Valve on 13 Things At Which They Have Failed

Even the best don't always get it right on the first try.

Valve Software is among the elite in game development – and now in online PC game distribution through Steam. But no company is ever perfect, and in an interview with PC Gamer, Valve speaks of the 13 things at which it has failed.

One recent fault was the erroneous Modern Warfare 2 bans. Gabe Newell shared, "Speaking of screw-ups, banning people in Call of Duty. That was way, way bigger an issue for us than piracy… as a thing we needed to do something about. You know about that? We banned 12,000 people because there was a flaw in how we were – it was a series of events that could occur that occur far more likely in Modern Warfare 2."

While Valve has done a great job delivering value and service to its PC base, those playing on the Xbox 360 and PS3 haven't had the same level of attention. That's one thing that Valve is looking to change – especially on the PS3 side with Portal 2 next year.

Erik Johnson said, "the lack of updates on the 360 for TF2 is also a total failure."

Although Valve was aware of Microsoft's rules on how updates would work for the Xbox 360, it had hoped that things would open up to allow for a more direct way for the developer to reach gamers on Xbox Live.

Newell added, "We thought that there would be something that would emerge, because we figured it was a sort of untenable… 'Oh yeah, we understand that these are the rules now, but it’s such a train wreck that something will have to change.'

"That’s why we’re really happy with the current situation with the PS3… We’re solving it now in a way that is going to work for our customers, rather than assuming something is going to emerge later that will allow us to fix this."

Read the full Q&A session with Valve on PC Gamer.