Lets pray valve never goes public
Why would they?
The fuck do they need investors for?
Depends on who gets the crown - or prices thereof - when Gabe passes. There are lots of cases where the beneficiary of an estate can’t afford to keep the asset due to a lack of liquidity, and is forced to sell.
I’d say Zuckerberg’s $77B disaster is not a forced mistake but a self-influcted wound. If anything, it’s the Cambridge Analytica scandal that pushed him towards the rebrand they would have been better off without.
This is such a controversial person to discuss. On one hand, loot boxes, the steam market for trading, and a lot of gambling and profiteering going on. At the same time, all of the OP comments are also true.
Out of all the billionaires, I dislike gaben the least. The net good he’s done for gaming may not balance the scales entirely, but at least there’s a discussion to be had whether what gaben has done is for the better, or for the worse. Which is more than I can say about most billionaires I know of.
Hot take: …but it’s just fucking gaming tho… He’s not fucking with manifesting some bullshit ideology throughout the world, he’s not trying to leave his mark on history… And if he is, it’s as a chill dude who gave us all a better alternative to piracy.
he’s not trying to leave his mark on history
He kind of is, but in the way old-school millionaires did - he has purchased a MASSIVE yacht and turned it into an ocean-floor research laboratory, either donated it to a university, or just allows researchers to use it.
Gabe was already wealthy with Microsoft money when he founded Valve, so when his new private startup found success he didn’t feel the pressure to go public, expand, dilute, and cash out. He made the judgement call that they already had enough talent internally to keep playing the hits while keeping all the profit for themselves, and he was right. I’m sure a little bit a business ideology reinforces Gabe’s long-term outlook for Valve, but he’s ultimately enabled by a happy intersection of pre-existing wealth, great timing, and careful hiring choices.
I mean, he is developing the brain chip with his Starfish Neuroscience company but its supposed to be minimally invasive and let’s be real if its between his and Elon Musks (which is NOT minimally invasive and requires surgical implantation) I’m definitely going with his.
I wouldn’t say at this point its all about gaming though. Valve is, but not necessarily Gabe. Which I don’t mind but I could understand how some people wouldn’t like it.
Hard pass
Fair. But its important to point out this won’t be one that goes inside you it will be one that you put on the outside of your head that interacts with brain impulses, at least according to them.
If I was someone with limited mobility or some other sort of handicap I would do that before I got the one that goes inside my skull. But that’s just me.
Can I put it on my dick instead?
You can put almost anything on your dick, its the secret the elite don’t want you to know about!
You know, I think those are inevitable … any potentially evil technology shown in sci-fi will eventually be created irl; it’s like some kind of rule (trust me). Given this, the future is a duality: it’s either GabeN or a random billionaire. I want this potentially-abusive technology with devil that I know.
I remember back around 2010 period, maybe a bit after that, Valve and reddit were both hiring economists. We can see exactly why, now.
I’m pretty reluctant to be this flattening towards Gabe Newell and Valve.
Once Google was seen as one of the good companies. “Googling” became synonimous with searching on the internet. Most if not all competitors went bankrupt. When Google was accused of monopolistic behavior, its fans treated it as an attack on “perfection”. Google Chrome was a fast browser requiring less memory than its competitors. People saw them owning YouTube as a good thing. The most common form of toxicity towards new users in the Linux community was only providing lmgtfy links to them (I did get the occasional custom WinXP ISO torrent link too). Even their motto was don’t be evil.
And then came the YouTube content ID system. And then they were reluctant to throw off the far-right from their platform for breaking their ToS during Gamergate. Then they dropped the motto. Then they put ads into the Google search results. Then they let the far-right control their platform before the 2024 elections. And also they’re pushing AI hard.
Will Gabe Newell stick to his ideas, or get an anyeurism and join the Trump oligarchs?
How do you write all this and fail to mention that search doesn’t even fucking work anymore?
I’m not arguing with you. But internet searching aDOEA NOT WORK ANYMROE.
Not perfect, but better than Google.
No it is t.
DuckDuckGo is a horrible search engine.
Google is a horrible search engine.
Bing is horrible.
They all fucking suck.
So, you are afraid to have an opinion in case future events make it invalid?
How do you support literally anything with this mindset?
Elon Musk might be haunted by the three spirits of not being racist this christmas and give away all his possessions. Nonetheless, I’m happy to call him wanker today, because it’s an accurate representation of reality at present.
It is fair to compare Google to Valve only in a category of “once been good”. Other than that, 2 different companies with 2 different mottos.
Thing is Valve is a private company with a flat structure and shared ownership that encourages moving between departments.
Basically, it’s just a club of people doing whatever they want and they happen to all love videogames.
Guys I know he is not perfect but it’s understandable that people like him in a world where the average CEO drinks the blood of newborns daily.
Huh, so that’s why they’re all so prolife. Need to keep the source of fresh babies going…
“Don’t get an abortion! Have that baby and dispose of it at your nearest “Leave your baby here for our coalition of friendly CEOs to take care of” location for a 25$ amazon gift card!”
That fully sounds like a program a literal vampire would implement with wild success. Parents selling their kids for money happened in the past, so not even that much of a stretch. It does sound like a potential cobra problem though.
very literal cobra problem as well
Would watch a full length film of this
Gaben and steam are not perfect, but are monumentally better than what we would be stuck with on sony-soft
They’re succeeding by not actively running their platform into the ground, which is somehow inspiring and disappointing at the same time
That’s because they’re a privately owned company. They can decide when to prioritize long term profits over short term profits.
Most of their competition are publicity traded companies that have no such luxury. They have to make next quarter’s number higher no matter what.
The very core of pretty much every enshittification you can put a finger on
succeeding by not actively running their platform into the ground
As someone who began to use Steam from 2007, and play their games since 2000 - they not only made their platform better over years, they also now branching out lately. Their hardware is either the best in price/performance or outright innovative.
They are not “succeeding by not actively running their platform into the ground”, they succeeding in actually providing a good service and getting better the more time passes. All that while all competition does is to attempt to expand their user base without actually providing a good service.
Just thought that if not Valve, we’d be stuck in the same shithole streaming services been lately.
All that’s between you and success is a consistent and reasonable performance, but seemingly everyone else in the world is too greedy to pull this off.
That’s because they’re a privately owned company. They can decide when to prioritize long term profits over short term profits.
Most of their competition are publicity traded companies that have no such luxury. They have to make next quarter’s number higher no matter what.
Nintendo too. look, I love their creative, but holy hell have they become exceptionally money grabby.
Nintendo has used up all there goodwill, for me personally. Sucks.
agree, it’s depressing that such a part of my childhood is basically… moneygrubbing
They only began giving refunds when the European Union mandated it, back then only Origin (EA) gave refunds. Some times the EU is useful.
The EU definitely helped. I’ll add that this was actually kicked off by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in 2014. They took Valve to court over their insistence that they can ignore Australian Consumer Law rights - in particular that if a product is ‘not fit for purpose’ then the buyer is entitled to a full refund, with respect to games. Valve offered no possibility of refund at the time. The case dragged on, but Valve eventually lost and was told to pay several million in fines, they appealed it to the High Court of Australia in 2016 - and lost also on appeal.
The judge was pissed at Valve, and wrote in their ruling:
“Valve’s culture of compliance was, and is, very poor”. Valve’s evidence was ‘disturbing’ to the Court because Valve ‘formed a view …that it was not subject to Australian law…and with the view that even if [legal] advice had been obtained that Valve was required to comply with the Australian law the advice might have been ignored”. He also noted that Valve had ‘contested liability on almost every imaginable point’.
Valve are generally a very positive force in gaming, but they’re definitely not the saints that OP image text implies.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/australia-fines-valve-over-steam-refunds
Thanks mate for adding the extra information, I had forgotten about the Australian ruling.
I have a pro-Valve bias because I do like them. But I still do want to make a fair argument and would like to be corrected if I fail to do so.
So, yes, Valve’s refund policy in the past was bad, and yes, they were forced to change. But since then they have fixed their mistakes, and have arguably the most generous refund policy out there. Last time I bought digital content from Nintendo store I had to waive my refund rights.
They could have limited refunds to Australia but they didn’t. This has to count for something, right? Valve is a for profit company in a capitalist system, and yes they have bad practices. But surely we can agree they are one of the better ones?
Thanks for the info and sources!
Encouraging customers to spend less money by having sales is certainly one interpretation
I am a fan of Valve, but this is just way exaggerated. For example, encourages you to save money by having sales? Isn’t that about manipulating you into buying more games than you would otherwise, because you perceive the value as being better?
I fall for it every time and I couldn’t be more proud
Yeah, Valve are certainly one of the best options for buying games other than sometimes GoG or directly from the developer. But this level of simping for Valve is odd.
They don’t set the prices. Developers and Publishers of the game are the ones that do that.
PlayStation has been known to straight up limit and even DENY developers and publishers of indie games on their platform but its strange I never see hate for them very much. And they also have crazy sales on AAA games too.
Right? The best method of saving money is not to spend it in the first place, no matter how good the deal is. I mean, good deals are nice and all if you really need a thing.
Where I am, games in Steam cost about five to ten bucks normally, and two or three bucks on sale. Ten bucks goes quite far here, and without sales many wouldn’t buy games at all. Now, is it good value to buy games instead of not buying any?
People saying that when Gabe dies so does Steam seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle.
From everything I’ve read and can tell they work using an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program). Meaning each employee working there today is becoming partial owners in Valve. If you think they will allow some new face to show up when Gabe dies and flip the table you are missing the piece where the owners of this company are extremely well compensated today and a core part of making Valve successful today.
A ton of companies have ESOP, but that doesn’t stop enshitification because the employees generally don’t own enough shares to exert control.
Those shares are also generally for sale for a high enough price. Given the immense current value of the brand, when Gabe dies vultures of every variety will start circling. If they offer employees 2x their share price to sell, enough of them will do it to lose control to investors that just want to enshittify everything and milk it’s brand for every last penny as they drive it into the ground.
My company is an ESOP and shares don’t give us voting rights or any actual control, it’s just a monetary incentive. The C-suite/board still control everything and unilaterally makes all the executive decisions.
STEAM- Give a reasonable good platform for gaming.
OTHERS- Kill themselves with shitty optimization and spam policies.
STEAM - Sit. Enjoy the sunny day. Drink a coffee. Improve a bit the navigator to help you find new games.
OTHERS - Keep their shitty platforms unoptimized and double down on AI Slops.
STEAM - Doing some yoga. Walk the dog. Add an AI disclaimer for the games.
BTW the way refunds work is that steam withholds the money for a month to pay refunds with it. The publisher has no say, they just get gross - 30% - VAT - refunds.
Also giving refunds is required by law in some countries, it’s not like valve invented it out of the goodness of their heart.
Australia sued them into their current refund policy
They did not need to extend that to countries like the US.
At a certain point, making some functionality only available to part of your audience is more costly than just allowing it for everyone. Also the PR would have been horrible.
Now, being sued into doing it at all somehow made everyone in this thread fawn over them…
Is this supposed to be a negative?
Well the op said it was out of their own pockets, this is saying that op’s claim is fake.
The fact that you immediately got weirdly defensive about it tells me you think it’s a negative, and I agree since this policy applies equally to EA garbage as it does for your cute little indie game.
“You immediately got weirdly defensive”, and the dude asked a single question.
“Your cute little indie game”, bro why do you talk like a Disney bully?
It was a very weirdly defensive question.
And your little dog too!
How was I being “weirdly defensive”?
Tone in text is an exercise for the reader if it wasn’t an exercise for the author.
Mmmm billionaire boot must be delicious
Steam is not a bad company but it is still a company that holds a lot of power, don’t forget that.
Yeah. I am a fan of valve but their complicity in cs:go skin gambling uhhh… gets worse and worse the more closely you look at it.
Its fair to appreciate the good they have done for linux and largely very consumer friendly business practices AND, companies are not your friends.
Valve’s “hands-off” approach extends far beyond CS:GO gambling. They have the same willful negligence toward moderating their own official group chats.
For weeks, the official Steam Deck group chat has been flooded with racist slurs and hate speech. I and many others reported the individuals responsible, yet weeks passed with zero action taken.
Frustrated, I opened a formal support ticket. I detailed the offenses, provided evidence, and explained why a basic filtering system or active moderation is necessary for their own official spaces. Valve’s response? They closed my ticket without taking any action at all. They have confirmed, through inaction, that providing a non-toxic environment in their official communities is not a priority.
This experience has made me lose a significant amount of respect for Valve. I will now be actively purchasing my games elsewhere in protest.
Exactly, and Steam is not a bad company… yet.
Steam has had this power for ages tho and never abused it to the disadvantage of customers.
Supporting companies that don’t shit on consumers is equally important as boycotting companies that do.
Hmmm. Everyone takes Steam refunds for granted now. But until late 2015 they refused to do refunds for any kind of game purchase, even if the game was literally unplayable by buyers - until they were dragged through the courts by the ACCC and fined, with similar legal demands happening from the EU around the same time.
Dunno if I’d call that, “never abused their power to the disadvantage of customers”.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/australia-fines-valve-over-steam-refunds
That is not true. I know this because I had one case where I did get a refund for a game called “War Z” - I also found an article that explains that the game was pulled by valve and they have indeed offered refunds: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/how-not-to-launch-a-video-game-starring-i-the-war-z-i-
On the same site, I also found this article talking about a ubisoft game that was pulled: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-ubisoft-offering-refunds-on-i-from-dust-i-through-steam
Now, it’s debateable if this was a valve or a ubisoft decision - however, knowing ubisoft, I’d say they were pressured by valve to give in lmao.
I’ve also found this article on polygon that talks about another Early Access Title that was pulled by valve and refunded to buyers because it was shit: https://www.polygon.com/2014/5/6/5686826/earth-year-2066-refund-steam-early-access/
And that’s just what I found with a few minutes of research. I’m fairly confident if I search some more, I’ll find much more of those cases.
So yes, while the stance back then was “all purchases are final”, you were absolutely able to get your money back if the game was truly broken and unplayable. Don’t get me wrong, the current rule is significantly better, but claiming that steam hasn’t been on customers side back then is just straightup wrong.
And I have an anecdote that counters your anecdote. I’ve been refused a refund. It was at their discretion. Game crashing withing 10 minutes of playing every time isn’t always enough to get them to deign to give you your money back…
So, yes, it IS true. Them occasionally making a PR friendly move and going against their own policy doesn’t change that
Their policy was that if a game was activated on your account then you were not entitled to a refund. The fact that they pulled some games from the store due to significant complaints about those individual titles (or at publisher request), and subsequently decided to make an exception to refund that particular game for some people does not disprove that their standard policy was ‘you are not entitled to a refund’.
Of course it doesn’t disprove that, I never said it was, infact, I stated quite the opposite. However, the fact that they were handing out refunds in cases where games were just outright broken or a scam proves that they have been on the consumer side. Just look at what bethesda did with FO76, where they actually denied refunds for that game when it was obvious it was a shitshow.
Again, I’m not saying that it was a great move from steam to not have a refund window, but claiming they were “abusing their power” when “no refunds” is basically the default for american companies (where refunds are not legally mandated, but each merchant can set his own refund period) is just stupid.
At least they are not beholden to parasitic shareholders that demand quarterly grow at all costs.
And if they get rid of most of the competition then they can treat us like garbage and we’d have nowhere to go.
If Valve would want to do that, they could have done so years ago. To the contrary, there are more stores where you can buy games online then ever before (Epic, Windows Store, GOG, Itch.io, Fanatical, Humble and so on, with steam keys and without), and i haven’t heard of a single aqcuisition by Valve yet.
What competition lol
It seems from your response that you have at least some desire to educate… Why must that also come with derision?
It isn’t that hard to convey a message without such a contemptuous tone, and I’d venture to guess it would be more likely to persuade. Someone has seen some good in a thing. You can disagree without scorn.
My apologies, this community is generally memey/jokey in tone, and I was going with that. /gen
I’m also firing off dumb comments at like 2 am where I am, lol. Please do not take my short soundbites (text bites?) seriously.
On a more serious note, one billion dollars is a legitimately unfathomable amount of wealth and, by extension, unilateral power. That’s a dangerous thing for any one person to hold, regardless of how kind their heart is since it means the use of that power is dependent on the whims of one person.
Corporations are also, by their nature, driven by a profit motive. A corporation can do non-evil, customer-friendly things but that can also change very quickly. It’s important to differentiate between beneficial behavior and altruism.
Also, I typically don’t expect people to read my unsolicited soapboxing rants under a green text meme lol.
Also also, I am quite appreciative of the benefits of Valve’s efforts. I just don’t assume they’re purely doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Nor do I expect/demand them to.
I’ve lurked on Lemmy for over a year and this post, for whatever reason, compelled me to register an account to respond; I took your comment to be a tad critical. It seems I may’ve misread the room here - my apologies if so. I agree wholeheartedly with pretty much all you’ve said. Thanks for the response.
Your concerns are valid since text is hard to interpret due to lack of inflection, context, and other intonation indicators. I try to remember to use tone tags but don’t always.
Thank you for your thoughtful responses and engagement, though. Good faith discussion is an important thing on the web, and is a large part of why I like Lemmy over Reddit and other centralized social media sites. I appreciate you for that and adding to the constructiveness and positivity :) /gen
Yes, it’s better to have companies that have no power and do nothing.
Steam refused to issue refunds for a long, long time. In the end they started allowing refunds for everyone because governments started requiring it and it was easier to just allow them for everyone than having to do the legal footwork to have different policies based on geography.
I think they’ve even been forced to pay fines because they refused to give refunds in countries where it’s a legal right.
I know this novel strategy that Valve employs might be difficult to conceptualize for people whose thinking only extends as far as “company evil, success bad”, so let me summarize it in a format that is easier to understand:
I receive: half-decent product
You receive: my money
end of story
The sad thing is that them having a half decent product is something special in this world
How would you like to see it improved?
The world? Don’t get me started.
Steam? It’s alright, I guess. I just wish “sell decent product, get money” would be the norm, not this ensure try fixation circus we have
