Det var under natten som Valve-grundaren, Half-Life-producenten och Steam-chefen Gabe Newell (som enligt Forbes är god för strax över 40 miljarder kronor, också - enligt gårdagens rapportering) besvarade fansen frågor på Reddit. Och ja, många frågor blev det. Bland annat fick Newell frågan om vilket Valve Studios-spel han håller som sin personliga favorit och till mångas förvåning svarade han varken Half-Life eller Half-Life 2, två av tidernas mest hyllade actiontitlar.
What is your personal favourite Valve game/series?
- I think Portal 2 is our best single-player game. I play Dota 2 the most of our multiplayer games.
Han fick även frågan varför Valve inte kommunicerar med sina fans/spelköpare om titlar som Half-Life 3 och Portal 3. Såhär svarade han då:
"Because our decision making is way more conditional than most other companies. The one thing we won't do is waste our customers time and money, which means we will cancel or change stuff much later in development. Tracking our choices would be annoying and frustrating.
Another way to think about this, and the way we talk about this internally, is that we prefer to communicate through our products. We are all pretty devoted to reading and listening to the community - everyone here believes it is an integral part of their job to do so. And when it comes time to respond, we generally use Steam - shipping updates that address issues or add functionality. Obviously this doesn't work for everything. Working this way imposes latency on our communication - it takes longer to ship and update than to do a blog post. This can lead to the feeling of an echo chamber, where it seems like Valve isn't listening. We're always listening. So sometimes the latency is rough for everyone, including us when we want to address issues quickly. On balance we think it's usually worth the trade-off."
Dota 3, Portal 3, Team Fortress 3 eller Half-Life 3. Om du fick välja, vilket av dessa treor skulle du helst vilja se att Valve släppte härnäst?