Valve & EA... this can't be good
 

Unless EA decides in a few years from now to completely drop their gaming branch and move on to ****ing up some other multi media branch (such as movies for instance), it's not a matter of IF... it's a matter of when.
When will EA grow so big that it controls every game, every developer and all prices?

Recently Valve and EA announced that future Half Life games (including the Xbox version of Half Life 2) will be distibuted by EA unless it's no longer needed. Valve is working hard on upgrading their Steam software to support buying games online, and installing them online. Half Life 2 already had this concept build in partialy, since you had to get some files of the internet before being able to play the game (yes, Half Life 2 is not playable for people without an internet conn). And if Valve has anything to do with it, that's the future of selling games. No more spending 50% of the profits on the selling stores and publishers... if they start selling their games online trough their Steam software, they can easily catch 90% of the profit. Which is a major change from how things go these days. As a game developer, in the end you can be happy if you get as much as 10% of the profit, so just imagine what could happen if big time publishers like EA are out of the picture?

So far, Valve games have reached a high point of 20 million sold copies, now, if they would sell the same ammount with their Steam software; they would be richer then Bill Gates in no time.
But untill then, they are stuck with EA as a publisher. For now the deal is that EA will ONLY distribute the game, and not have a hand in the game AT ALL. This ofcourse is good news... heck its great news. But I remember them saying the same thing to Westwood Studio's 10 years ago... and now Westwood is gone, along with all their future games. So it's a matter of how much we can trust EA.
No doubt it will start with distributing... then a little hand in the game here and there... and before you know it they buy 51% of the stocks Valve has and BAM, another great game developer down the drain.

My advice to Valve: Get your asses working on that Steam project. Even though most of kinda hate it at the moment... it's still better then EA ****ing you over. And if you can pull off selling games online... it's bye bye to EA... and hello revolution in the gaming industry.

In about three hours...

Lol, you've completely failed to understand what's going on.

EA will be the DISTRIBUTOR. Do you know what that means? That means they'll be shoving disks into boxes and sending them to shops. WHOO! So much for your big conspiracy theory about it taking over all the developers. Seriously if that's what they were really doing they'd get busted for monopoly quicker than you can say "EA dominance ftw!".

The only reason EA get games off of developers is because those developers are going out of business and they're trying to sell off their game to make enough money back to avoid having to live on the streets. They rarely ever take over fully operational companies unless it's a merger, in which case they keep all the original staff and the games themselves are unaffected.

I'll tell you now for nothing; Blizzard, Valve, Ubisoft, Sierra, etc. (all the big game companies) will remain seperate from EA, because everyone in the industry knows that EA suck big, executive balls.

You know what this means, don't you?
More black and white game manuals.

That's the first thing that went through my mind. Woe is usn's.

Thats what I meant when I said EA would only be a publisher. Only stocking boxes ect.
Thats how it started with Westwood... and they were one of the top developers, I doubt they had any problems with their money flow and EA bought them up, didn't they?
EA is slowly but surely TRYING to take over the gaming market and you know it. Go to your local store and see how many games carry the EA logo. Go check some random gaming forum and see how many complaints there are about EA games.
Everyone hates them becouse they ruien great gaming company's. Heck, they came close to messing up Oddworld as well. Need I remind you that they own 49% of the stocks in OWI? Thats 2% away from messing up a good company.

I know/hope that Valve knows what their doing. Cuz it would be a shame to see them go down the drain.

I WORK in the gaming industry (albeit part time) and I can tell you now with at least some authority that you're definately wrong. EA are just trying to make money.

No, they don't. They take over failing game companies and sell their shitty product to the shitty masses. Like Ultima Online for instance - the game sucked prior to EA takeover, and still sucks after EA takeover. The people who play it are just as undiscerning as EA. The same with all the other games that EA pump out.

That's not a takeover attempt, that's how partnership investment works in the world of public limited companies. 2% extra would make them majority (and therefore controlling) shareholders in the company, which means that they would have to invest more money in it and get less returns as a result - they're interested in leaching money off of OWI in return for giving it enough money to operate. If they were interested in buying the whole company they'd just buy 100% of the shares.

Valve aren't going to go down the drain, they're outsourcing deadweight to give themselves a springboard on their way to Steam dependance for all their product distribution. Not strictly tactical since it means they'll cut off all their non-internet customers, but they did that the moment they released HL2 anyway so I guess they're not worried about that.

And you need to brush up on your understanding of businesses, companies and economics.