Valve is Filled With Fanboys?
posted Saturday Nov 7, 2009 by Scott Ertz
Ever since Valve started developing software for the new generation of gaming hardware, they have been very vocal about their dislike of the PS3. Their seemingly never ending list of one-line insults toward Sony hasn't slipped by us here at The UpStream, and it also hasn't slipped past Randy Pitchford, president and CEO of Gearbox Software.
Randy has done a lot of work with Valve, involved in a lot of the Half-Life titles, and felt he needed to speak up and bring even more attention to, what he believes is "childish and narrow minded" comments and views about the PS3. He said in an interview,
I noticed something on the net not too long ago. Doug Lombardi (Valve's VP Marketing) had to take a swipe at the PS3 again, and I thought it was foolish. I read it the same way I read fanboys. Like there's a guy who brought the Sony platform and he's a Sony guy, so he decides he's going to spend a certain percentage of his time bashing Microsoft. And there's a guy on Microsoft doing the same thing.
The PS3 is awesome. I think Valve... I don't know why they are doing that. It's weird. But yeah, the PlayStation platform's really cool. It's different to others and it's certainly a challenge to be able to develop software for. But that's where the fun is, right?
Now, personally, I do not agree completely with Randy. I am a software developer, and I understand the idea of writing software on a platform that makes the development easier. Take web development as an example. Most professional web developers hate writing for Firefox, because it doesn't do anything the way it should. That doesn't make them fanboys for IE or Chrome, it makes them frustrated at developing for a platform that makes the process harder.
That is just my take. What do you guys think? Is Valve trying to make their own lives easier, or are they all just fanboys?
