That's what you get when the Company CEO is also the original (or at least one of) Founder

Every time the founder CEO steps down and is replaced (Unless the founder directly, hand picks their successor (and even then sometimes not)) the company goes to shit soon after

It happened with Google, it happened with Apple, it happened with Reddit (Little more complicated, but there were multiple founders, the one with the vision and the one with only money on the mind, you can guess which one is currently at the helm) and it'll happen with Valve too

They don’t need VR or handhelds and they certainly don’t need their own games, but they do it anyway.

Releasing a handheld was a fairly savvy marketing strategy, given how lucrative the console marketplace has proven to be. Idk if I'd call that "love of the game" so much as "optimal play at the production price point".

Valve doesn’t have shareholders and doesn’t seem interested in the myth of infinite growth.

Plenty of Valve's store content is absolute dogshit. I refuse to believe they are immune to the allure of infinite growth through the distribution of MOBAs and other FTP games. But they're not munching on their seed corn in pursuit of stratospheric growth, like Apple and Microsoft. They're also coasting on an environment where things are getting worse and they're just kinda treading water.

Not getting worse is the new getting better.

I'm glad they do these things.

It also makes me more likely to put time into Deadlock, because I know they'll support it for a while.

Shareholders ruin everything. That's why I'm a Mutualist.

You don’t seem to have the billionaire monopolist mindset, when you reach the level steam is at you are no longer competing for money but power, steam could be making all the money in the world but that won’t stop Microsoft from shutting them down as they have already tried to do with windows store, if steam doesn’t have its own platform they are vulnerable and beholden to Microsoft, it’s true Gabe Newell could retire anytime he wants but that only applies to him not his countless employees, if steam can’t make enough money to pay a competitive wage to hire people from Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple or Sony then they will just work for them for more money so they have to charge the %30 Steam isn’t a public company but I guarantee the vast vast majority of its profits are poured directly back into the company its always that way or other companies will outcompete and they will die.

CS2 is a half-assed sequel meant to be the bare minimum necessary to keep Valve’s cs money printer going.

But Valve can't count to 3

What would you really add or change that would warrant a third game though? The second game can already be expanded into multiple full games thanks to the mod community.

The first game laid out the concept, the second game refined it and expanded on it. While technically nothing stopping then from making more of exactly the same game such would be disappointing against most people their expectation of improvement and would be easily criticized from all kinds of corners. Weather it is fair or makes any logical sense valve today is who they are part because of their imago, maintaining there respectable and high quality standard is economic survival.

No.

Dota 2 is the greatest game of all time. Not video game, but game. Take video games, chess and board games, sports, all of it. Dota 2 is insane and simply the best. The sheer amount of mind energy that people can throw into the matches is unreal and the skill ceiling is seemingly endless.