Latest about GDC 2025
Valve literally gives Half-Life away now, but 27 years ago it was carefully crushing its angry pirates: "None of them had actually bought the game"
News The launch of Half-Life, straight from Valve's founding CMO
Balatro's first big update is still on track for 2025, but it'll be "done when it's done, because it's got to be good before it's fast"
News The poker roguelike's first major gameplay update is still on track
"Don't tell Valve I told you this": Industry expert warns devs that Steam "is an engine that turns magic into money," and you can't break into "Real Steam" until you have the magic
News Chris Zukowski loves Real Steam
Helldivers 2 director says "balance is a myth," and devs shouldn't spend more than 5% of their time on it: "If you balance out all the chaos, you've made an uninteresting game"
News Arrowhead's Johan Pilestedt says if you spend all of your time on game balance, "you're an idiot"
Helldivers 2 boss told launch players not to buy until servers calmed down, and it "took 5 minutes until I got a call from the friendly people over at PlayStation asking what the f*** I was smoking"
News "'Don't recommend that people do not buy your games' - it's incredibly conventional wisdom"
Steam expert says devs need 250 reviews "in the first month" after launch or else it's probably "not gonna happen," but admits one ingenious factory game defied the odds: "They somehow pulled it off"
News Beltmatic managed to gain success months after launch
Dev behind cozy mashup of Ghibli and Zelda says working on Diablo and Overwatch taught him "storytelling isn't just an enhancement to world-building – it's what gives it meaning"
News Without meaning, games "feel pretty empty"
"Valve knows it, I know it, and you need to know it": Steam expert tells indie devs to "give away" demos, because actually playing a game beats all other marketing
News It's not until you get your demo that you get your visibility. So get that demo playable."
This indie mashup of Zelda and Studio Ghibli is gorgeous, though its creator didn't want to "mimic" the iconic animation studio, but to "find out what makes it special, and recreate those watercolor movies in a game"
News Europa director Helder Pinto says it was "very important" to have references like Ghibli movies to work from
