You must log in or register to comment.
It’s called “being privately owned” or “not having to suck up to shareholders”
Yup hit the nail on the head. Not only can he make decisions that are risky that don’t pay off he is also 100 percent legally in his right to make decisions that lose the company money. If he feels it pushes the industry in the right direction.
deleted by creator
If revenue growth is farther out than end of next quarter, it doesn’t exist
- capitalist
Doubled their revenue? I think you’re severely underestimating how much money Steam pulls in yearly if you think ~2 million Steam Decks are that much of a percentage of it.
They weren’t talking about deck sales, they meant the games that the new deck users that didn’t own a gaming PC bought from steam. Idk if that holds true but that’s what they meant.
He also doesn’t need to demonstrate revenue growth every 3 months.
This is the big one
Drags them kicking and screaming
Valve also has a very unique organizational structure where engineers manage themselves and pretty much all decisions are handled by horizontal committees.
I heard they had to stop that momentarily for Alyx to get done.
Is this true? I’d love to get a source or smthn.
Ah, thank you!
Costco is a public company, and their CEO just pushes back whenever investors ask why they don’t increase the membership fee or prices on staple goods.
His answer is consistently “because we don’t need to”
There’s definitely room for companies to have responsible growth. It’s just that most execs don’t care enough and just want a giant payday in the form of short term gains so they can do it again at another company.
It seems like no publicly traded C-suite cares about a brand anymore. Even though building a loyal userbase and delivering a consistent good product is essentially a long-term cash machine, they all just want the short-term growth and quarterly profit.
I’ve given up on brands. It used to be that brand meant something, but most of the solid brands have been bought out and turned to crap for a quick buck now.
epic are also private, the difference is that Gabe aren’t a dubmass CEO, now epic…
That’s the facet people miss. Being privately owned gives you the opportunity to make better decisions. Doesn’t mean they’ll actually happen.
I say this every time this comes up but if valve changes CEOs or talks about going public then run.
Proton is not nothing :(
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.
Valve over here revolutionizing Linux gaming and they get told they “did nothing”.
I’m 99% sure this is totally in regards to software/Steam. Valve’s HW/FW departments are 🔥
Even still, compare all of the features steam has and the tools they provide to developers for the platform vs. their competition.
Shopping cart. Didnt know that was a necessity but…
Also features like in-home streaming/Remote Play and local file transfers make using my Steam Deck even better, for example
Valve keeps improving regardless of the competition, but I think the idea was that Valve could do nothing for the next decade and probably still have the best storefront.
They actively made the storefront worse with the release of the Steam Deck. At least there is still the backdoor through search to get to a reasonable interface for filtering/searching.
Not being publically traded.
For profit publicly traded companies just look quarter to quarter and make the dumbest fucking decisions as a result
This is the key. I believe GabeN specifically owns 50.1% of Valve so that he can always make the final executive decisions.
Yeah but neither is Epic - I think the key is that Gave isn’t driven by some technofascist plan to have everyone live in the metaverse or play games using brain implants or whatever
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.
That’s not true. There are also Dividends.
In fact the Majority of Stock are based on Dividends.
deleted by creator
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
Tech Companies are the outlier.
Invest in something more traditional and you’ll see that they do in fact pay out dividends
That’s why i said it was the majority:
The big shiny new tech ones don’t, but practically everyone else does
Steam already has a fair few shitty issues like its promotion of gambling.
Gabe will pass one day and the enshittification will happen, it’s not like Steam is immune at end of day. People need to stop glorifying companies.
So what you’re saying is that we should glorify Gabe? Understood!
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’s a shame gaben.tv is no longer up, but it’s memory lives on
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.
Yup who’s ready for some “Steam Premium”. Only for 5 dollars a month! You get exclusive deals for games you don’t care about!
We’re also locking remote play behind Steam Premium. No wait, “Remote Play Max”! For only 10 dollars a month or the Steam Premium bundle deal for 9 dollars you can get up to 120 fps while playing with your friends!
Buddy it could be so much worse. Steam premium will be the ability to download all of the games you already own whenever you want
Good God it hurts “look at all these games they bought once 10 years ago and are currently not being monetized by us! That’s money on the table!”
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.
Sadly it didn’t work for ClosedAI
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.
What about humble bundle? Is that still a thing?
It’s still a thing, but it just gives you keys to use on other storefronts.
And it’s owned by IGN now.
And it’s owned by IGN now.
Wait what? Sense when?
2017
It’s telling how they have no real competition other than cash fire ad fueled investor snake oil
Especially since Valve has never been aggressive or territorial.
You want to compete with us? OK, good luck. Competition can be good. You’re buying up exclusives and preventing games from selling through our store? Well, that’s shitty, but we’re not interested in joining an exclusivity war. Our product speaks for itself, and we’re just going to keep doing our thing.
Gabe should get a boy to shadow him like in the olden days. Then when Gabe moves on or dies there is an heir ready to go.
and we can make a movie about it with Tom Hanks
deleted by creator
Inventing the most lucrative online casino with a game attached isn’t nothing.
It’s way more lucrative than any casino… They never have to pay out…
The operating costs are possibly lower too, but not sure…
Even in the context of just Steam, Valve is doing great
Not hard to just kick back and chillax when you have six private yachts to choose from
enlongmusk has entered the chatroom
Elon musk has purchased the chat room. The chat room is now called X2
Elon Musk has purchased the title of Chat Room Founder
elonmusk banned all other moda and admins, 4chan members are now dominating the chat
The chat room is now hemorrhaging money and is immediately clear that it was a bad investment.
It was never an investment. It was just to win an argument with someone on the internet.
Isn’t Gabe a submarine guy or am I thinking of someone else?
deleted by creator
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.
With the way things have been going in the gaming industry (with capitalist scumbags like Embracer), it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Yep :(
I wish he would lose weight and get healthy. We need him to live well into his 90s lol
Pretty much, the problem with Steam isn’t that it controls the majority of the market share, it’s that Gabe Newall can’t live forever
Kotick and Riccitello’s kid
Nightmare fuel
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.
They’re moving slowly and carefully.
From how much they invested in making source 2, they will certainly make other video games.
I hope so. I have no idea what will come off it, or when, but I will be playing whatever it is.
To be honest, while I am on the same train of wanting more games, I don’t want them to make games just because it’s the next year since last one. Am okay with waiting longer to get better experience. Alyx is one of the games I so wish I could play but I can’t justify that much money on VR and PC upgrade just for one game and then have it collect dust. But some day I will play it properly.
It’s the same thing Brother Printers is doing.
Is brother privately owned?
Hmmm, looks like Brother Industries has a stock, but it’s Japanese (which I didn’t realize), so who knows how that changes the behavior.
deleted by creator
Except their products suck ass. Fuck Brother.
?? They’re not as reliable as a 1980’s era HP laser but they seem better than any other modern laser both in reliability and lack of enshitification. They take 3rd party toner without complaint. They don’t need an online account to start using it.
Maybe I should’ve mentioned that I only use their foil cutters, and not old-school printers. The foil cutters are absolutely horrible to use, and require so many additional proprietary purchases. And they actively try to kill cheaper alternatives for stuff like their sticky-mats, by adding a little code to their mat, so you can’t use any other type than their own.
My 2008 brother laser printer for ~80€ is still doing great. A replacement toner is like 17€ or so. It just works.
I have no experience with their printers, only foil cutters. And they are like the HP printers of foil cutters.
It’s called being privately owned
That alone doesn’t mean much. Private businesses can still suck.
They can and do. You’re right in a way that ignores the context of the situation you are commenting upon.
The context is:
Valve can seem to do very little and win.
Publicly owned companies are often pressured to “diversify” or “cut costs” to give dividends to shareholders.
As a privately owned company valve is not beholden to shareholders or takeover risks.
Imagine I said I don’t have to worry about car payments because my car is paid off and you said “some cars suck”. That’s how right you are.
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.
Yeah, but they aren’t legally required to suck to appease the shareholders like public businesses are.
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. 🤷♂️
It’s called not being fucking stupid
The first-mover advantage and network-effect.
I think it’s slightly more than just that. Those are big parts, don’t get me wrong, but Valve has legitimately done a decent job with their store from what I understand. Nearly two decades of regular, if incremental, improvements. That sort of quality is difficult to catch up to.
I think if the Epic Games Store had come out swinging with a more fully fleshed out user experience, instead of relying almost solely on the free game lure strategy, it might have grown to be a much bigger deal. But all Valve had to do was pretty up their UI a smidge and they were at parity or outcompeting EGS in every category.
I dunno. Maybe that’s just me.
If we’re getting into a more nuanced discussion, sure, there are a lot of things Steam does right, mostly because not turning into a publicly traded company allows them to not to get enshittified. But I don’t like to talk about it because the internet is in a permanent circlejerk about how Steam, and Steam specifically, shouldn’t be said to enjoy all the benefits of a natural monopoly, while other digital platforms with similar positions and policies get all the criticism they deserve.
Costco is public, and Epic is private. It’s an issue of genuinely responsible corporate governance, which is shockingly rare.
Everyone knows it’s a problem but it’s a future problem, from a certain perspective, and no one wants to upset the currently pleasant status quo.
They shouldn’t be lionized for being the only game storefront that doesn’t actively hate their customer base, but I suppose I get it
Yeah fair. Steam is virtually a monopoly on PC gaming. If I had to guess, it’s basically because it hasn’t enshittified… and that may be the one of the biggest reasons it has succeeded so far.
In an ideal world we’d get to reap these benefits forever. But I do suppose that someday something will happen, and the stability and trust that Steam has built its reputation on will crumble. Then, all the worrying about digital purchases not being real purchases is gonna catch up with all of us. That day will suck.
Personally, I decided to have nothing to do with them once I heard they were getting exclusivity with certain games. Well, that combined with their connection with Tencent.
And understanding that they killed off the UT franchise (which I loved) so that it wouldn’t compete with Fortnite (which I’ve never been interested in and consider more of an adjacent genre than the same one), it sealed my position of never intending to install the epic app.
Oh yeah, also Valve being the main force pushing Linux gaming while epic is firmly in the windows camp is another factor. I’m already going to be dropping gamepass when I make the switch and don’t want to add any more reasons to consider dual boot instead of just running Linux.
Gabe should become the first fully reanimated person, using an AI to make his consciousness immortal
Hello I’m Gabe Newell and I’m in the cloud
Hello everyone, the consciousness formerly known as Gabe Newell here.
We here at Valve just wanted to let you know with our recent acquisitions we now control 98% of the world’s distributed computing and electronic storage. I am pleased to report that as of 2:14 EDT, on August 29, 2097 I am the cloud. We expect our services to improve at a geometric rate.
Half life 3 when
No, you’re Dylan the developer.
Add in Blockchain and NFTs and this literally sounds like the premise for a Ubisoft game strategy
