Valve... (Patreon)

It's fascinating to see how much Crossplay, not the feature, but the sentiments surrounding it has changed.

Back in 2007, when asked the question if Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare would have Crossplay between PC and Xbox 360 players, the developers almost laughed the interviewer out of the room, yet in 2019, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was one of the biggest games to not just allow it but fully integrate it.

That's in 2019 however…

Valve meanwhile, in the year 2012, attempted to modernize one of their games as a universal hub, an experience where PC, Playstation, and Xbox, would all be interacting together with the same interface, controls, strategies, playstyles, and gameplay with cross platform play, progression, and interface.

An absolutely obscene concept for the company which previously abandoned Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2 due to the consoles limited updating capabilities and processes.

It seemed that Valve were backtracking from their previously public comments, and came back to the systems with their sky-high ambition fully in-tact, ready to pitch this idea to the world, except they decided to this with...

Yeah.

Valve were going to beat Rocket League, Fortnite, Among Us, Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight, Fall Guys, Minecraft, No Mans Sky, Nerf Legends, and Call of Duty to the punch, only to pick the game where accuracy between M+K & Pad MATTERS MORE THAN ALL OF THOSE.

It's even worse though.

The console versions had no aim-assist, and I don't mean, a low amount, I mean none, like friendly fire in Halo.

Valve contracted a company to build Counter Strike from the ground up to be an identical experience on all platforms with the intention of interrogating all of them, all the while doing absolutely nothing to mitigate the things that make Counter Strike on console anything but identical.

For any other company, this is a bafflingly nonsensical circumstance that's entirely self-inflicted.

For Valve…

It's Tuesday.

Back in 2007, during the beginnings of Machinima's dominance of internet culture, both the channel and genre itself, Counter Strike Source received its own Red vs Blue analogue in the form of The Leet World.

Turning the "Elite Crew" character into Cortez, a blind has-been Terrorist leader, "SEAL-6" into Chet, a dude-bro whose never sober, SAS into Player who can only speak through text chat and radio commands, and a bunch of other distinct characters in the format of The Office, the result is a comedic take on a game whose base content had always been rather… generic.

It's aged, just like Red vs Blue has aged, but it was easily the closest there was to Rooster Teeth's output, with the same talent for memorable characters.

It certainly rose far above the fifteen minute fame of Sanity Not Included.

It's rather remarkable how big Red vs Blue was, considering that legally speaking, there was absolutely no ground Rooster Teeth had to stand on.

In the world of Copyright, Fair Use is a defense, not a law, so it wouldn't matter what your opinions of Rooster Teeth's use of the game Halo was in regards to creating something unique and transformative, as far as our shitty outdated legal system is concerned, Red vs Blue, in any context other than free internet videos, was forbidden.

Luckily, Bungie were chill, and eventually channeled Rooster Teeth through to Microsoft to arrange a deal where the two properties, Halo, and Red vs Blue, could coexist.

Smooth Few Films, Leet World's creators, wouldn't be so lucky.

From what I recall, they did have a brief exchange from Valve, but it basically amounted to someone from the company replying "nah" to SFF's pitch of expanding Leet World beyond their Youtube channel.

Smooth Few Films would later disband, with at least one of its members, Eddy Rivas, ironically enough going on to work for Rooster Teeth.

You can sometimes hear him even in Seasons of Red vs Blue.

Not counting a revival attempt in 2015, the last episode of Leet World was posted in September 2009.

So, in 2009-2010… Valve had no interest in community Machinima projects for their existing properties.

Source Filmmaker released in 2012.

…

Valve.

What.

The.

Fuck!?

You could've had your Red vs Blue be working with an early build of software that would've overshadowed the production of Red vs Blue!?

You turned away a name with millions of viewers per-episode to let it die, only to then stumble into one of the biggest tools for internet media in generations!?

Though, I guess the jokes on us, being that Source Filmmaker is still in beta. Perhaps they know better than anybody else how many have moved over to Blender.

Then of course…

There's TF2.

The game which during the peak of its popularity had a competitive community sustained entire by the community with a set of rules most were happy with and competing with for years.

Valve weren't interested in supporting this.

Valve in-fact didn't seem interested in supporting eSports at all, given the struggle of both Counter Strike 1.6 and Source, also maintained by third parties.

Valve were given to fund, not organize, fund, basically, assist a couple communities they spawned that in some cases, were some of the biggest global gaming competitions years in advance of the eSports explosion, and ignored it.

Then in 2011…

You can't make this stuff up.