kljpmsd, it's not marketing. It's many different things happening, including putting out a website change that makes things non-functional and buggy. No one in their right mind would do that for marketing reasons. On the getting funds in advance and then making changes against those promises, well, that just a way to lose business. I saw the Steam fiasco. Valve was a great company that used to make memorable games. Now it only sells games, and occasionally buys and rebrands things (tweaking). They saw the amount of money Riot games was making and decided they wanted a cut. Now they get a ton from their MOBA, but any other game IP's they own have suffered greatly in lack of real development. Had they simply continued to develop their own properties they probably would have earned the amount from the MOBA. Think about it. L4d predated most of the zombie craze. They easily could have pioneered the field and gotten fat off it with variants. The same can be said of Half-Life (speaking about breaking promises on selling episodes at a faster rate than putting out a finished game). Half-Life could have easily topped Call of Duty before COD even came out. And many others.... Sure Valve makes money, a ton, but the Valve that was is long gone, and the chances for greatness are gone too. Valve is Apple now. Apple music copying Spotify and others. Not to bash Apple, but Tim Cook no Steve Jobs and has never been an innovator.

The dust settled, thinking "what a fine home, at least for now" not realizing that doom would soon be coming in the form of a vacuum cleaner.