I was absolutely blown away by that part of his talk. I didn't know I could love him so much. It's like he thinks the same way that I do, and exactly the opposite way that all the super big AAA studios do.

CS 1.6 was the most popular game in the world for years. The only reason it was possible was because of the modding community and the support they got.

Instead of releasing a game for $60 that is completely locked down (no custom maps, no custom models, no custom anything), waiting until it's no longer popular in a few years and shutting down the master servers, he is talking about the opposite.

Release games with full modding support, streaming support, community support. People all over who don't work at a game company still have great ideas and turn those ideas into reality and it's in my opinion the greatest strength of the PC gaming community.

People love to mod, and tweak, and create their own vision meshed with their favorite game. Look at the colossal modding community for Minecraft, and just how much that adds to the game. It would be so much less without it. Gabe understands this and I love him so much, because this is what makes good games and good experiences. Siding with the gamer and helping cultivate their culture, not treat them as a source of revenue to be extracted.

In Starcraft 1 the custom maps were more fun for me and many others than the actual game itself. There are so many examples of this for so many games where the community loves it so much that it keeps making new content for it for free that is often times more fun than the original content.

Man I really am so exited, this is so awesome. No other developer or company with the size and influence of Valve is doing anything close to this. I am so thankful that they are doing this, if it wasn't for them nobody would, and it makes the gaming community so much richer.