It only ignores the context if you’re assuming I am saying Valve is one of those private businesses that sucks. Having shareholders doesn’t mean a company will suck, just as being private is no guarantee it won’t suck.
Imagine if the comment I replied to said “the sky is always blue” and I pointed out that sunrises and sunsets can be orange, pink or purple and entirely black at night.
Its called try to run an ethical and pro-consumer business. Fuck up occasionally, but never falter. God help us if he decides to steal all our games from us
Or when he dies, dude has an amazing track record of doing the right thing when he’s gotten push back, but I’m worried once he is gone, we’re going to get some dick wagon that’s going to do a 180 and make Todd Howard look like Jesus.
This is the “let them fail” method. Valve has a solid product in steam. They have no need to suck up to investors, they’re making money hand over fist with steam.
Running a good marketplace is amazing income; as long as gaben still runs it, there’s no reason to screw that up. The focus of valve is on Steam as a marketplace; and they’re reaping the rewards of that decision. It’s why so few games have been made by valve. The reasoning is clear if you’re paying attention for them.
Valve started as a software company that makes games, but after steam was created, which initially was just to distribute their own games - little more than a digital purchase and delivery platform for their software, and they opened that up to allow other publishers to have their games purchased and distributed through Valve’s system, the writing was on the wall.
I miss the games that Valve used to make, and as far as I’m concerned they were some of the best games available, and in many ways, they still are. I’d like to see more from them, but I understand why it’s not their priority. At the same time, I appreciate that they are still working on games, as evidenced by Alyx, which was an excellent experience. They still make excellent games. I look forward to anything they decide to release in the future, but I know better than to ask about it. Heh.
I’ve more or less been a valve/steam fanboy since the orange box. Not in the way that I am going to attack someone for not liking it, or not using it. I personally enjoy it, but what others do is not my concern. I hope that they continue to create amazing games and that enshittification is put off as long as possible.
Exactly. Steam is a money-printings g machine, and since they’re not publicly traded the owners make money asong as they’re profitable.
With publicly-treaded companies, anyone who invests only makes money when the value of the stock goes up. Your company can make 5 billion dollars a second in profits, but still lose value to shareholders if the next quarter you aren’t making 6 billion a second.
Dividends are typically an extremely low percentage and I wouldn’t be so bold as to say the majority of stocks pay out dividends. I have ~20 different tech companies (some large, some small) in my portfolio and only one of them pays out dividends, as an example.
That’s not a good example. A lot of tech companies don’t pay dividends because they aren’t yet profitable. The share price fluctuates heavily because it’s all speculative.
Longer term, profitable companies that pay consistent dividends are the bread and butter over a strong passive income generating portfolio. You can also get significant dividends just from index fund ETF.
A million dollar portfolio can easily print $30000-$50000 a year in dividends depending on how it’s allocated
I don’t know, he gives a bunch of video games away for free on 4chan for a week every year between Christmas and New Years Eve. That’s the week you can make a post with your steam username and what game you want and you magically get it, if you don’t believe me, wait until next year and try it, you will believe me then. You’ll know it’s real because you will see a bunch of other people posting the same shit.
No such thing as an ethical billionaire and everything. Steam just lost a class action antitrust lawsuit and will have to issue refunds to a bunch of developers and customers. Overall GabeN seems like a less-evil billionaire though and truly seems to enjoy games (and knives). Steam will definitely go downhill once he’s not leading it and we’ll all lose a great platform that’s defined PC gaming for a decade or three…
It is possible but for things like a steam deck you just move on to the next store or piracy. It’s so open you get trapped by convenience not by encryption or premium features.
You’re thinking of now not the future. It’s a great device at the moment. But it’ll become out dated with time and it’ll be easy for the next steam deck to be shit or for shitty practices to come into play.
And using the example of piracy/other stores means every device is fine. Just hack the device/remove the shitty practices and you’re good to go whether it’s a steam deck, Windows, Etc.
Devices will be outdated anyways. But the steam deck you don’t have to hack. You just enable things with touch buttons.
Valve learned from other consoles they get hacked anyways, so they enabled you to do all the mods - while at the same time you won’t have to fiddle with pirated games for a fee. Personally I don’t think this strategy will change - and if they release a more closed steam decknin the future piracy is an option again. On another device then.
I was recently playing a game, with my wife (it takes 2). I realised, I brought the game in a steam sale, I was gaming on my steam deck, my wife was using a steam controller, and we were playing on the TV via a steam link.
At some point I became a huge steam fanboy, and I’m actually ok with that. 🤷♂️
So true – It’s totally because Gabe rules as King and they don’t have ‘investors’ – One day they’ll sell or he’ll die and it will be turned over to the wolves just like everything else.
It’s telling how they have no real competition other than cash fire ad fueled investor snake oil a la epic ea ubisoft w/e – Is GOG still cool/unruined by short term anti user greed?
My wet dream is that when Gabe passes Valve is turned into a cooperative. It wouldn’t guarantee that Valve wouldn’t turn into a bad company, but it would mean the people at Valve want Valve to be shitty and I just don’t see that happening.
GOG is trucking along. They haven’t pulled any crap on my limited library with them. I only have around 25 games over there. Compared to the 140 I have on steam, mostly bought, and the 250 I have been given on Epic for free, none bought over there.
And DXVK. And VKD3D. And contributions to upstream Wine. And Gamescope. And the best handheld console thus far. And going against common industry practices by supporting the right to repair said console.
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