You said “I’m not going to waste any more time debating with you.” No complaints here

It’s about time someone stepped in to deal with these personal attacks too.

We’re only boycotting because of things which Valve DOES owe us, not things which Valve doesn’t owe us. Therefore, you argument is flawed.

We bought L4D1 under the rightful impression that Valve would be following through on it’s word. Valve failed to follow through, and so we can choose to not buy L4D2 unless Valve gives L4D1 priority–viz, by releasing the content they spoke of pre-launch of L4D1.

Additionally, just because Valve delays the launch of their games or content does not mean it is right for them to do that. You’ve said nothing about the ethics of the situation, and only focused on the precedent of what Valve has done.

I hope that you learn a lesson from this as well. Namely, that you cut down on your blatant assertion and ranting and focus more on the arguments at hand. Try taking a look at this site: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ It contains a list of logical fallacies which are common mistakes in argumentation. It might be worth looking over

Whether it was in legal writing or not doesn’t matter. They shouldn’t be going back on their word, period. We as consumers have every right not to buy their product if we feel they should be held to their words. That is why we’re boycotting L4D2.

As far as my “sooner or later” argument goes, your counterexample is not applicable. Why? Because Valve set a timetable for release of some of it’s content, which it failed to make. If Valve couldn’t have met their timetable of a few weeks after launch for an SDK then they shouldn’t have promised it. In fact, if Valve wasn’t prepared to create the SDK they promised in that time frame, maybe they should have held off on releasing L4D1 till they were prepared to support it like they intended.

I would reply to the rest of your argument, but there isn’t much for me to reply to. I think you’ve overlooked my own arguments, and made some assertions/rantings in place of a full response.

For example, you argument about why we are whiners was hard to follow. I was expecting something like “You are whiners because you are doing [insert example from our messages] and not [insert an example of a valid form of complaint]“. Instead, what you wrote was more along the lines of commentary on the enjoyment of L4D.

I’m not trying to be insulting here, although I may be achieving that merely in my criticism of your writing, but I really don’t know what to tell you. If you want to argue against us, that is fine. You’re more than welcome to form your own opinion. However, please address what people say in a rational manner.

In fact, I think we need some sort of moderator for this discussion to prevent some of the ranting.

You can view the content that Valve promised here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWylFmqnwM

We aren’t asking for “freebies” here. Rather, we are asking Valve to come through on their commitments that they made pre-release of L4D1 (which you can view in that video). If a company says they’re going to do something, it isn’t asking for a “freebie” if you want them to do what they said they would.

While we cannot say for certain when Valve will be releasing, if ever, the promised L4D1 content, we can say that sooner would be better than later. We are consumers who are trying to make educated decisions about whether to buy L4D2 or not. If Valve does not show us that they can fulfill their commitments to L4D1, how can we be certain they’ll fulfill their commitments to L4D2? Thus, we’d like to see L4D1 content delivered before we feel L4D2 would be a good bet to buy.

Additionally, how are we whining? We have been more than willing to extend the olive branch to Valve and journalists in order to foster a better understanding. In my experience, the people who are calling us “whiners” typically tend to label argumentation that they disagree with as “whining”. Please enlighten us as to your justification for why you think we are whining.

And last, just because Bioware doesn’t give DLC for their games doesn’t make it right for Valve to do the same. While it may be common practice by many gaming companies to leave games by the wayside, we feel that sort of practice disrespects the consumer–regardless of what company does it.

With all do respect, you have still to clarify what is and is not whining.

I think you might be confused as to our position with regard to new content. We are asking for content that was promised, not simply any old content that we’d like to see. We’re looking for Valve to include many of the ideas that they spoke about for L4D1 in the original game before we consider the purchase of a sequel.

How is our movement not a real consumer injustice? Could you elaborate?

Additionally, do you believe that holding people to their words is important?

We had a brief exchange in email, and though I don’t necessarily agree with the groups position, I do respect a small group that can organize any movement to thousands of followers.

Mr. Pancakes,

My perception is that many in the group are probably just looking for a corporate handout. Here is the thing, I’d dare you to find ten people that are more concerned about corporate accountability than I am, but trying to say a company like Valve owes its customers more free content? It just seems like an expenditure of energy that could be better spent trying to solve a real consumer injustice.

That being said, you do have the attention of over 36K Steam members, which is impressive.

1) In what way are we whiners?

2) Why would we hate sequels?

3) Why do you think we can’t even afford lunch?

4) Why do you believe we think Valve “sux”?

I think we’ll start with the portrayal of the group first, and work our way onto other things. Perhaps we can get to the bottom of this misconception.

Comparing Valve to Microsoft, come on, seriously??

See when MS tells Vista Ultimate owners “Gee sorry about that Ultimate Extras thing but hey you can buy Windows 7!” it’s evil MS trying to screw people. But when Valve says “We’re making your game obsolete by releasing its expansion pack as a sequel but we’ll make dubious promises to keep releasing stuff for the first one.” that’s just fine and anyone who says otherwise is a whiny loser with an entitlement complex. Right?

Let’s try the numbered points.

1. No developer has embraced the mod community? Didn’t iD release source code or did I imagine that? What about Stardock and their encouragement of mods? What about Battlefield, what about Unreal, what about… you know what, nevermind, I don’t have time to counter the Valve-blinds of all the CS kiddies and HL worshipers on this one.

2. Yes the Steam “community” is free. So is a freaking website! We should be grateful Valve offers a free “community” aka “easy way to constantly spam you to buy our DRM infested games”? Wow gee thanks for that, you are truly the champions of gamers! Now can I play a game without ever needing a net connection, or do I need to go to Xbox for that?

3. Umm I’ll deny that a retread BSP and static radiosity engine with some functive physics bolt-ons is “among the greatest games ever made” if you like. Wow, “free deathmatch”! You mean a feature everyone had been expecting from games for years and getting for free with most FPS demos? Wow how generous. Maybe it was released separate because HL1’s DM had such crappy net code it got the game slammed in reviews and Valve was still feeling the hurt? And episodic games were supposed to come out for cheap and often, HL2’s expansions were neither.

4. Ah yes The Orange Box. AKA “Crap our ‘episodic’ expansion took way too long to come out and now people are mad so let’s throw in this student project and that mod we’ve been sitting on for 10 years because we realized we should buy CounterStrike instead and then killed it so as not to compete with ourselves!” Crap why do people rave about the out of the box indy game and the sequel to one of the most popular mods of all time and ignore our vastly more expensive to develop expansion pack for our aging flagship game?

5. Portal and TF2 were “only $19.99″ if you had HL2. Well gee CounterStrike and TFC were “free” if you had HL1 ten years ago. This is an improvement? No, this is Steam ramming piecemeal sale of game features down our throat with DRM.

6. Yes let’s talk about TF2! I love TF2. It’s probably my favorite game since TF1, which I played for hours a day and even helped run a clan for. TF1 was the original quake mod, predating even Threewave CTF, and when Valve saw its success they thought they could buy it. So they did, ported it to the heathen TFC on HL with its crappy net code, and started work on TF2. Which was supposed to have this “amazing new engine” that I believe Intel used an alpha of to showcase the value of SSE (by doing tesselation or something). TF2 was going to be this ultra-realistic team based shooter… and then CounterStrike took off and Valve snapped that up. But oops, now they HAVE an ultra-realistic team based shooter! So they don’t want to compete with themselves, an sit on TF2 FOR TEN FREAKING YEARS! Eventually it only sees the light of day by piggybacking on the R&D budget for new animation improvements in the engine, and even then only gets released as a “please take this offering and don’t be mad at us for our failure at ‘episodic content’” offering and is immediately seen as being worth far more than the episode it came with. And the people behind TF and TF2 have fought hard to continually update the game with new maps (taken from the best user-made ones that appear on servers just like TF did) and new weapons (much like how the original TF userbase would mod the mods), and somehow convince Valve NOT to sell them with micropayments or bundle them into a “sequel” or “update pack” that would kill the game.

7. Yes weekly price specials. Someone has re-discovered the basics of economics and that more people will buy an intangible non-need product if it’s priced lower than if it’s priced higher. Way to go. Now if only they could start showing that draconian DRM like forced online activation only hurts legitimate customers like Stardock has been saying for years and even EA seems to be realizing.

Think about it, has Valve ever released a game that was sub-par?

As a follow up, I would love to get a list of each profile in the group and see if they actually follow through on the boycott when the game comes out.

That is the true test, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it, but somehow, I am fairly certain 90+% of the people in that group will cave in to the joy of more fast paced Zombie slaying combat, and I am willing to bet they will pay for it.

If you believe Snark on point #5 ;*), hey, we are all defenseless against Valve’s evil plan to get us hooked on quality games. They gave us the first taste for cheap, or gasp, in some cases for free!! (gifting from the bundle). According to Snark, Valve is in the business of pushing high quality digital dope. Hey maybe Jay and Silent Bob should man the counter at Steam? We obviously will have no choice but to cave to their alluring addicting product.

But if they don’t add at least a few more updates to L4D after L4D2 comes out then I’ll feel slightly cheated. Valve is a business first and foremost though and they need to fill their pockets so they can keep making the quality games we expect.