I think you're seriously exaggerating this issue. TF2 is very popular and updated frequently and freely, and for this reason is fairly popular. I don't understand how it's killing an entire genre, but however you want to call it.

The problem is, anti-competitive practices aren't, make a great product and keep updating and upgrading it so that it continues to compete with it's competitors. Anti-Competitive Practices are more along the lines of, preventing a competitor from functioning, and require a lot more power then Valve really has in the grand scheme of things. Other game companies are fully capable of being competitive. The problem is, well, they don't. Either it's missing something, or it's not updated as much or the charges for the extra content get in the way. A lot of the time, it's also the fact that you're constantly rebuying games year after year (CoD is probably the biggest competitor, and I wouldn't be surprised if they lose people every year because of changes from the older products).

I'm not defending Valve (I really don't like the idea of having to defend companies), but this is, really poorly thought out.

Well, maybe he was exaggerating; I don't pay much attention to the FPS market as I don't generally play FPSs. The most important criticisms of Steam from that video were regarding client-based DRM and clients generally.

Do you? Because last I checked, it had nothing to do with releasing a game that people want to play. There is nothing preventing any competing developer from competing with TF2. Some try and succeed (the CoD and BF series have both done very well). Some don't succeed. That has absolutely nothing to do with something nefarious on the part of Valve.

Of course it does (or can). If it involved a product that people don't want then it wouldn't work.

XNA makes it really easy for developers to port games between the Xbox 360 and the PC, so again, you can't really blame developers for going the easiest possible route.

Indie developers will not spend money to use an old SDK and pray that their game work on every PC combination ever released. Deal with it.

It's called marketing. And guess what, every company in the world does the same thing. I also think that this was a dick move, but it only ever happened with 2 games (Shadowrun and Halo 2). Nothing else. There are games that do not support xp anymore, but that's because they're made on dx10, like Just Cause 2. And that will not work on xp even by "cracking" it.

This was an isolated case that can't be generalized.

No, it isn't. Releasing a game that people want is called...releasing a game that people want. Whether you charge for it or not, it isn't an anti-competitive practice. It's a game release. Period.

There is NOTHING preventing other companies from doing the same, and NOTHING preventing them doing so for free.

Chairs are popular and are totally an anti-competitive practice against standing up. Fucking chairs.

Total Biscuit is awesome, and sooooo typically British :)

Most Brits tend to be a lot more cynical about companies than many people in other countries, and sure as shit don't "support them".. And yes, he's absolutely correct in just about everything he says.

I got temp banned three times for very very minor and silly things:
1) "profanity filter evasion" because I auto-censored my own words back then. I wrote 'f**k' whereas the filter would make it ****. Apparently, this deserved me getting banned ... yes really. I explained it to the moderator but he was a right arrogant cunt and didn't give a fuck. Yes bless GOG for not censoring :p

2) I dared call out a mod for being abusive - and I did it very mildly too. Basically a moderator was having a right go at someone who had posted a personal opinion of a game which was rather broken and he said he was appalled that this broken a game would remain on Steam. The moderator had a right go at him AFTER banning him and even made personal attacks - I said that it wasn't really fair to attack him on a personal - result; ban and a PM which attacked me as well.

3) When the id collection was released with Doom, Commander Keen, etc. I bought it right away only to discover it used DOSBox - a heavily crippled DOSBox that didn't even have the setup files for the games. Turns out they had removed files from DOSBox that they weren't allowed to remove. One person on the forums remarked that the games couldn't be configured (like reassigning keys) because there were files missing so I explained the whole situation and said we should contact them asking them to add the missing files back in. I actually got a ban for this DESPITE them later apologising to the DOSBox team (of which I was a beta tester) and adding the files back in.

The Steam forums are horrid, this is an objective fact.

I'm going to laugh blood two years from now when Windows 7 users come through here complaining that their 8-bit, Indie, NES-remake GOGs need the much more powerful DirectX 13 which is only supported by Windows 8.

Lol heard the news, Windows 8 sucks :P. Knowing Microsoft we won't see an OS as good as 7 in about ten years.

Releasing a product that people want and engaging in anti-competitive conduct are not mutually exclusive. Anti-competitive conduct general involves a product that people want, the conduct would be ineffective otherwise.

For example, in Australia, the Competition and Consumer Act provides that a corporation that has a substantial degree of power in a market shall not take advantage of that power in that or any other market for the purpose of eliminating or substantially damaging a competitor of the corporation or of a body corporate that is related to the corporation in that or any other market.

I am not suggesting Valve is engaging in anti-competitive conduct, but, it could certainly be argued (and often is in other contexts) that a company providing a product for free (or less than the cost of producing that product) is in breach of this section (or at least the previous equivalent section in the Trade Practices Act). Obviously it would depend on establishing certain other facts, but it is at least arguable. Selling something cheaply (or giving it away) with nothing more, however, wouldn't be a breach of this section.

My point is, anti-competitive conduct can be found to have occurred as a result of conduct which ordinary people may not realise is anti-competitive such as offering products for free (or at discounts) refusing to supply to certain people, supplying to certain people on the condition they purchase other products, etc, etc.

But ol' Bill will make sure that you're seeing 8.

You are just exaggerating for no reason. Developers won't just make games what no one will be able to run. They are the ones who would lose money, after all. Game developers have nothing to gain by making a game incompatible with most hardware.

Games nowadays still use dx9c which was released 8 or 9 years ago (except for Just Cause 2, BF3 and maybe a few other ones). So yeah, your point is invalid.

By the way, if you do want people to take your posts seriously, take your precious time to post facts instead of going through unecessary hyperboles. Windows 8 will use dx11.1, which will be supported by Windows 7 too. No need to laugh blood.