves, it’s bad.
Again, I never actually claimed it was bad, just incredibly average, you're getting uppity like others here because I dared to criticise the holy patron saint that is Gabe Newell and now you're busy trying to lick his balls.
Now, caveat with this, I'm a Godot fanboi, so of course I'm going to praise the engine. If you wanted to get really autistic about this you would have to get CS:2 and then clone the game in Godot 4 side by side to do some proper comparisons. My money is though that Godot 4 would run a game like CS:2 yes, pretty much almost the same as the Source engine.
CS:2 isn't exactly a heavy game, though that being said a lot of people have complained about the graphics update because they preferred CS:GO since it really would run on almost anything. Allegedly there's been difficult when it comes to CS:2 when people have tested that on older machines.
I've posted the same thing about Notch, I don't even hate these guys, I just think the marketing is silly and they should be more open about their development workflow and practices instead of trying to pretend they've got some magic secret sauce nobody knows about. If you want to impress me, make a truly complex space simulator or some kind of management/RTS game now that code is more complex.
Wat. We're talking about the dota 2 developer. Like you're realize that. He's the ultimate "built it in a cave, with a bunch of scraps."
This is exactly how dota 2 was relased, beta keys. So sure it's "silly" for the developer of the most successful esport of all time to develop a similar game using similar marketing for the same company.
And YES there is a secret sauce. Its nothing. The secret sauce is being secret and keeping retards out of your process flow. Which is helped by the dude being anonymous for so long, and not broadcasting his design choices.
I don't get how your brain works. But I've made that clear before
It is refreshingly simple. The game warns you that it is not to be discussed publicly and why. If you discuss it publicly, or write and publish an article about it (kek), you get banned from current and future participation. Open and shut.
The cat is out of the bag so there's no real reason for Valve to hold you under a legal threat. They're confident that news won't really hurt them, and participation would be desirable. So they invite you quietly, and allow you to invite your friends. And when you break the arrangement they just ban you.
I have to admire the elegance.
But what kind of nutcase are you to literally put the disclaimer of "Don't share any details about this game with anyone" that the game shows you on every launch IN YOUR ARTICLE, and then glibly assert "But I didn't press OK, I pressed Escape, ha HA!" You want to live in a society where nobody trusts anybody, and this is the attitude that makes it so.
He is a loose cannon who does not play by the rules! Or sign NDAs! Or accept EULAs!
That's some Kosher Oven logic.
Not really.
"I would like to enter your theme park."
"Okay, sign here."
"No."
"Understandable, come right in."
The only thing that contradicts that is some kind of "well everyone knows not agreeing to a EULA actually means agreeing" logic. Let me ask you this then: when presented with that UI, how do you refuse that agreement and close the game? Or is every possible action agreeing to their contract?
It's clear and obvious what is meant. You can argue semantics if you want.
Valve wasn't taking the guy to court though. They just banned him. Which they are allowed to do for any reason.
That's sort of how contracts work in the first place. But you're also right about the ban.
Alt tab right click close?
Alternatively, I'm not sure I can conceptualize the legal state of declining to fulfill a requirement for entry, and then... being faced with the consequence of... not being allowed entry somehow being the fault of the person setting the requirements.
What's the tort violation otherwise?
Granted, on the one hand, he signed an NDA agreement, he should at least be bound by some degree of professionalism to honour it which shows you nobody hates journalists enough. On the other hand though, the 'secrecy' around game development has baffled the fuck out of me particularly when it comes to AAA studios.
I know I come across as majorly cocky sometimes, I'm not that lacking in self-awareness but I'm sure any programmer worth their salt will back me up in that even Valve can't produce anything that would remotely wow people anymore. There is no need to be so secretive, the only reason they do any of this crap is as a marketing ploy and honestly just from the screenshots the game looks thoroughly unremarkable.
If anything, when developers pull this crap and do the old marketing-fu it makes them look shady as fuck and they're almost certainly trying to cover up how bland or shit their game is. If I see a studio announce a game that's going to be release within a year and refuse to show anything beyond a teaser trailer, I'm assuming it's shit and they're hiding behind marketing hype.
The most Valve managed to do with their programming tech with CS:2 was the interactive smoke and in reality they were just a bunch of destructible textured cubes floating in the air to make the simulation a bit more believable. I saw a programmer in Godot quickly replicate it no problem so it's not as if they were that amazing.
People will play this game because it's Valve, just like people will play GTA because it's Rockstar, but overall I suspect the reception will be extremely meh.
That’s an absurd statement. You have no idea what the game plays like. It could be crap, but it could also be great. If you were saying “X company used to be great, but their recent products have been bad, so I don’t have faith in this,” that would be one thing, but you say “even Valve,” so it sounds like you think Valve is still great, but making something that wows people is just fundamentally impossible.
Maybe they want to get feedback on an early design without being committed to that design by hype? Maybe they’re concerned about someone making a shovelware clone and beating them to market?
No idea where you’re getting this from. It has no official release date. It’s an early build. Hence that NDA. If you’re just “chatting generally” about hypotheticals, it shouldn’t have any bearing on this particular case.
I don’t know why you’re conflating “code complexity” with “fun mechanics.” Many people enjoy and play CS2. Is there some reason that the smoke was a particularly poor implementation of what they were trying to do? Perhaps you should explain that instead.
You got sick of people pointing out your lack of self-awareness and annoying habits, so you started saying “I’m self-aware” without changing any of the stuff that made people say you weren’t self-aware. Hilarious.
As if there aren't already a million hero shooter clones out there which have had varying degrees of success, nothing Valve is doing here is remotely unique. If someone fears shovelware outperforming their product it shows that they don't have any confidence in what they're making
I never claimed it was a poor implementation, I simply pointed out it was nothing special, you just don't like that I'm critiquing Valve's work from a programmer perspective and I fully expect this hero shooter to be exactly the same
Take from that what you will, I can't stop you, there's a reason at times I post like I do and it's because when you read code on a daily basis you've seen it all and this is why even when it comes to old studios who have a pedigree I'm thoroughly unimpressed by what they put out considering these are companies with billions in profits. I don't care if it's Rockstar Studios or Valve, I call it like I see it, cry harder about it. It's even more embarrassing when you see companies with billions in backing and their games barely run even on high end machines along with being 100gb+ installation sizes. At least Valve hasn't reached that stage with their optimisation yet, but I wouldn't be shocked if they get invaded with DEI we'll start seeing that happen.
If you haven't already, you should watch the videos by the ex-Fallout dev. It's extremely eye opening that these companies have billions of dollars available to them and they take weeks just to write a few lines of code when an indie dev can poop out game features they brag about on a weekend just by speed running tutorials on a low end PC. This is the reality of the games industry now.
You talk like an intermediate that thinks he's a principal.
Tim Cain certainly was not thinking of Valve when he made that statement about workplace mediocrity.
Friendly suggestion: after you finish a post, re-read it and find any bits where you talk about yourself and simply delete those paragraphs.
Yes, sometimes personal experience is relevant to a post. But no, your programming experience or British citizenship is not relevant to every post. You'd be better erring on the side of caution and your posts will be better if you just leave it out.
Believe it or not I do at times, unfortunately owing to recent circumstances with my country burning itself down me being British is annoyingly relevant and I have to make the point because otherwise people won't realise yes I do actually live in the country being discussed because it happens to be trending constantly at the moment.
I'm sorry my country keeps getting in the news lol :( by the way it's not fucking over yet in the slightest, they're going full communist.
Might I interest you in a game called Artifact.
You never hear about it anymore. So no people will not play a game just cause of its dev name, although it will lead to a surge of initial players if they screw it, it will die.
Ex valve devs have commented on code maintainability and workplace mismanagement. Still, I wouldn't denigrate the technical prowess put into a successful twitch shooter sequel on a custom engine (or if they went the UE/Godot route) as beneath a moderate sized triple-a team. Did the Godot hobbyist come up with a superior smoke implementation? I have my own complaints outside the core gameplay, about the hidden away server browser and retarded official matchmaking systems, so I'm not giving Gaben special treatment, and have held my negative csgo review since trying cs2.
Triple-A gaming is far from the most secretive industry. Think of the secrecy measures put into a federal contractor like Palantir. Or even hardware companies like Micron or AMD. Would be an unnecessarily costly burden that constrains creative output.
Dota has been getting updates, substantial massive tons of content updates for 20 years, and its still around 65 G. I trust this one
I would probably fall under that, but I would also disagree. Cause things that "wow" people are not things that a programmer does. It's what a designer does.
What wows a programmer is stuff like the magic number for fast inverse square root. But for a player that is irrelevant.
Stuff like the physic puzzles in HL2 are trivial and were trivial. We had physic simulation for ages and they're easy to implement. But putting them into a shooter? That was the wow factor.
I mean your CS2 example is great. Did the Godot programmer's version run at 240fps next to all the other code of CS2? Cause that was a requirement, cause CS nerds value their 240hz monitors. Not to mention they don't want any changes to the gameplay.
Sorry, I know you’re trying to be nice, but his example with CS2 was the worst part. He didn’t say anything about whether it worked well. You’re extrapolating that because you assume it wasn’t a retarded example. His actual complaint was that it wasn’t complicated or fancy. I even asked him to clarify if there was anything bad about it, because the complaint didn’t appear to make sense, and his response was:
In other words, it worked fine, it did what the game needed, but because it wasn’t done in a fancy new way that Valve invented themselves, it’s bad.
Again, I never actually claimed it was bad, just incredibly average, you're getting uppity like others here because I dared to criticise the holy patron saint that is Gabe Newell and now you're busy trying to lick his balls.
People understandably keep asking me about that so I've got the video for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNbku2qrtDM
Now, caveat with this, I'm a Godot fanboi, so of course I'm going to praise the engine. If you wanted to get really autistic about this you would have to get CS:2 and then clone the game in Godot 4 side by side to do some proper comparisons. My money is though that Godot 4 would run a game like CS:2 yes, pretty much almost the same as the Source engine.
CS:2 isn't exactly a heavy game, though that being said a lot of people have complained about the graphics update because they preferred CS:GO since it really would run on almost anything. Allegedly there's been difficult when it comes to CS:2 when people have tested that on older machines.
I mean if you don't know anything about the guy developing it what you said might make sense.
But the Frog being involved is about the only trustworthy name in game development.
I've posted the same thing about Notch, I don't even hate these guys, I just think the marketing is silly and they should be more open about their development workflow and practices instead of trying to pretend they've got some magic secret sauce nobody knows about. If you want to impress me, make a truly complex space simulator or some kind of management/RTS game now that code is more complex.
Wat. We're talking about the dota 2 developer. Like you're realize that. He's the ultimate "built it in a cave, with a bunch of scraps."
This is exactly how dota 2 was relased, beta keys. So sure it's "silly" for the developer of the most successful esport of all time to develop a similar game using similar marketing for the same company.
And YES there is a secret sauce. Its nothing. The secret sauce is being secret and keeping retards out of your process flow. Which is helped by the dude being anonymous for so long, and not broadcasting his design choices.
I don't get how your brain works. But I've made that clear before