左边是地狱右边也是地狱_地狱甚至还能做些什么（除了拿走我们的钱）

左边是地狱右边也是地狱

As Steam unveils an overhaul to its chat system that barely competes with the rising star of Discord, we’re left to wonder why this took so long to begin with. What the heck does Valve even do anymore?

在Steam对其聊天系统进行彻底改革后，它几乎无法与Discord的后起之秀抗衡。我们不禁要问，为什么这样做花了这么长时间才开始。 Valve甚至还能做什么？

Valve, the game developer behind franchises like Half-Life and Portal, as well as the company that owns the virtual PC game store Steam, has around 360 employees (as of 2016). In 2017—a year in which Valve released no games—the Steam store made $4.3 billion in revenue. Back in 2011, Valve founder and President Gabe Newell said that, on a per-employee basis, the company is the most profitable company in the United States.

Valve是《 半条命》和《 传送门》等专营权背后的游戏开发商，也是拥有虚拟PC游戏商店Steam的公司， 截至2016年拥有约360名员工。 在2017年( Valve不发行游戏的一年)中，Steam商店的收入为43亿美元。 Valve创始人兼总裁Gabe Newell早在2011年就表示，按员工人数计算，该公司是美国最赚钱的公司 。

So, what does such a profitable, successful company do with its time and resources?

那么，这样一家盈利，成功的公司如何利用其时间和资源呢？

I’m seriously asking.

我很认真地问。

新的Steam聊天仅勉强与竞争性社区工具保持同步 (The New Steam Chat Only Barely Keeps Pace With Competing Community Tools)

This week, Steam released its new chat client that, in short, copies Discord just enough to get by. You can use it to start group chats with your friends, or with your entire Steam Group. Once in a group chat, you can create a series of text channels to organize discussion around different topics, or create voice channels that you and your friends can hop in and out of at your leisure, instead of having to organize a call and invite people one by one. Prior to this update, Steam’s built in chat was vastly inferior to setting up a free Discord server for your friends or community. Now, Steam has reached at least basic feature parity.

本周，汽发布了新的聊天客户端 ，在短，副本不和谐刚够通过得到的。 您可以使用它与您的朋友或整个Steam组开始群聊。 进行群组聊天后，您可以创建一系列文本渠道来组织有关不同主题的讨论，或者创建语音通道，您和您的朋友可以在闲暇时跳入和跳出，而不必组织电话并邀请其他人逐个。 在此更新之前，Steam的内置聊天功能远不如为您的朋友或社区设置免费的Discord服务器。 现在，Steam至少已达到基本功能平价。

Well, sort of.

好吧，有点。

Discord has had text and voice channels for years. The fact that Steam is only just now getting around to adding them, while a welcome change, is still very late to the game. Meanwhile, Discord has in-game overlays, video chat, robust server moderation features, and a ton more. Steam is busy chasing Discord, while Discord has been chasing Slack. It’s a bit like copying off the jock who’s copying off the nerd’s homework.

Discord拥有文本和语音渠道已有多年。 蒸汽是现在才让周围添加它们，而一个可喜的变化的事实，仍然是非常晚的比赛。 同时，Discord具有游戏内叠加，视频聊天，强大的服务器审核功能以及更多功能。 Steam正在忙于追逐Discord，而Discord在追逐Slack。 这有点像抄袭模仿书呆子作业的乔克。

But Steam has an ace up its sleeve: PC gamers have been using Steam a lot longer, and Steam has a ton of community features that it can integrate with this new chat system. Except…they didn’t.

但是Steam拥有一点优势：PC游戏玩家使用Steam的时间更长了，Steam具有大量的社区功能，可以与这个新的聊天系统集成。 除了……他们没有。

If you’re in a Steam group, you can create a group chat with a single click, which is nice. However, you can’t send announcements from your Group to the chat. Any events you create won’t show up in the chat. Steam groups and their corresponding group chats are functionally isolated. Now, this is a first release and Steam might update in the future to integrate its existing social features more closely with its new chat system, but given how long it took for the company to catch up to the basic offering its competitors have, we’re not holding our breath.

如果您在Steam群组中，则只需单击即可创建群组聊天，这很好。 但是，您无法从网上论坛发送公告到聊天室。 您创建的任何事件都不会显示在聊天中。 Steam群组及其相应的群组聊天在功能上是隔离的。 现在，这是第一个版本，Steam可能会在将来进行更新，以将其现有的社交功能与新的聊天系统更紧密地集成在一起，但是鉴于该公司要花多长时间才能赶上竞争对手提供的基本服务，我们不要屏住呼吸。

Steam基本上会忽略游戏广播 (Steam Is Basically Ignoring Game Broadcasting)

If you’ve paid even a modicum of attention to the gaming world over the last few years, you’d know that streaming your game to an audience is big business. It’s also a complicated business. Even broadcasting on Twitch or YouTube usually requires third-party software that’s not quite as simple (or as cheap) as it could be. So, maybe Valve is pouring all of its Steam development into better features for broadcasting games? You’d think so. And yet, Steam’s features on this front are paltry at best.

如果您在过去几年中对游戏世界一无所获，那么您就会知道，将游戏流式传输给受众群体是一件大事 。 这也是一项复杂的业务。 即使在Twitch或YouTube上进行广播， 通常也都需要第三方软件 ，因为它可能不那么简单(或便宜)。 因此，也许Valve正在将其所有Steam开发投入到更好的广播游戏功能中？ 你会这样想的。 但是，Steam在这方面的功能充其量只是微不足道的。

Curiously, Steam does have built-in broadcasting features. If you enable it in your settings, then your friends can drop in to watch your game while you’re playing. You can even set it to broadcast your games publicly for anyone who happens to stumble on it from Steam’s broadcasts page. You don’t even need to have any third-party software to start broadcasting. It all works surprisingly well, and it even comes with a built-in text chat for every broadcast.

奇怪的是，Steam 确实具有内置的广播功能。 如果您在设置中启用了它 ，那么您的朋友可以在玩游戏的同时观看游戏。 您甚至可以将其设置为在Steam广播页面上偶然碰到它的任何人公开广播游戏。 您甚至不需要任何第三方软件即可开始广播。 一切都出奇地好，甚至每次广播都带有内置的文字聊天功能。

However, it lacks crucial features that broadcasters or viewers would want. You can’t easily follow people whose broadcasts you like. You can’t get notifications when a streamer is live. As a broadcaster, you can’t add a webcam overlay (really?) or even share a link to your stream (really?!), which makes it almost impossible for most people to find your broadcasts at all. To Steam’s credit, this feature is still listed as a “beta” on its product page. To Steam’s discredit, this feature has existed since 2014. Worse, it seems largely unchanged since it was first released. So nearly four years ago, Steam recognized that streaming games is a thing, and yet the company hasn’t bothered developing the feature it created back then.

但是，它缺少广播公司或观众想要的关键功能。 您无法轻易地关注喜欢自己广播的人。 直播直播时您不会收到通知。 作为广播公司，您无法添加网络摄像头(真的吗？)，甚至不能共享指向您的视频流的链接(真的吗？！)，这使得大多数人几乎根本找不到您的广播。 值得称赞的是，此功能在其产品页面上仍列为“测试版”。 自从2014年以来 ，Steam一直存在此功能。 更糟糕的是，自首次发布以来，它在很大程度上似乎没有变化。 因此，将近四年前，Steam意识到流媒体游戏是一回事，但该公司并未费心开发其当时创建的功能。

If that’s how Steam handles the threat of Twitch, it doesn’t bode well for this new, mostly-baked Discord clone the company has released.

如果这就是Steam应对Twitch威胁的方式，那么对于该公司发布的这个新的，大多是烤制的Discord克隆来说，这并不是一个好兆头。

Valve不再制作游戏 (Valve Doesn’t Make Games Anymore)

If it’s not community or streaming features, maybe all that money and manpower that Valve has is going into game development?

如果不是社区或流媒体功能，那么Valve拥有的所有金钱和人力都可能用于游戏开发？

Please stop laughing.

请别笑了

To be absolutely fair to Valve, there are at least a few games that have either been released recently or are under active development. In 2016, the company released a free VR game set in the Portal universe to promote the HTC Vive. A year before that, they made, um, an arcade cabinet of Left 4 Dead. Oh, but there is Artifact, the Dota-themed trading card game that’s supposed to come out this year. To get an idea of how excited people are for that, check out the absolutely legendary video above of the crowd reacting to the game’s announcement.

为了对Valve绝对公平，至少有一些游戏最近发布或正在积极开发中。 2016年，该公司在Portal世界中发布了免费的VR游戏 ，以推广HTC Vive。 在此之前的一年，他们制造了一个街坊橱柜，里面有《 Left 4 Dead》 。 哦，但是有Artifact ，应该是今年以Dota为主题的交易纸牌游戏。 要了解人们对此有多兴奋，请查看人群中绝对传奇的视频，以对游戏的发布做出React。

In terms of its biggest franchises, though, Valve has all but given up. The last Portal game (besides the free VR demo), Portal 2, came out in 2011. Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009. The last Half-Life game came out in…well, let’s just not bring that up. You could maybe argue that Valve cares more about its competitive multiplayer games like Dota and CS:GO since those can continue to make money with things like regular tournaments. Yet other publishers, even ones of a comparable size, are capable of managing releases for both online and single-player games. Does Valve even care that it has outright abandoned its most wildly popular franchises? Do they even want to introduce new ones? Ever?

就其最大的特许经营权而言，Valve几乎放弃了。 最后的游戏门户网站 (除了免费试玩VR)， 门户网站2，在2011年造成4人就出来了求生之路2在2009年就出来了最后的半条命游戏......那好，我们只是没有提起这件事就出来了。 您可能会争辩说，Valve更在乎其竞争性多人游戏(如Dota和CS：GO)，因为它们可以通过常规 锦标赛等继续赚钱。 其他发行商，甚至是规模相当的发行商，都能够管理在线游戏和单人游戏的发行。 瓦尔(Valve)甚至在乎是否已经完全放弃了最受欢迎的特许经营权？ 他们甚至想引进新的吗？ 曾经吗

If Valve still made games, fans would probably put up with long development cycles. Heck, Bethesda gets around to a new Elder Scrolls game maybe once every six years, but people still flip out when even a new game’s title card is released. That’s because in those long development lulls for one game, new versions of other games come out. With Valve, instead of a staggered release schedule and the occasional content drought, it seems like the developer only wakes from its slumber on the bluest of moons in order to either throw a bone to the esports scene, or to release something disappointing.

如果Valve仍然制作游戏，那么粉丝们可能会忍受较长的开发周期。 哎呀，贝塞斯达大概每六年就会有一次新的《 上古卷轴》游戏，但是即使发行了新游戏的头衔 ，人们仍然会失望。 这是因为在一款游戏的长期开发停滞中，出现了其他游戏的新版本。 使用Valve时，开发人员似乎只是为了在电子竞技界摔倒骨头或释放令人失望的东西，而只是在最蓝的月亮上从沉睡中醒来，而不是交错的发布时间表和偶尔的内容干旱。

Steam不断放弃对自己商店的控制 (Steam Keeps Giving Up More Control Over Its Own Store)

Okay, so despite the massive amounts of money the company rakes in, they still keep their employee count low. They don’t throw a ton of resources at competing with Discord or Twitch, and they only work on the games that make the most continual money. But surely, surely Valve would spend some of its considerable resources on making sure the Steam store is the best it can be, right? Selling games is the one thing the company is still good at after all these years, and it’s the moneymaker that ensures Valve will never go out of business, no matter how few games it makes.

好的，尽管公司赚了很多钱，但他们仍然使员工人数保持低水平。 在与Discord或Twitch竞争时，他们不会投入大量资源，而只能在赚钱最多的游戏上工作。 但是可以肯定的是，Valve 肯定会花费其大量资源来确保Steam商店达到最佳状态，对吗？ 这些年来，卖游戏是公司仍然擅长的一件事，而且是赚钱的人，确保Valve永远不会破产，无论它制作多少游戏。

And yet.

但是。

By virtue of being the big store (and, more importantly, download source) that everyone is using, Steam maintains its dominance as the best place to manage your games. However, its not always the best way to buy games. While you’re waiting for the next Steam Sale, Humble Bundle has stepped in to offer pay-what-you-want sales on pretty great games. If you’re looking for something specific, IsThereAnyDeal will scan every store available, track prices over time, and find the store with the best deal no matter what time of year it is. You can even narrow it down to stores that sell Steam keys, so you can get a solid deal without splitting your library. IsThereAnyDeal scans some niche stores, but it can also find sales from big retailers like Amazon, which leaves a gaping weakness in Steam’s fortress.

凭借成为每个人都在使用的大型商店(更重要的是下载源)，Steam保持了其主导地位，是管理游戏的最佳场所。 但是，它并不总是购买游戏的最佳方式。 当您在等待下一次Steam促销时， Humble Bundle介入了为非常棒的游戏提供按需付费的销售活动。 如果您正在寻找特定的商品， IsThereAnyDeal将扫描每个可用的商店，跟踪价格，并在一年中的任何时间以最优惠的价格找到商店。 您甚至可以将其范围缩小到出售Steam密钥的商店，这样您就可以在不拆分图书馆的情况下达成一笔划算的交易。 IsThereAnyDeal扫描了一些利基商店，但它也可以从亚马逊等大型零售商那里找到销售，这在Steam的堡垒中留下了明显的弱点。

A store is more than just its sale prices, though. A good storefront will help you find good games to play. Steam does still have a Featured & Recommended games section on its front page (presumably a Valve employee has to pick those), but curating games seems like a task the company would like to farm out to someone else. In October of last year, Steam overhauled its Curators feature to make it easier for influencers to recommend games. It’s a lot better than the Curator system used to be, but it also positions people who don’t work for Valve as the primary source of finding new games to play. It would be a bit like if Netflix started putting Rotten Tomatoes in charge of its suggestion engine.

但是，商店不仅仅是其销售价格。 一个好的店面将帮助您找到可以玩的好游戏。 Steam仍然在其首页上保留“精选和推荐游戏”部分(大概是Valve的员工必须选择这些部分)，但是策划游戏似乎是公司希望向其他人推广的任务​​。 去年10月，Steam对其“策展人”功能进行了大修，以使影响者更轻松地推荐游戏。 这是一个很大优于馆长系统曾经是，但它也职务的人谁不工作阀，寻找新的游戏玩的主要来源。 这有点像Netflix是否开始让Rotten Tomatoes负责其建议引擎。

Not only does Steam seem uninterested in finding good games, it seems uninterested in banning bad ones. Earlier this year, Valve announced that, as a policy, the company would allow essentially everything on its store, unless it’s illegal or “straight up trolling,” whatever that means. So, if you’re not a fan of games that are basically porn on Steam, it’s now your job to avoid it, not their job to remove it. Valve reserves the right to ban a game for being exceptionally outrageous, but for the most part, policing content on its platform is not a job the company wants.

Steam似乎不仅对寻找好的游戏不感兴趣，而且似乎对禁止不良游戏不感兴趣。 Valve于今年早些时候宣布，作为一项政策，该公司将实质上允许其商店中的所有物品 ，除非这是非法的或“直截了当”，无论其含义是什么。 因此，如果您不喜欢基本上在Steam上色情的游戏，那么现在避免这种情况是您的工作，而不是将其删除的工作。 Valve保留禁止游戏表现得异常残酷的权利，但是在大多数情况下，在其平台上监管内容并不是公司想要的工作。

While Steam keeps finding fewer and fewer things to be responsible for, their competitors are gunning for them. GOG is becoming a competent alternative storefront—though its commitment to DRM-free games naturally means some publishers will never show up in its store. Worse (for Steam), Twitch is experimenting with selling games directly. Given that Amazon owns Twitch, and already sells game download codes, this doesn’t bode well for Steam. If anything, it seems like the only reason Steam doesn’t have major competition in the PC game sales arena is simply because no one’s tried very hard to knock the king off his throne yet.

尽管Steam不断发现要负责的事情越来越少，但他们的竞争对手却在争取他们。 GOG正在成为一个称职的替代店面-尽管其对无DRM游戏的承诺自然意味着一些发行商将永远不会出现在其店中。 更糟糕的是(对于Steam而言)，Twitch正在尝试直接销售游戏 。 鉴于亚马逊拥有Twitch，并且已经在销售游戏下载代码，这对于Steam来说并不是一个好兆头。 如果有的话，看来Steam在PC游戏销售领域没有主要竞争的唯一原因仅仅是因为还没有人试图将国王从王位上拿下来。

Finally—and we admit this is a total nitpick—Steam hasn’t had a UI update in years and it’s looking positively dated. This shows through with every new feature that’s added, sticking to the same old interface design. A year and a half ago, a leaked file heavily implied that a design overhaul was coming to Steam. Six months ago, a Steam designer said that it’s still in the works. Still, here we sit, waiting.

最终-我们承认这完全是挑剔-Steam多年来没有进行过UI更新，而且看起来很过时。 这表明添加了所有新功能，并坚持了相同的旧界面设计。 一年半以前，一个泄露的文件严重暗示着Steam正在进行设计大修 。 六个月前，Steam设计师说它还在设计中 。 不过，我们坐在这里，等待。

阀门似乎含量不高 (Valve Seems Content to Not Do Very Much)

Of course, Valve still does stuff. Last month, the company released the Steam Link app that lets you stream games from your PC to your phone. And yes, the new chat features are important for Steam as a platform, but it’s hardly revolutionary for the gaming world at large. Still, we’re left with the question of what the hell Valve does with its time and money.

当然，Valve仍然可以做 。 上个月，该公司发布了Steam Link应用程序 ，可让您将游戏从PC传输到手机。 是的，新的聊天功能对于Steam作为平台非常重要，但对于整个游戏界来说，这并不是革命性的。 尽管如此，我们还剩下一个问题，那就是Valve如何处理时间和金钱。

These days, it seems like if the company is still highly profitable per employee, it’s less because of how much money Valve makes, and more because of how little the company does. It can seem like ages between major feature releases, and when big features finally do drop, they’re duds. But what do we care, right? In another month or two, there will be another Steam sale, we’ll get games for 75% off, and Valve will still make boatloads of money. Maybe, having conquered the PC gaming world, Valve is content to rest on its laurels, only do a bit of work when it feels like it, and otherwise lets its highly profitable employees relax. Sounds like the dream.

如今，似乎该公司的人均利润仍然很高，这与其说是因为Valve赚了多少钱，不如说是因为该公司做得很少。 似乎在主要功能发布之间已经存在了很长时间，而当主要功能最终消失时，它们就变得愚蠢了。 但是我们在乎什么呢？ 再过一两个月，Steam会再次出售，我们将为游戏提供75％的折扣，Valve仍然可以赚很多钱。 也许，在征服了PC游戏世界之后，Valve满足于保持其桂冠，只在感觉良好时才做些工作，否则让其高利润的员工放松一下。 听起来像梦。

And yet, one can’t shake the feeling that Steam only continues to remain dominant because the rest of the world simply hasn’t bothered to overthrow it yet. Amazon (with Twitch) has more than enough retail clout and infrastructure to make Steam sweat if they decided to, and scrappy startups like GOG and Discord are hungry enough to rapidly build out the features gamers want while Valve is slow to adapt to a changing market. Valve may be safe for now, but unless the sleeping giant wakes up and does something, there’s a genuine risk that the gaming community will move on.

但是，人们无法撼动Steam继续保持主导地位的感觉，因为世界其他地区还没有费心去推翻它。 亚马逊(与Twitch联手)拥有足够的零售影响力和基础架构，足以使Steam汗流sweat背，GOG和Discord等草草的初创公司已经足够饿，可以Swift建立起游戏玩家想要的功能，而Valve却无法适应不断变化的市场。 Valve目前可能是安全的，但是除非沉睡的巨人醒来并做点什么 ，否则游戏社区将继续存在真正的风险。

翻译自: https://www.howtogeek.com/360177/what-the-hell-does-valve-even-do-anymore-besides-take-our-money/

左边是地狱右边也是地狱