I think Valve has the capacity to make some truly excellent stuff, but they only seem to care if it increases their wallets in a significant way.
After Architect, I’m very cautious about any Valve multiplayer game as it is bound to become infected with ways to extract money (or “value”, as Gabe Newell puts it) from the customer.
I mean by all accounts Artifact was actually a great game if you wanted a digital CCG. Deadlock is going the Dota route of making all gameplay content free, I’m sure there will be a skin market but that’s irrelevant to me, and the game is already very fun. I trust the Valve/Dota balance team far more than any other similar game’s, so I really don’t see what could derail it from at least moderate success at this point.
