Steam’s continued push to forge direct connections between content creators and players is something Valve thinks about “a lot”, founder Gabe Newell said during his Reddit AMA today.
“We still think we have a long way to go to get to the point where all of the different people that are contributing value to competitive play get everything out of it that they should. Feels like we are making pretty good progress though,” Newell told Reddit, responding to a question about Dota 2 (and perhaps Team Fortress 2)’s UGC and microtransactions.
“Giving the consumers of content a direct relationship with the creators of content is something we think about a lot. That is what drove our thinking about how the community could be more involved in the tournaments that mattered to them.”
The AMA also included were several miscellaneous questions about Steam and associated services and products. Valve is “making some progress” towards lower-cost Steam Machines, Newell said.
“We see Steam Machines (along with SteamOS and the Steam Controller) as a service update to Steam, porting the experience to a new room in the house. As we’ve been working on it, we’ve focused first on the customers who already love Steam and its games,” he said.
“They’ve told us they’re tired of giving up all the stuff they love when they sit in the living room, so it seemed valuable to fix that.”
