Why did Sony and Valve fall out of love with making video games? – Reader’s Feature

A reader feels Sony was the weakest part of the recent State of Play and draws a comparison with Valve’s disengagement from making video games.

Despite the late starting time I stayed up and watched the State of Play on Thursday and I’d say in general I wasn’t disappointed. There was a lot of great games and a decent range of genres. I would’ve given it top marks if the Castlevania game had been 3D or we’d seen something on the third Final Fantasy 7 remake game but overall I was entertained and very interested in Silent Hill Townfall, John Wick, and Yakoh Shinobi Ops.

The biggest disappointment by far though, and the thing that almost ruined it for me, was seeing how little effort Sony themselves put into it. GC covered some of this in their report on the livestream, but Sony didn’t really announce anything new that was made by themselves, they’re just publishing games made by outsiders again – their own studios working on who knows what (or just getting covered in cobwebs).

As everyone knows, they’ve been like this for a while but what hit me with this State of Play is how similar they’ve become to modern day Valve. Both are important pillars of the gaming industry but both seem to have lost all interest in making video games, apparently because they make so much money by simply selling other people’s.

I realise making money is the one and only goal of a company, but I still find this a very strange attitude. Video games are still profitable – very much so if they’re a big hit – and exclusive games are a big reason why people pick a particular console. Although I suppose that matters less to Sony now that no one is picking an Xbox.

But making video games is still something Sony is expected to do, it’s why us fans have been so frustrated and angry with them over the last few years. There’s always an excuse though, first it was Covid, then it was rising costs, then it was the stupid live service pivot – which may or may not be over now.

With this latest State of Play it occurred to me that it’s a lot simpler than that: Sony just isn’t that interested in making games anymore. They do the bare minimum to justify keeping their studios going and that is it. They’re just not that bothered about speeding things up and there doesn’t seem to be any passion for anything.

The head of PlayStation, whoever that even is now, never appears on these things anymore and you can see from the half-hearted way that Horizon Hunters Gathering (which wasn’t in the State of Play) was announced that they’re just going through the motions.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they started shutting down their first party studios and just didn’t bother with games anymore, then they’d be even more like Valve.

Valve used to be one of the most respected developers in the world, with games like Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Portal but now that Steam has a monopoly on PC gaming they just don’t care anymore. They haven’t made a normal single-player game in over a decade and all their talent slowly left, after years spent twiddling their thumbs.

It’s been so long most younger gamers probably don’t even realise Valve used to make their own games and I worry it’s going to get like that with Sony. They had their longest ever State of Play and they couldn’t even announce a single new game made by a first party developer (if it’s found out they are doing the God Of War remake trilogy then that will still be the lamest, least interesting option possible).

I just don’t get it. Especially as it’s always been true that companies make more money on software than hardware (Microsoft better hope that’s true at least). Presumably they’ve run the numbers and figured out that sitting around doing nothing is the best option but It doesn’t seem that way to me.

By reader Soldat

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