Valve to be bought out by... Google?!

[Thrik]

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... ogle-valve

I'd say the notion of Google wanting Steam has some serious credibility, although I'm definitely going to need corroboration from other sites before I believe it. Steam is indeed a fantastic system, and definitely the best in its field at doing what it does — especially now it has the tight social networking integration of Steam Community.

The downside I guess is that Google will inevitably want something out of it. Hopefully that doesn't eventually translate to ads. I was also kind of looking forward to seeing Valve become a serious publishing heavyweight, which I think is very possible considering their current momentum. If this deal does turn out to exist, I hope it doesn't compromise that.

[e-freak]

I just read that as well. Either it's a f*ing late aprils 1st or we will soon be seeing some serious competition in the field of online distributition.

While on the one hand I see some serious issues with Google and it's data-collecting-pollicy and the fact that Valve is one of the greatest Devs today due to it's independence I think a connection with Google could boost them up in theyr influence a lot. There's some serious connection possibilities between Steam-Services and Googles Web-Applications. Open up your Steam Community Overlay, switch to Picassa, publish your latest Screenshots, switch over to Blogspot and give some of your latest game-experiences, get News from Google News to the game you are currently playing, issues getting on a Server with some Custom-Map? Quicksearch in Google from within the Game - and so on.

[Bic-B@ll]

if this were true id expect it to be broken by some kind of gaming blog....not the inquirererer. i'm not really sure what interest they'd have in obtaining valve. steam isn't really an ad platform. but then again images, mail, calendar, finance, youtube, video etc don't generate income either. content distribution is the kind of thing they can start on their own with, theres no youtueeque domination. should this be an acquisition wouldnt it be the steam product and not a game company which happened to make steam? unless google wanted to make a first person shooter but thats even more out of the picture.

[skdr]

haha

[-HP-]

This makes me remember this old flash video:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic

[Jetsetlemming]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/11 ... interview/

Well we do have freedom. I think lots of games reach a stage where people say, “Okay, let’s ship it,” when there’s really twenty or thirty percent of the work left to be done on a project. There’s enormous pressure on publicly owned companies to meet quarterly objectives, and people who are not gamers just don’t understand: they can’t see the difference between a done game and “almost-done” game. They don’t understand why the people building it keep pushing them back. They say, “Are there show-stopper bugs?” and if they answer is no then they ship it. Their bonus will be based on the targets for that quarter, and they’ll be off working somewhere else the next year anyway.

Here the company is not owned externally, we do not receive our funding externally, everybody who works here owns a part of the company and they have a long-term interest in the company. They are all concerned with the long-term success of how we do. That freedom to get it right allows us to recognise that just because you can run through the game and it won’t end up crashing, well, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a stable platform to go and fix the things you got wrong, it’s not something that’s ready to ship. It just means that now you’ve got to the serious work of getting it right

Interview from 7 months ago.

[-HP-]

Man, that's an awesome read right there!

<3 valve

[kleinluka]

I highly doubt this is true..

[Izuno]

1) What Klein said.

2) Just doesn't feel like it could really be true, even though I could actually see Google making use of Valve for profit one day. Good or bad for gaming that's another discussion...

3) If it actually were true, it would somehow just make me feel bad because I like the idea of Valve being independent. I just don't see Valve selling themselves to Google anyway even though Google is one of the few companies with enough dumptrucks of cash to pay what many believe Vavle is potentially worth over a "longer" time horizon.

Haha HP

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic

"GOOGLEZON"...

[skdr]

"Rumor", according to Doug Lombardi.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54784

[KungFuSquirrel]

Now doesn't seem like a good time for Valve to sell, if they ever will. Hopefully not. We need strong independents!

[Bluestrike]

Wel money wise it would be better to sell when youre strong?

Anyway maybe some parthnership in steam but if I owned a company like Valve I doubt I would sell it as a whole.

Ofcourse maybe Valve isn't doing as good as they say?

Anyway lets hope its a wild rumor, it seems to spread pretty fast tough ;-)

[Punky]

Sorry to disappoint you believers; http://www.mcvuk.com/news/31802/Valve-calls-Google-story-100-rumour

or they're lying, but I doubt it...

[Seldoon182]

NOT TRUE

[Punky]

NOT TRUE

He just copied and glued it xD