Santa

Im sure theres other articles out there on this, but I nearly shat myself when I saw it. http://www.gamereplays.org/portals.p...ssing-or-curse

Cant say I trust EA to not kill another great developer. Even if the head guy at Valve trusts EA, he cant ignore their history. Its not like valve absolutely needs to be bought as they seem to be doing well enough on their own, so I gotta say itll be a pretty stupid decision by Valve if they decide to be bought.

Bommando

I think the deal revolves more around distribution rights than a total buy-out. Although recently John Riccitiello admitted faults with EA's developer acquisition strategies. It's hard to say where EA will take a new developer in light of such acknowledgements, but I believe Valve's gushing praise was more just a way to entice EA to work on a market that Valve doesn't much want to be involved in: Physical distribution.

Let's face it, digital distribution is the future and Steam has matured into a pretty damn robust platform. Not only that, but I'd wager that profits from electronically delivered games are much higher than physical and with less headaches to boot. Valve could be withdrawing from a logistical headache and bringing EA on board to ease the burden with their well-established shipping channels. Also, since digital delivery of full retail releases to consoles is a while off yet, they're likely looking to tap into the massive console market with a partner who has the resources and experience to release games in a much larger volume.

This is all just conjecture of course, but as a small, proud independent developer for 12 years, I can't imagine that a highly profitable developer / publisher would want to sell up right now. If anything, they're wriggling the worm to get an idea of their market value, so they can work on bigger things.

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Zoopy

EA distributed the Orange Box for Valve.

icky

They distributed HL2 as well, didn't they? Valve has been dealing with EA for a long time, as far as I know.

Hidus

NPD just released some new study results recently that for once didn't focus on retail sales numbers alone:

http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_080811.html

PC Gaming is far from dead.

L10N

Surprised at how few are in the extreme group.

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CitizenSnips

EA has been with Valve for a while now...I think the first game EA and Valve distrubuted was the Xbox version of Half-Life 2. EA is usually the killer of good gaming companies but it seems Valve has been un-affected by EA's poison.

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icky

Hi, Jack!

Extreme gamers should be divided into people who sit in front of WoW with drool running from their expressionless faces and people who play every released title on every platform and get the shakes in months with less than 30 new titles. They two obviously have different purchasing habits.

Zoopy

Distributors have no say in the game making process. So EA has no influence on a Valve game whatsoever. If EA was the publisher on the other hand...

Relmar

Right, and if that happens, farewell Valve. It was nice knowing you.