Steam reviewers are review bombing Dota for "killing Half Life 3"

[AlTech]

Recently, a bunch of Steam users review bombed Dota 2 to ensure that Valve got the message that Half Life 3 matters.

 

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If there's one thing we know about online user reviews, it's that they often bear little resemblance to the actual quality of the product in question. Today's evidence: the user reviews section for Dota 2 on Steam, which in recent days has been flooded with people complaining not about Dota 2 directly but about Valve's refusal to work on Half-Life 3.

 

 

It looks like LaidLaw releasing the unofficial plot ending for Half Life 2 Episode 3 has spawned some hatred towards Valve.

 

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the timing of this coordinated online "protest" may seem odd, considering that over 11 years have passed since Half-Life 2: Episode 3 was first announced. It seems likely that former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw's recent publication of a "fanfic" potential plotline for Half-Life 3 may have spurred some of the newfound backlash against Valve.

 

 

Users on Steam had some very interesting things to say about the matter:

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"Dota killed Half-Life 3. Nuff said. "

"HL3 died for this"

"This game is derivative trash, bring back real story driven FPS games, which are the reason you are here"

" Newell ♥♥♥♥ you (please dont delete my steam account) "

"Valve is a blood sucking company that doesn't care about it's User's [sic] and refuses to make Half-Life 3."

"I really don't care about Half Life 3, but you know, making Left 4 Dead 3 would be pretty nice"

 

And all of this didn't really amount to much cos nobody seems to actually care enough...

 

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The most ironic thing about this effort is that many of the negative reviews come from Steam accounts with dozens or hundreds of hours logged on Dota 2, suggesting these people haven't been willing to boycott the game to send a message about Half-Life 3 or anything. More than that, the wave of astroturfed negative attention hasn't really affected Dota 2's public reputation. The game still has an 89% positive reception among over 775,000 user reviews on Steam, the same ratio it had a couple of weeks ago with about 768,000 reviews. The trolls are going to have to work hard to make a real dent in numbers like that.

 

Valve, Valve, Valve. What a mess you've made for yourself.  I suspect Half Life 3 (if ever released) will be a SteamVR exclusive game. This name calling and trolling isn't going to make Valve feel bad about not making Half Life 3. If Valve employees don't want Half Life 3 to be made then that's the problem of it's employees (apparently Valve employees choose what projects they work on).

 

Source:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/08/steam-reviewers-bomb-dota-2-over-lack-of-half-life-3/

[GoodBytes]

1. Grow Up (I mean those doing this)
2. Who cares?! I mean Dota 2 is a well known established franchised, and people who are interest in the game already bought it. Not to mention that people will read the reviews and see that it is about HL3 being cancelled.
3. Game got cancelled most likely because Valve could top off the excellent HL2, and the hype and expectation of the HL3 is so high, that even if the game was really awesome, it will be a total disappointment, and flop.

[Misanthrope]

I guess in principle I should be upset but in reality, can't muster any sympathy for either Valve or DOTA 2.

[Taja]

I cant believe how people care about HL3. I always tought it was only a joke, but ppl really cant let go lol

[Agosto]

4 minutes ago, Taja said:

I cant believe how people care about HL3. I always tought it was only a joke, but ppl really cant let go lol

EVERYONE who played HL2 (and episodes) wants ep3/HL3, especially since Lord Gaben himself said it would have been ready for 2007/2008.

[LukaH]

quit with the "hl3 cant live up to the hype" bs. We don't want a hl2 topper we just want fucking closure. I'd play that shit at 10fps all day everyday. 

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, Taja said:

I cant believe how people care about HL3. I always tought it was only a joke, but ppl really cant let go lol

 

1 hour ago, Agost said:

EVERYONE who played HL2 (and episodes) wants ep3/HL3, especially since Lord Gaben himself said it would have been ready for 2007/2008.

Indeed: We're talking about the game that successfully sold the idea of DRM to hardcore PC gamers. There was massive push back when Steam was released but Valve was stubborn enough to know they were sitting on a winner and basically popularized Digital Distribution and acceptable DRM for the PC Market.

 

That's the true power of Half Life.

[PlayStation 2]

Dota 2 didn't kill Half-Life 3, these fucking tools killed Half-Life 3. They really think they're gonna get it.

[Tiz]

Boy, this user does really like a lot to make controversial-yet-not-informative posts ha?

[Master Disaster]

 

Yeah my photoshop skillz are really bad, sue me

[onlybuilt4cubanxlinx]

Episode 3 would need to be released on the source 2 engine or better to make it a huge step from the previous chapter. 

[Dash Lambda]

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Game got cancelled most likely because Valve could top off the excellent HL2, and the hype and expectation of the HL3 is so high, that even if the game was really awesome, it will be a total disappointment, and flop.

You know, that's what I always thought, but then I realized that I was just making assumptions about how everyone else felt.

Personally, I've never been able to imagine myself disliking the next Half-Life game, assuming it's of the same quality as the others, no matter how long I wait. It's not like we have any investment in it other than interest, all we're doing is waiting. I feel like being disappointed due only to the wait would be rather immature (More immature than the Internet already is...).

 

I personally hope it comes out as soon as possible, as I'm always excited for games I'll enjoy, but I'm perfectly fine waiting. I just wish we actually knew it was coming.

[suicidalfranco]

i'm just glad story driven fps games are going the way of the dodo, now if only third person action adventure games could disappear follow suit, that would make my day

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

3 hours ago, Taja said:

I cant believe how people care about HL3. I always tought it was only a joke, but ppl really cant let go lol

It's actually a very small group but very loud. The majority of pc gamers care about Dota, LOL, PUBG, WOW, Overwatch and card games.

[The Benjamins]

6 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

i'm just glad story driven fps games are going the way of the dodo, now if only third person action adventure games could disappear follow suit, that would make my day

Why do you want them to go away?

[Humbug]

Valve has totally lost their way in game development. Loads of money and talent but I don't know if they have the motivation and organization to get hundreds of employees together in a coordinated effort for a few years to create a AAA game.

 

But regardless; review bombing is retarded. And this trend will die down in a few days.

[Humbug]

2 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Why do you want them to go away?

maybe it hurts him when other people play games these games.

[suicidalfranco]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

Why do you want them to go away?

because they have one of the most boring gameplay i've ever played.

[Terryv]

1 minute ago, suicidalfranco said:

because they have one of the most boring gameplay i've ever played.

No one is forcing you to play them and their existence in no way interferes with your life.

[Master Disaster]

22 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

You know, that's what I always thought, but then I realized that I was just making assumptions about how everyone else felt.

Personally, I've never been able to imagine myself disliking the next Half-Life game, assuming it's of the same quality as the others, no matter how long I wait. It's not like we have any investment in it other than interest, all we're doing is waiting. I feel like being disappointed due only to the wait would be rather immature (More immature than the Internet already is...).

 

I personally hope it comes out as soon as possible, as I'm always excited for games I'll enjoy, but I'm perfectly fine waiting. I just wish we actually knew it was coming.

Its NEVER coming, Gabe has said as much in an interview fairly recently. Something along of the lines of "It was in production but then every just sorta gave up, the project was shelved and no one has touched it since". He followed that up with something like "I'm not going to say it will ever come but right now there is no one actively working on a Half Life game".

 

This is my take on what happened...

 

They started production of the HL3 sometime during HL2's release build up but with only a skeleton crew as most were working on L4D2 and Portal 2 at the time. After L4D2 and Portal 2 released Valve starting making huge bucks on TF2 hats and items (it was a few months before Portal 2 released that Valve started heavily pushing TF2 items) so while some of the artists started working on HL3 others went to the TF2 studio to make items for the game. Portal 2 launched with its own in game item system that failed dismally which showed Valve that single player games with item systems wouldn't have the same impact as multi player games would and this caused the management to do something that is rumoured to never happen at Valve, they basically told everyone working on SP content to stop making it and concentrate on MP content instead.

 

HL3, L4D3 and Portal 3 (if they ever existed at all) were put on permanent hold and Gabe, literally swimming in his money bin at this point, told all his staff that valve would never do a true story driver SP experience again because Valve could make multiple times the amount of money per month from selling small items to players of MP games instead and the cost versus the profit from story driven SP games simply did not add up.

 

I don't believe the staff at valve didn't want to make HL3 for a second, I mean its obvious that some of them cared about it, Laidlaw cared enough to try and give fans closure after 11 years and he no longer works for Valve. The decision to cease creation of SP games was a management decision based on nothing but pure greed.

[Terryv]

1 hour ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Dota 2 didn't kill Half-Life 3, these fucking tools killed Half-Life 3. They really think they're gonna get it.

This has as much to do with DOTA as is has to do with ice cream. It's people protesting in a place where it would be most visible to Valve and Gabe. the community wants its voice heard and with time and a lot of luck, we might finally at least get an official response (or the actual game) from Valve

 

A letter writing campaign brought back star trek, with some say as few as 50,000 letters.

 

 The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as the old expression goes

[Master Disaster]

11 minutes ago, Terryv said:

This has as much to do with DOTA as is has to do with ice cream. It's people protesting in a place where it would be most visible to Valve and Gabe. the community wants its voice heard and with time and a lot of luck, we might finally at least get an official response (or the actual game) from Valve

You're kidding, right?

 

It took Valve getting sued by the EU & Australia before they responded to the whole steam refund debate.

 

On Christmas Day 2015 Valve literally gave away thousands of users details because someone uploaded an incorrectly coded webpage and it took them 48 hours to even acknowledge the mistake and it wasn't until 5 days after the event (when Totalbiscuit and Jim Sterling starting crying about it) that Valve issued any form of apology and reason.

 

It took Digital Homicide to try and sue Valve and 100 Steam Users before Valve responded to that whole clusterfuck, remember they had already filed a spurious lawsuit against Jim Sterling, banned hundreds of people from their community section on Steam, physically threatened Steam Users, were abusing the greenlight system by selling an asset flip, were abusing the greenlight system by giving away keys for votes, were abusing the greenlight system by using card sales on games they'd given away for free to boost their income. All that and Valve did nothing until the Romaines tried to subpoena Valve for users details and drag their name into the lawsuit.

 

If you really think a review bomb will get a response from Valve then your as delusional as the people who think the review bomb will get them HL3.

 

I've already said everything I need to in the meme above, Gabe does not give a fuck because Steam will ALWAYS make him money. ALWAYS. Look at it this way, if everyone stopped playing Valves games tomorrow Valve would still be making billions a year just from Steam.

[Dash Lambda]

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

It's NEVER coming

-snip-

Nothing I haven't heard before. To my knowledge all we've heard from anyone at Valve is that it's an ongoing, on-and-off project that groups of employees occasionally get together to do but haven't yet gotten very far on before putting it back on the shelf. Everything else is people reading as far as they can into that.

I don't think Valve's structure really allows for an EA-style "money-before-all" corporate order, and even if it somehow did I don't think anyone in charge at Valve is really evil enough to kill SP games, the thing Valve does best, regardless of the state of HL3.

 

It's been 6 years since Portal 2, we're still on Valve Time for SP games. Have patience.

[The Benjamins]

23 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

because they have one of the most boring gameplay i've ever played.

So because you don't like it no one should be able to enjoy them?

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

Nothing I haven't heard before. To my knowledge all we've heard from anyone at Valve is that it's an ongoing, on-and-off project that groups of employees occasionally get together to do but haven't yet gotten very far on before putting it back on the shelf. Everything else is people reading as far as they can into that.

I don't think Valve's structure really allows for an EA-style "money-before-all" corporate order, and even if it somehow did I don't think anyone in charge at Valve is really evil enough to kill SP games, the thing Valve does best, regardless of the state of HL3.

 

It's been 6 years since Portal 2, we're still on Valve Time for SP games. Have patience.

Well I'm sorry to break it to you buddy but, as you said, its been 6 years since Valve released anything narrative driven, all the writers from HL and Portal have moved on to other studios and yes, Gabe has straight up said that no one is working on HL3.

 

We all hear these stories about how it is to work at Valve but just remember that it is a business and it has some kind of hierarchy in place. Gabe is the boss and if he doesn't want his staff working on SP content anymore then his staff won't be working on SP content anymore.