“Late Is Just For A Little While, Suck Is Forever”
In Valve’s new documentary commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Half-Life series, co-founder Gabe Newell discusses the differences between a delayed game and a rushed release. When discussing the challenges Valve faced in the lead-up to the release of Half-Life, he summed it up as “late is just for a little while, suck is forever,” which ultimately resulted in the game’s release being pushed back a year.
“We could try to force this thing out the door, but that’s not the company we want to be, that’s not the people we want to be. That’s not the relationship we want to have with our customers.”
The quote has already been compared to “Miyamoto’s most famous” line, in which he is said to have said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad”.
Interestingly, Gabe Newell has previously stated that he is a huge fan of Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and that Miyamoto’s games have helped him become a “better” developer. Valve even released Portal: Companion Collection for the Switch last year, and they recently mentioned how the OLED model paved the way for the Steam Deck OLED.
This weekend, Half-Life is also available for free on Steam.