this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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[–] azenyr@lemmy.world 296 points 2 years ago (14 children)

Valve seems to be the only company on this capitalist world that actually understands that company profits cannot and should not grow exponentially forever without eventually destroying itself. All other companies don't know or want to stop the greed ad are constantly pushing for more profits to see until where they can push the greed and milking without losing "too much" costumers. They even weight the amount of costumers lost vs the extra profits to see if its viable to lose those costumers and still profit, like Netflix. Valve does not work like this. Valve grew to a size, and that size is giving them stable and steady profit. And they are holding that size, slowly growing more here and there but nothing big. The biggest thing they did in like 10 years was the Steam Deck and they will not update it with a Deck 2 anytime soon. Valve plays the very slow, but steady profits game. This is how you win as a company. You try to keep yourself on a balance between good profits and good public perspective.

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 207 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Being privately held helps a ton. Gabe is his own boss. Once a company's public they're beholden to the investors, and investors want big short term returns so they can dump their stock and move onto the next one.

[–] Haui@discuss.tchncs.de 54 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Maybe that shouldn’t be possible.

[–] bastion@feddit.nl 39 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Yep. Investing should tie you to a stock for at least a year - as soon as you decide to sell, the one-year timer starts.

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[–] whereBeWaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 years ago

I truly fear the day Gabe passes on. Do we know who would own Valve if Gabe were to pass on today?

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[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 88 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Valve able to do that because they are private company, the exponential growth is only made mandatory because of the stakeholder. if the growth is stagnant(even with healthy profit), it's very unattractive to investor, hence growth is needed to keep the cog running.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I wonder, what actual benefits are there in publicly traded companies for society as whole? Benefits that are good for you, me and everyone else equally.

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

It's mostly the effect of expanding the company, like more job, better product, etc etc. sometime it help develop the society quicker because they get more capital to do bigger thing and put in research to do better thing or find new thing, but in return you have to promise growth and return to people giving you money to do that thing. i don't think it's meant to be altruistic cus it's not charity.

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[–] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Mark my word, once Gabe pass it's gonna be very very different. We have very different things to worried about, like climate change, but on software side and tech we shouldn't rely on monopolies. Valve was kept in that state because all the competition didn't actually put up a fight worth extra investment. The windows store pushed valve to develop SteamOS and Proton, they also back off on some revenue split policy because of EGS's deals. (Let's be honest, not all players care about which launcher they use, as long as they get better deals and can play the game they want.)

And to my experience, Steam's recent years' updates to store/client are not something I like as well.

  • I don't like the gamification of sales event etc.
  • I don't like the new unlimited scroll type, they backed off a bit and become like 3 pages long until you hit the top/popular/sales part.
  • I also don't like some of the UI changes(ie the downloads/library mixed together and not separate item)
  • I hated the auto start live streaming thing, if there is option to turn off that please let me know.

For EGS,

  • their search sucks
  • library page sucks, you can't really organize your free games/purchased games etc.
  • auto updates are pretty on par so that's okay.
  • their friends/etc also sucks.(not that I care much but at least it's far worse than steam one.)
  • I like that they adopted Nintendo's gold coin reward type to encourage consumer to purchase there.
  • games from other big publisher usually do require install their clients as well, which sucks. (it's similar on steam as well.)
[–] DancingIsForbidden@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I want to finish reading your post but now I'm just too sad about the thought of GabeN dieing

I will say one of the things i don't like about egs is nothing similar to steamvr, I still highly enjoy my index and want that industry to do well and refuse to invest in a store with no skin in the vr game.

also, I'm finished with windows forever and steam has native Linux support while egs needs a weird combo of wine, bottles, and lutris to be able to achieve something somewhat similar

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[–] clifftiger@feddit.de 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I hated the auto start live streaming thing, if there is option to turn off that please let me know.

There is an option in the settings to turn that off.

edit: Account details -> Store preferences -> Broadcast preferences (at the very bottom of that page)

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[–] oce@jlai.lu 16 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Valve seems to be the only company on this capitalist world that actually understands that company profits cannot and should not grow exponentially forever without eventually destroying itself.

Nah, they are many of them, maybe even the majority of companies are like that (think SMBs). The peculiarity of Valve is that it also managed to become and stay the world leader in its domain, so every nerd knows about it.

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[–] delitomatoes@lemm.ee 252 points 2 years ago (6 children)

If you wonder why public companies with billions in revenue can't make a Steam competitor is because they can't think long term, being a private company allows Valve to just work on what they want and grow If they need to

[–] dukepontus@sh.itjust.works 55 points 2 years ago

Exactly this! I dread the day they go public :(

[–] FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 35 points 2 years ago (1 children)

See also: Reddit's direction to eventually IPO

[–] squidspinachfootball@lemm.ee 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Has that happened yet? I thought it was supposed to have happened by now

[–] Dark_Blade@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago

It needs to be viable first, which obviously won’t happen when the management keeps stumbling into PR nightmares weekly.

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[–] serratur@lemmy.wtf 17 points 2 years ago

they can't think long term

Well they can, but only in one way: Grow by selling at a loss to outcompete other and then make a profit.

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[–] chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 117 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

I'm not one that usually calls for the "Hail Corporate" BS where people lick the boots of big companies. In fact, I typically am very anti-corporate in every way, but Valve is one company I honestly have very little problem giving my money to. They very rarely have any anti-consumer things that crop up and every one to memory they've taken feedback and course corrected very rapidly. I'm afraid for the day Gabe Newell dies or retires, though. Whoever takes over Valve is going to have some big shoes to fill.

[–] crackajack@reddthat.com 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Honestly, when I think of the word "corporate" with its negative baggage, the last entity I will think of is Valve. They've been consistent and good for the past decades thanks to Gabe Newell. If there is any rich tech mogul who should be celebrated more than Elon Musk or Bill Gates, it's Gabe.

[–] Navarian@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not in the least because Elon Musk is a complete idiot that has only managed to whittle literal billions of dollars just by being himself.

Every good company he has touched was either built from the ground up by someone else, like Tesla & PayPal and remains profitable in spite of his existence, or was built from the ground up by someone else and was subsequently ran into the ground - See Twitter.

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[–] Moneo@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm mad HL2 ended on a cliff hanger and I'm really mad at how they handled TF2. Overall though yeah valve gud.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I think that's better than how other companies handle game sequels though Just look at the state of the FIFA franchise

[–] finder@sopuli.xyz 9 points 2 years ago

World of Warcraft is another example of corporate greed ruining a good product.

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[–] frezik@midwest.social 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

About the worst criticism I've heard is around policies involving refunds (very short but charming games can be played quickly and then refunded) and shitware games clogging up search results (often Unity/Unreal Engine skeleton games with a new logo slapped on).

The first one discourages a subset of indy games, but ones that should be taken seriously.

The second, I think, is more of a problem for reviewers hunting for hidden gems than the public at large. Steam decided long ago to lean into Sturgeon's Law of letting almost everything go through and let the good stuff rise to the top. The other way to go is a curated list where you've already cleared out the garbage, but with the understanding that some hidden gems might be caught, too. If you go for letting through everything, then you should have mechanisms for highlighting quality. Steam is pretty good at that overall, but I see how it could be a problem for reviewers. After all, they're exactly the people who need to be trolling the depths and finding those hidden gems.

I don't think most people even notice those skeleton games all over Steam. I would never have seen them if not for J Steph Sterling pointing them out.

Suffice it to say that if these are the biggest problems, they're doing pretty well.

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[–] ghostface@lemmy.world 87 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Google started out the same way. Hopefully this sticks

[–] dudewitbow@lemmy.ml 156 points 2 years ago (10 children)

The advantage atm is that valves privately owned. The moment they go public, be very wary.

[–] BallShapedMan@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago

That's the biggest piece, smaller but worth mentioning is they make money off of our purchases directly unlike Google.

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[–] blunderworld@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 years ago

Valve opened in the late 90s and is privately owned. Never say never where corporations and capitalism are concerned... But hopefully they wont take the evil google approach this late in the game. I think good will from their customers really sets them apart from competitors like Epic.

[–] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 years ago

LOL Valve is not "starting out". They are about as old as Google.

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Valve didn't suddenly get big, they've been dominating the PC space for many, many years.

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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 65 points 2 years ago (8 children)

I really hope that Gabe has future-proofed valve. It really is a remarkable treasure and one of the most user-friendly platforms of all time. Especially in these days when we are seeing a corporate takeover of the internet, or realizing that we lost a long time ago when we put all of our eggs in the Google basket.

I could see so much potential for fuckery happening, can you imagine if steam was as fond of kicking people off the platform as Reddit is? Or if games were constantly being curated to make sure they check all the boxes like the YouTube algorithm does? Five Nights at Freddy's would have never existed if steam played by those rules, same for every other surprise Indie hit

[–] TheLongPrice@lemmy.one 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It's private at least, a good first step

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[–] Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee 51 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Gabes replacement will be the tell all. and as much as i want steam to exist over multiple generations..i dont think it can survive turnover, greed, opportunistic bastards.

[–] whofearsthenight@lemm.ee 25 points 2 years ago

I think this is the difference between private/public companies. They don't have to deal with the "growth at all costs" mindset that plague public companies.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years ago

I really hope that he is planned out his successor meticulously,

Imagine if it was as Ban Happy as Reddit, Corporate as Youtube, or... owned by Elon Musk

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I think it would be awesome if he turned it into a nonprofit with a healthy endowment. The charter could say that any profits above $X that can't be invested into improving PC gaming must go to charities that promote indie dev. So the main goal would be to do things like the Steam Deck or build innovative games, and there would be little incentive to screw over customers. It could also be structured like a coop, so if employees didn't like the CEO's direction, they could vote to remove them.

That's what I would do, but I'm obviously not GabeN.

[–] Scrof@sopuli.xyz 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)
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[–] s_s@lemm.ee 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Steam is a store.

Why would they try and sell you someone else's goods?

LMAO.

[–] IMALlama@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Amazon is also a store, but they have sponsored listings that get preferential placement. Not technically ads, but very similar idea...

[–] dym_sh@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

here's the kicker: amazon sells their own product at the public market owned by amazon, undercutting any other seller on near-exact things.

imagine if valve made knockoffs of every famous game and just redirected every search to them.

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[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, isn't literally everything they have on steam and advertisement?

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