Sometimes, despite all the great things Valve has given us, from one of the most mod-friendly games in existence to Portal, it becomes difficult to see method in Valve's madness.
If you go back about two years ago, you can probably remember that bewildering announcment that there would no longer be a "Black Box" for all the new games for those who had already bought Half-Life 2 and Episode One. I'm surprised that there wasn't a huge back-lash to this announcement, as clearly it was Valve's way of justify making their core audience pay an extra 10 dollars for games they already had. Then this past few weeks, Valve implemented a convoluted unlock system in Team Fortress 2 that has only induced more headaches than the single class rushes that characterized previous class updates in the game.
Come E3, we expected the final installment in Valve's botched attempt at episodic content, and... hey... wait, hold on a second...
Oh... what the fuck, Valve?
Now, I'd feel a lot better about the L4D 2 announcement, had it been given at least another year, or if it was going to be part of some form of DLC. However, the thing that incensed me the most was that we've given Valve three years (remember that Episode 3 was announced to be in the works shortly after Episode 1 came out) and they've decided to already focus on something else entirely. For god's sake Valve, at least a story teaser with a flash of the G-Man's face and "Episode 3: Coming Soon" would suffice.
At this point, to say a gaming company has sold-out has become almost cliched. But unfortunately, as much as I loved the Half-Life series, there's no two ways about it this time.
