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[kard]

Valve tried to bypass its dependence on Vivendi to publish HL2 by going with Steam, and with broadband reaching the mass market, will publishers as we know them today become obslete? Big developers can afford to spend few million dollars to market their top games, so why would they need the publishers anymore?

 

[bitwise]

i wouldn't call valve indie, per se.

But I think its only going to get harder and harder for indie devs, not easier.

 

[Mama Smurf]

Well you can't really do it at the moment with the way consoles are, so it'd only be the big PC developers who could. And they'd have to be big to get away with it.

Be funny if Blizzard were next though.

 

[MassiveAttack]

Considering who is actually running Vivendi Universal Games these days, Blizzard and Valve should be running for the hills.

 

[kard]

Well you can't really do it at the moment with the way consoles are, so it'd only be the big PC developers who could. And they'd have to be big to get away with it.

Be funny if Blizzard were next though.

Not talking about now, but in the next couple of years...New consoles with online capability, hard drive or USB jump drives...I bet many people in the industry are watching how steam experiment goes...

 

[Andy787]

I wish Valve and Blizzard could band together and form a juggernaught of ultimate videogame pwnage, but alas Vivendi apparently owns Blizzard. Valve + Blizzard would be the best company evar. As is, I'd love to see a lot of the remaining great independed PC devs join on with Steam, like Irrational Games, Planet Moon (unless they've truly gone PSP-only, which is also cool with me, but hey), iD, Firaxis, Epic, Remedy, Creative Assembly, Starbreeze, 3dRealms, etc. Of course, most of those would never happen, but it would certainly be cool.

 

[Shard]

Considering who is actually running Vivendi Universal Games these days, Blizzard and Valve should be running for the hills.

Especally considering how they systematically dismanted Sierra over the course of 5 years or so.

 

[SKluck]

Um, well someone has to pay the employees and for the ads WHILE it is being made. People don't work for free you know. Sure, developers can be self-sustaining if they have a great game (or a couple) under their belt, or a billionaire funding them (Valve), but for new dev houses and not so successful developers, they have to get money somewhere just to operate.

 

[Zaptruder]

Gabe Newell is a billionaire?

Damn...

 

[SKluck]

I don't know, he's loaded though. He did come from MS. Was with them for a decade.