Absurd Internet Rumor of the Day

http://kotaku.com/5946830/two-korean...=recirculation

Honestly, the first thing that popped into my head was Bill Cosby during the Noah's Ark skit, going... "Riiiiiiiiiiight. Am I on Candid Camera?"

Gabe Newell has said he'd disband his corporation before he sold out to some large, corporate schizophrenic entity like EA (or in this case, NCSoft). Gabe is a gamer. No one else in the industry even came near his concept for Steam sales until Steam came along, and the rest of the industry hates Steam for it. And that's fine, because Gabe has pretty much told them all where they can stick it. I own almost 200 games on Steam (90% of which I've never played, here's looking at you, City of Heroes). Almost all of them were bought for under ten bucks, and almost all of them carried a MSRP of $20 to $60.

Remember, folks, publishers don't want to buy Valve because they envy them. They want to buy Valve because they hate them, and want them to die. You can't kill a corporation as successful as Valve unless you own it; and they'll never so much as own a small stake in it as long as it's privately held.

Edit: On the bright side, I can't wait to read about Newell's reaction to NCSoft's offer. I'm sure it'll be...entertaining, LOL. Especially if Gabe remembers all the letters our community recently sent him. Might be an excuse for him to get a knife-jab in for us.

This will just never happen in a million years and NCSoft and Nexon are just so supremely disconnected and out of the loop and just...ugh, can I say stupid? I don't want to be mean here, but really, NCSoft? You and Nexon held a CONFERENCE over this pipe dream? Really?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpugp6DIb3I

This song comes to mind.

Valve are the only gaming company and published I've ever consistently respected for their integrity and good business sense. Sure, Steam might sell some crap (I STILL hate spending money on Crevures) but anything Valve themselves actually make is solid, innovative and fun. They basically hire people out of the indie sector and toss money at them with which to make their great ideas a reality, and you really can't say that about any other publisher out there. They have consistently offered the most stable, reliable and lucrative online game retail service.

So I REALLY don't see Valve selling to a Korea conglomerate of ruthless MMO publishers, especially after how they've behaved recently. I don't know if those rumours are even true, but I just don't see this happening. I can see Blizzard selling to Activision, given past history. I don't see Valve selling to anyone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I was going to sell out. But I couldn't find a buyer.

The article contains at least one obvious incorrect statement. It refers to Nexon as owning a majority stake in NCSoft. Nexon is the largest single shareholder for NCSoft, but it's 15%-ish ownership is pretty far from from a majority.

lol as if NCSoft could afford something like that

All three companies have now laughed it off.

I'm pretty sure that within the past year or two, EA offered to buy Valve for $1 Billion. Valve laughed it off and said it wasn't even half of what their company was worth. Nobody's buying them.

The key to Valve's success is that a large part of the business is built around customer satisfaction and bringing in new customers/keeping old with their good Steam sales (forcing stores like amazon and origin to do the same in order to compete). They also prototype a bunch of new products, services, and features (TF2, the extremely fun war-themed hat simulator, is as much a guinea pig as it is a cash cow). They really are the antithesis of a Korean company. On a side note, that Total War sale has me tempted to finally pick up Napoleon and Shogun... not only is the bundle going for a decent price, but hats!

hmm... I saw the thread title and thought it was about the upcoming bacon shortage.
(Which is also a myth.)