A protest against Valve for its lack of information on Valve's "lack of information" regarding Half-Life 2: Episode 3 seems to have missed its mark slightly. The protest - which had the support of 30,00 players who pledged that they would play Half-Life 2 on Steam over the weekend - saw only half of those players playing over the weekend. They increased the usual amount of players playing Half-Life 2 by about 10,000.
"I am personally impressed with what we've achieved today," the protest's organizer said. "We're nowhere near done - in fact, we are currently in the process of planning new activities. This was only our first attempt and, in my eyes, was a success for everyone."
The protest was designed to send Valve a message: "Your oldest and longest-running fanbase would like better communication ... The entire trilogy of episodes was scheduled to be completed and released by 2007, and if Valve has decided to do other things for the time being, that's fine."
"All that we ask for is a basic response on the matter, and to let fans know whether or not the current story arc is scheduled to conclude at another point in time."
We wish them well in their future endeavors, though an online petition would probably work better than improving Valve's online usage stats for the weekend.
Comments
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/blogsheep.php?action=articleinfo&id=76
This is from 2008, where the creator of the MINERVA mod for Source announces he's gone to work on Episode Three at Valve.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
I thought Gabe was waiting for the next generation of consoles for the next Half-Life. They should be protesting Microsoft/Sony. The 360 came out in 2005. Seems like no one wants to sink the money into making a new generation of consoles.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
Valve don't want to talk about it incase it gets delayed.
Think of it as a surprise present when it comes out.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
I agree with that. They would rather not set a release date as fans would get pissed off if it's not met.
Now they learn that no matter what you do you piss people off.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
Didn't the Sonic the Hedgehog fans once do something like this by boycotting one game and buying the original Sonic for Genesis instead?
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Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
Wait, half of 30k is 10k?
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
According to the original report, about 13k participated (although, who knows how many of them just happened to be playing that day). Usually about 3k are playing which gives the "increased the usual amount of players playing Half-Life 2 by about 10,000" stat.
Andrew Eisen
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
Ah, thanks Andrew. Still, I'd have probably written a third, since the odds that at least 500 of them were people unrelated to the boycott are rather high.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
It's called patience. Learn it.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
Episode 3 was originally slated to be out years ago. I think fans have been pretty patient and I see nothing wrong with the desire for Valve to let them know what's going on.
Andrew Eisen
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
More then likely, Valve is just stuck in a corner. They don't know how to end the game and as a result are just trying to put it off long enough for people to forget about it.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
HL3 should end with a battle where every bit of ammo you've scrimped and saved over the course of the game becomes necessary to defeat the final boss. Once you completely run out of ammo, the crowbar becomes the only useful weapon. It would be classic - the iconic start in Half-Life is the way HL3 would end. Just fade to black once the last boss dies at the hands of our favorite mute scientist.
Either that or HL3 should end with Gordon Freeman singing a song and eating some cake. After all, GLaDOS made Portal a triumph.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
Agreed, I can say that when one of my friends spotted this during the weekend we all just laughed. The universal agreement was that, if you insisted on not using a petition, they should simply boycott Steam. For say.... 2 weeks to a month. Real attention getter considering that Valve's income is based pretty much entirely on the Steam platform at this point. Shut down revenue and you almost guaranteed a response... so long as you actually stick to it. Which considering the track history of Valve fans and boycotts.... not promising.
At least some of us still have the backbone to stand up. Supported the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, never bought the game, consider the founders who ditched it for swag as poser sellouts and would deck 'em if I ever laid eyes on em.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
A boycot sounds like it's rather missing the point. One, this isn't over any wrongdoing. Two, these people badly want to give Valve their money.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
True, boycott isn't the correct term. Apologies.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
I'm sure Valve would love to put out another Half-Life game... but come on, those Team Fortress 2 hats aren't going to make themselves.
Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
That's the part that worries me more: the fact that Valve is putting out more info about TF2 hats than anything actually Half-Life related
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Re: Player Protests Against Valve Falls Short
That's probably because Valve is making more money on hats than games. They're in the unique situation, with Steam and hats, that they don't need to put anything out to make money.