How long can valve afford to wait before releasing a new game?

[mahonisaya]

We have seen, DOTA, TF, Half Life, and Portal as well as all their sequels. Sure valve makes money through steam but how long can valve as a company stay relevant before they need to rely purely on steam (Which many people are finding alternatives to by now anyways) to make money? Valve needs to release a new game eventually or they will likely start losing money. How much longer can they wait until steam and the TF2 and DOTA shops stop making them income? (please no stupid HL3 jokes i would like to hear honest opinions)

[Deleted]

Infinity time?

[ThunderTaco]

I'm pretty sure they can rely purely on steam and DOTA. There was a tournament recently were they gave like 5M$ to the winning team IIRC. Shows they are doing fine.

[Super Kami Dende]

They control Steam and have CS:GO, TF2 and DOTA 2.

They are fine.

[Lahis]

Valve will never have to release new game anymore. Steam just pumps so much money for them. I'd wager that if HL3 ever gets released, it'll be last of Valve's traditional game releases. After that they'll just need to make F2P entryway drugs to get new people into Steam and make old users stay.

[zealo]

A long fucking time due to Steam.

[cFortyfive]

Valve doesn't need to release any games ?

[Kelimbror]

Valve needs to release a new game eventually or they will likely start losing money

Please don't take this rudely, but I don't think you understand how their company works at all. I won't claim to know specifics, but considering the amount of revenue they have just from Steam sales combined with how well DOTA does...they could probably never make another game and coast for many, many moons. They have so much money they just throw it into R&D to make SteamOS and get steamboxes to be a thing. Once they tap into the console market that way...sheesh...sky's the limit.

[Dundebuns]

Left 4 Dead 3 will be there next release, but yeah, Valve don't need to release any games anymore. They are slowly transitioning to a Technology company, albeit a games oriented one, and licensing out rights to Steam boxes, rights to Steam controllers, and all the revenue Steam brings in for them, they wont need to release one again for financial reasons.

[lordjust]

Valve gets 30% of every transaction done on Steam and in addition they have some games with in-game shop (TF2, DOTA 2) that are very strong and a lot of people use the shop. Also they have their Source Engine that some studios licensed. I think Steam alone isn't enough but with the in-game shops and their engine they don't need to make games anymore. On the horizon there's also the Steam Machines from which Valve get some money for licensing (I read in an interview with a manufacturer that Valve gets 10%).

They make games if they feel like. In a short documentation they also said exactly that (with Geoff Keighly) that they don't need to make games and focus on creating new ideas and game prototypes and get people with good ideas in the company to create whatever they wanted and after that stay in the company or go their way. Portal and Left 4 Dead were created that way and both teams left Valve and created their own studio and the team behind Left 4 Dead is now working on Evolve.

I think if Valve creates a new game it's just to show the world something new. They will probably create a game to boost Steam machines and Steam OS or to show off their new engine.

Valve is like Nintendo. They have a lot of money and even if they lose a lot of money by industry standards they could survive for another 20 years and more.

[Shurkuris]

You have got to be joking if you think a game would actually make more cash in a year compared to the amount of pure gold that oozes out of Steam in a day.

They are in the same position as a Mafia group, they get a piece of every fucking thing that goes through them.



If a big triple AAA game gets released today on steam and makes 1,000,000 sales for $60. They get 30% of the revenue (Number is subject to change) generated by those sales. Not even including sales from the other 10,000+ games and the millions of daily, in-game, cosmetic micro-transactions.

Steam has more money than they know what to do with.

[Edge-]

Considering the absurd amount of money they're making from the sale of games on Steam, Dota 2, TF2, and the Steam marketplace, they never have to release another game. Ever. They can literally pour tens (possibly even hundreds) of millions into development every single year and still not bother to release a game and be financially fine.

[Yuanrang]

When the Dota2 community gathered up 9 million USD to give to the prizepool of TI4, that was only 25% of the total revenue. Valve took the remaining 75%, and that was 27 million USD right there over the course of 60 days. It is pretty damn hard to calculate how much they earn simply from cuts on Steam purchases, and games like CS:GO, Dota 2 and TF2.

[Deleted]

How much longer can they wait until steam [...] stop making them income?

Steam is a money printing machine with no end in sight. So, a very, very long time.

[Fencers]

Forever.

Valve has the most profitable and most well known PC gaming platform of like all time. In addition, they have the fantastically successful DOTA2 and Team Fortress franchises- both of which are hugely popular and profitable.

[Vankrys]

valve nerver learn to count up to 3


Half Life 2
Portal 2
left4dead 2
Team fortress 2

more seriously, out of those franchise, onlu Portal 3 would have me hype. Half life 3 would be yet another FPS. Though half life is a very good series, we have too many FPS and i don't see how half life 3 could be revolutioning the genre, it will be a standard shooter.

Portal 3 is what i want.

[DeadmanWalking]

Why make games when you can make money hand over fist selling other peoples games? Game's are risky ventures and putting tons of money in a game by no way means it will be a success. Steam has done what Bill Gates figured out in the 80's, let someone else make the computers and worry about resources and manufacturing, the real money is in producing the program which all computers will use and just copy pasting it onto CD/DVD's until you are swimming in money.

[Deleted]

at a total worth of over $3 billion they dont have to do shit ever again.