I'd love to get another singleplayer game as well, but I've accepted that Valve is just unpredictable. I'm sure they haven't given up on Singleplayer and we'll get another singleplayer game... at some point. Their previous game was the fantastic Half-life Alyx after all.

Valve is not a normal company. As far as I know they still have their fluid work structure in place where projects are dictated by what the devs themselves feel like doing and are inspired by.

Icefrog (who was the lead developer of Dota 2 - and Dota 1 for many years before that) is lead developing Deadlock as I understand it. It has his fingerprints all over it, at least. It seems enough other people at Valve liked his idea of a twist on the MOBA concept to turn it into a full project.

I feel your frustration but there isn't really any opportunity cost lost here. It's not that they decided to make "a game" and chose this one out of all available options. If they felt like they had enough ideas to make Half-Life 3 (or any other single player game) then they would have. It's just that this is the game they want to make right now.

For what it's worth, Robin Walker and his team are working on the next half life after Alyx. Will that ever come out? I have no idea and I'm not expecting anything. Deadlock however is a game designed by one of the grandfathers of the moba genre, and has had over 20k concurrent players at any given time, and it wasn't even announced with it's existence only known through word of mouth. That's insanely impressive and shows how huge the moba genre really is and how those players are thirsty for a new game from a big company. It sucks and I wish we had more sp valve games but I'm content with the work they've done on proton, steamos, the steam deck, steam itself, and half life alyx. They haven't been sitting on their hands not doing anything, they've been putting their focus on more technical areas versus making games and that's ok.

we're getting old dude

the kids who are the age we were in the half life glory days--they don't want single player. they want league of apex legends fortnitewatchstrike

single player games won't go away completely, but they're definitely taking a backseat to whatever the rage is with the kids. currently mobas. just google "most played video games" if you're not depressed enough already

"An overwatch looking moba shooter"

No, it plays like Battleborn and Monday Night Combat, a third person shooter with moba elements. It's not overwatch, it's not Dota.

I wish for more fun and casual multiplayer with strong competive side like TF, none of this matchmaking toxic shit no-fun allowed with elo

Why does this billion dollar company not do exaxtly what I expect them to😡 They made great games because those are the ones I like and now they make shitty games because I dont like them.

+100, my feelings exactly.

I am now 45. I tried Deadlock, was overwhelmed, some other player told me to "fuck off" through the vocal chat because I was in the wrong lane, I uninstalled.

Generally, I don't have time anymore to play online games that are about grind and skill. I don't want to play only one sort of game. I want a game with an end so that I can move to another one.

MOBAs were cool at the time of warcraft 3. Let's move on.

I'd much rather have a game like deadlock developed out of love and passion than some suits dictating to the devs to make games they don't want to. That's how we get Avengers, Redfall, Gotham Knights, etc...

but they do have all the money in the world, no external pressure, no publisher to shit on them, it’s just their developers and artists and a vision.

I think that's part of the issue. Supposedly they do have multiple games in development and a large percentage of their employees are working on them. But they are content to let the creative and technical processes play out, without announcing too-ambitious release dates which inevitably get pushed back and still have a buggy game released. And sometimes they even cut their losses if a long term project just isn't working out.

I'd like them to do an RPG, something completely off the wall, like the TF2 crew playing D&D.

I’m stoked about Deadlock. I used to play Super Monday Night Combat constantly, until it shut down.

I’ve been waiting like 10 years to get a decent game that fills that void, and Deadlock seems to finally be it! I personally couldn’t be happier with their choice hah.

My immediate emotional reaction is to dunk on you. Boo hoo, a company won't make a game you want. But you're missing the valve you grew up with, and gaming is worse off now. Multiplayer games with subscription models and microtransactions have become the default, and we all feel it.

For me Deadlock has great characters, lore, new interesting mechanics, and only surface level similarities with DOTA. I'm not upset about it really. Just happy Valve is making anything again. Maybe I'm worn down, but so many big companies take but shits everyday I'm just happy to see one building good shit. (And it's free!)

I miss Super Monday Night Combat. (This is utterly unrelated to the post other than being a shooter/moba.)

Dude, where have you been? Look how little good single player games rockstar is putting out.

It’s just harder and less profitable.

I rather have one great red dead 2 than 5 forgettable ones; looking at your assassins creed, used to be one of my favourites and I haven’t played anything after black flag.

If I ever get VR stuff, I would want to play Alyx but if they had 5 okayish games instead, it would be a nope from me.

I still haven’t even played black mesa even though i bought it, I like fewer but better choices especially since I’m more busy in this stage of life.

The laws of captialism entropy:

Any organization that sees success will attract profit-driven leadership, and will become such over time. The soul from the original founders will be watered down, dampened, or ejected.

A profit-driven organization will over time become more and more profit-seeking, never less. Once this reaches a certain threshold, we start to use phrases like "enshittification". Valve hasn't gone shit yet imho, but their soul and passion doesn't seem to lie in games anymore.

The next excellent product comes from new, growing organizations or small teams that may grow into such.

It is best to just treat it as any other law of nature and so we move on from Blizzard, Google, EA, Valve, Epic Games, Unity, etc and go swim in the wonderful vibrant indie scene.

Valve doesn't want to make a buy to play game unless it's something that pushes the medium forward somehow, which is the only reason Alyx was made. A PvP moba can be a source of continued revenue like all the other games they still support (and one they don't).

I wish they'd at least do some fun story driven coop stuff instead of only pvp stuff. But, I miss the single player days.

Don't they supposedly have a couple other games in the works, too? What are the chances they're working on three new MOBAs?

Isnt Icefrog one of the lead devs? I guess he likes this style of game. How many Total Wars, 4x and CoDs were released while Valve made one more Dota-like. Valve has some cool people working, vut O don't see a Suda51, a Raphael, Swery or Co, who has the focus to develope such a single player experience. If the flat structure with 'at will' project focus is still a thing, than sp games have probably a problem getting devs.

They are doing what they like, you would be complaining about them making games without passion, make they really like tf2 and Dota lol

Weren't there just credible leaks on a sequel to Half Life Alyx that may or may not be Half Life 3.

I remember them saying that they dont want to do another one in the series because they are looking to innovate and make something truly original.

I don't remember them saying this, but I remember people speculating that this was a reason. The truth is, if you look into The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, they prototyped a bunch of different single player games that were cancelled because they just weren't working, including Half-Life 3. Post-Alyx, in recent weeks, we have evidence to suggest that Half-Life 3 may be imminent.

It’s true they’ve always been distracted with multiplayer games as well, things like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress and I did play them for sure, because I was a kid and I had all the time in the world.

These days I’m not a kid anymore and so when I game I tend to look more for memorable experiences instead of mindless grinding.

Boy, I miss the days when multiplayer games didn't mean mindless grinding. I play fighting games, and the mindless grinding in recent releases is siloed off to a separate mode that I don't have to think about; otherwise you're playing the game because it's fun and/or because you want to get better at it, not unlock the latest costume. I would love nothing more than for campaign FPS games to come back--the kind that postdated the designs of what we now call boomer shooters--and to come with a deathmatch/CTF mode made out of levels recycled from the campaign, playable online and local. You'd play that multiplayer mode for maybe 5 hours or maybe 5000 hours, depending on how much magic they managed to capture in it, but you absolutely would not have some expectation that the devs must keep updating it. Those were good times, and I didn't appreciate how good we had it.