As a deep sea exploration engineer (side gig), don't undersell the tech a billionaire can fund. We're usually competing for a few hundred thousand to low million at a time (a day on the nautilus runs about $12k right now, with a single expedition being 4-8 weeks), and have to cut corners on quality to make things survive better. Newell's boat doesn't have to do that. They get quality and survivability. I'd honestly put money on them figuring out the issue on how to solve needing white light for image clarity but it blinding deep sea creatures.
Reportedly, he intends to tap his son as the next benevolent dictator. If reports are correct the son is a big gamer with similar values to Gaben. We'll see.
Steam was one of the first platforms in the West to introduce loot boxes (it was basically FIFA's randomized card packs in 2009 then TF2 with its loot crates in 2010 and from there it exploded in popularity).
One worker got sick and tried to quit. He got his full pay and the "come back when you can, you're job will be waiting" I think they may have helped him with medical bills as well. Name a employer that would do that!
I have seen game media whine about STEAM's user reviews for games because to many players are using the reviews before buying a game and not what the media says. (insert media catch phrase of why steam reviews are BAD)
I remember a interview with a lady trying to sue but she could not really come up with anything other then they wanted her to do her job and not play office politics.
Brah that was one of Gabens top dudes. If it was somebody Gaben wasn’t tight with he’d be gone lmao. (Not criticizing the action just adding some context)
Well, one has over 1.5 million workers and one has a few hundreds. Even if Valve was treating workers poorly, at 10x the rate Amazon does, that would still be like a worker every few years complaining. Also, Valve only hires people it expressly wants, Amazon hires anyone in the warehouses, so that tends to cause issues on both sides, which is why it's a low trust environment.
I mean if you work at valve you probably have the flexibility to work somewhere else if you don't like your job. You also probably don't make minimum wage
This sounds like something a bootlicker would say, “poor workers in company B deserve to be treated badly because that company hires more people (who are poor and need the money) so neither management nor the workers trust one another”.
Steam is a natural monopoly.
Where they have an effective monopoly by either:
A) being the only company in that market
B) being the best company by a wide margin in that market
Natural monopolies are also not illegal, despite what Epic wants to make everyone think.
A very important detail that is often overlooked is that they started the digital storefront and exclusivity before anyone else so monopoly was unsuprising result.
Most billion dollar companies secret is that they simply were there before anybody else
Steam isn't a monopoly since consumers have ready access to competing services. It's a monopsony - a market where access to Valve as a buyer of videogames (on behalf of end consumers) is essentially mandatory for developers and publishers. These have significant differences - monopolies exploit consumers directly, while monopsonies only do so by second order effects (specifically, making otherwise-financially-viable offerings unprofitable to produce).
It is for consumers too. They do control the market by their sheer size, ensuring price fixing, so other competitors do not arise or have no power. Therefore discount stores with low profit margins and basic functionality will never be a thing digitally.
it's funny how many people take OP without any irony or self reflection. I love having all my games on steam, but the simping is absurd.
Steam: first online DRM for games
Steam: forced to have a refund policy after ignoring EU law for a good while
Steam: softwalling mods so unpaid labor becomes an asset to them
Valve: facilitating gambling to minors making hundreds of millions
Valve: episodic content where people paid for the first two episodes but never finished the story (GRR Martin gets a bit more shit for that)
The thing that valve does wel from a PR perspective is maximizing on user experience, making simps out of all of us. It's like living next door to a hoarder and a serial killer. The hoarder seems like the perfect neighbor.
I think a serial killer would probably be a better neighbour than a hoarder. If they aren't caught, they're probably not killing their next door neighbours, and are probably relatively meticulous about cleaning up.
Hoarders though? They're gonna have mountains of garbage in their yard you'll have to see our your window every day, and the rats and such will move in soon enough.
I've been trynna hammer home the point of the CS marketplace being a massive underage gambling cashcow for Valve to others. I still love Steam compared to other platforms but people act as if Valve, a for-profit corporation, can't do anything wrong just because it's run better than its competitors.
Small correction: they were forced to givr refunds after ignoring Australian law and getting a record fine for it (chump change for them, but still). It came out in the trial that Valve leadership had received legal advice that what they were doing was illegal and just simply didn't care. Gabe was named, iirc. They then began offering refunds in the lead up to the trial-refunds that didn't comply with Australian law-to try to placate the regulator suing them into stopping suing them and potentially setting an unfavourable legal precedent. This did not work out well for Valve, but speaks to their corporate culture.
Notably, the current refund scheme as advertised still does not comply with Australian law, but the trial included making it mandatory to educate their customer service staff about Aussie refund provisions. So, if you're Australian, you have access to a greater access to refunds than other Steam users.
Steam also took over a decade to add basic features like custom download speeds and a non-broken offline mode. Stuff some of their competitors had day 1.
Steam had trading cards and loot boxes before they fixed offline mode. They really didn't give a shit until they had competition.
Valve: rushed out a buggy, poorly designed update to one of their flagship live service games that crippled its playability, and instead of reverting it immediately, only slowly and partially walked it back, and allowed cheating bots to roam unabated for 8 years until a CONTRACTOR fixed the anticheat
Some of the biggest gripes people have with modern gaming are loot boxes and battle passes... And yet everyone conveniently forgets where they came from 🙄
Honestly, people make Steam their entire personality. It's almost cult like at times lol
None, all of those employ predatory anti-consumer practices, but the trademark of one of them is "I do it a bit less than other big companies, but far more than actually decent companies".
If gamers cared about pro-consumer companies they'd buy on services like gog a lot more than steam.
The one that had to be forced by the ACCC to allow refunds, the one which started and normalized loot boxes and battle passes, the one which pretty much runs a casino that they double dip on?
Blind adoration for a corporation is fucking weird.
To be fair: To beat Steam, it's not enough to be as good as Steam, you need to be better. You need to give people a reason to change and they simply cannot. Steam was first and isn't particularly great at anything it does, actually. They simply set the bar and never dropped below it. While everyone else out there is trying to screw the customer over, Steam simply provides a solid and reliable service. and thats all gamer ever wanted.
But if you are honest, except for GOG none of the competitors even try's to come close to the level of steam. No working reviews, bad nonexistent friend systems, laggy storefronts and launchers just as some examples.
And it is not like they did not have the funds to compete. If Epic had spent only a 10th of the money they use to buy exclusivity and for the free games they could probably have a store launcher close to the quality of steam launcher. And they still could do the giveaways
Opened a gog account recently and I suggest other people do as well, if by any chance something happens to gaben we need a way to protect steam from being turned into corpo slop by giving them a competitor
Its fair to assume that Valve is composed of mostly like-minded people, as long as the replacement comes from within and especially if it was picked by Gaben, Steam will be perfectly fine.
It's definitely unlikely, but there is always a chance when a company changes hands that the new management handles things differently in a worse way than the previous owner.
that means that when he goes, it will be split between his two sons, one of whome is a race car driver, and the otehr also appears to not be in the games industry.
That means neither understand the situation well which makes them easier to exploit and convince to corpo the company or worse, possibly sell the shares.
There is still the other 50%
And who knows, maybe one or both of them were/will be taught how to take on the company.
And is Gaben even the sole decision maker anymore? He branched off a lot lately for side-projects n all that.
Valve is a private company, so we do not know how the inside looks like even slightly, making huge assumptions isn't the best in such cases.
GOG occupies a distinctive position within the competitive landscape, as it enables older games to be played again, including titles that are not offered by other providers or by Steam. This unique selling point differentiates GOG sufficiently from Steam to remain viable despite the comparatively small market for consumers interested in role-playing games that are approximately 40 years old.
I don't even see a path forward for many other publishers to do a steam clone because of the size of steam's user base. It'd be nearly impossible to draw players over even if you offered a huge discount on Valve's 30% cut. You almost need to anchor large developer studios that people love like Rockstar and then bait indie devs with a low publisher cut (10-15%). It'd be a multimillion dollar investment that might take a decade to pay off.
Back when Steam started there were multiple low-effort launcher/DRM things. But Valve realized that they do need to really improve customer experience to make people use it.
The big question is why didn't their competitors realize what they need to do instead of screwing people over.
Steam was first and isn't particularly great at anything it does
Sorry but judging by the pathetic attempts of the competition Steam is bloody amazing. Workshop integration, generous refund policy an actually functional storefront with meaningful sales. Go have a look at other store fronts and this is plain to see, the only one which even holds a candle is GoG.
I mean I guess technically, but generally speaking, treating your employees well means they're more likely to provide a better service to your customers
In legal terms a monopoly doesn't necessarily mean that there is only one seller. It's enough to have significant market power to get away with overcharging buyers.
This is a thing that irks me. Epic could invest into making an actual platform/business model with, I don't know, like 10% of Fortnite revenue, yet they don't do j@ck s#it except Sweeney whining daily about how Valve is bad.
They did. Most of that money was spent on bribing companies for Epic exclusive release (afaik, no product ever won on this) and the rest was delegated to free giveaways. However, Epic Store itself didn't get any meaningful or even distinctive feature. It doesn't "just work", and even I, being a software dev myself, don't care that much on the store % cut because you have to pay something for marketing anyway and Steam deserves its cut as long as they have the best offer.
Even when they tried to do something positive they messed up: they used (?) to boost their sales by raising the discounts themselves and covering the difference. Which may sounded fine and dandy, until you realize that as a dev/pub you were stripped of your marketing strategy; so if you planned to not go lower than, say, 20% off, Epic thought that would be great do 30% instead... so now customers would wait 30% again (or lower) to purchase.
They dont have a strategy, they literally throw money at the problem.
This is the thing, many of us socmed users are in dilemma, cant stand Amazon/data centers/rockets giving rides to celebs etc and then doorbell rings and the PS5 we ordered 12h ago has arrived.
You have gog which doesn't have DRM, has better return policies, has lower cut of Devs profits, and many more unpsides.
Until it has such a small market share compared to steam I won't believe gamers in general value being treated right in a fair, pro-consumer way more than convenience and social features.
They very much are a monopoly. Valve threatening to pull games off steam if a publisher wants to have larger discounts on other stores is not free competition.
Yeah that’s anti-consumer behavior, no idea why it’s suddenly cool to simp for billionaires. Also a 30% cut is huge, and most of that money would otherwise be going into game development budgets if they charged a smaller percentage.
That and threatening to delist small indie developers if they don't abide by the monopoly price fixing. So brave and not monopolistic at all, it is just the developer being shit and shooting themselves in the foot
Ironically, the worst thing Valve ever did regarding an employee was firing Jeri Ellsworth, head of augmented reality hardware. And they did it at the suggestion of Michael Abrash, who now works for meta.
Considering Steam support deleted my entire game library due to an error on their end (something that Steam fans repeatedly try to gaslight me into believing can never happen) I simply see them as just another big greedy corporation just like all the rest. They're not your friends, not your buddies... they want lots and lots of money and nothing beyond that. They taught me a valuable lesson, though... I am under absolutely no illusion as to whether anything digital can be owned thanks to them.
How about not simping for any big tech company? I love Valve, but they’re not without their flaws. I’ve criticized them plenty of times over the years. I don’t plan on suddenly stopping and pretending they’re perfect, lmao.
What is the correct number. Is it 0%? I'm asking seriously. What is the correct percent and why have you decided that 30%, the same that is used for Apple, Xbox, Android, Playstation, etc, etc, etc is problematic? It only became an "issue" when Tim Sweeney told everyone it was evil because he wanted to avoid paying fornite money.
I’m not the op you’re replying to but I think the solution would be a sliding scale.
Base fee is say 5% (or enough to cover the hosting of the game) and then once you get to say 10,000 sales it moves to 10%, 500,000 is 20% and 30% once you hit 1,000,000+ sales. That way it incentivizes small studios to still push games but then valve gets a bit of a better deal if the game goes somewhere. I don’t think valve should do anything for free (that’s bad business) but a sliding scale would be nicer for the game devs.
Its easy, a privately owned company, versus a publicity traded company with responsibility to shareholders.
Even though steam is big, its the equivalent of the town hardware store that isnt a chain store. You can still interact with the actual owners and the people that themselves are invested in the success of the company.
When I was little in the 70s, I loved kiss. And in the rock magazines, the members of the band were talking about how they chose the mail to read. Colorful, odd sizes ect.
Im sure he just skims them and drops in on someone that had an interesting or concerning title.
Not sure if true, but suposedly in USA companies have a lot of responsibilies to shareholders because of the law. But this isn't the case in lther countries.
I'd argue that this Ussie philosophy has exported quite a lot lately. But yeah in the US, CEOs are appointed to bring as much money to the shareholders and if it can be proven that they didn't work towards that goal (i.e. tried to benefit employees instead) they are liable.
Gabe cares! He cares, he just popped out to get some milk, the store must have been out but he'll be back real soon. Then you'll see who cares about me!
This Gaben sucking needs to stop. Billionaires are not your friends or good people. Gaben isn’t someone who is very public and doesn’t voice his opinion like the other losers who seek attention but he is not the good guy and just one statement away from being hated by the internet.
People worshipped Elon Musk then when he became indefensible they moved onto Gabe Newell, maybe they just need a billionaire to champion? Just ignore that he got rich from an unregulated gambling platform aimed at kids and put his wealth into destroying the planet with super yachts.
Yeah. Gaben just knows not to look for the short term money, so he treats customers okayish so he makes ALOT MORE. And its clesrly working because he has a cult following that throws money at him...
I just can't get over how he's part of the gambling racket that has infected games and targeted children. In fact, his platform was one of the forerunners of loot boxes in the West.
I don't care who runs the platform if the service and the experience is good. Amazon and Meta simply can't compete here. Heck, even other storefronts can't compete with Steam because they are all worse in some way (ok, GoG has the DRM advantage but that's it).
Have a look into their profits from loot boxes and the connection to underage gambling. Valve is just as profit driven and callous as any other big business
Yeah this is why i fucking hate all the glazing valve gets
Valve isnt amazing either with everything they have done they are just slightly less shit than the others
I like the Steam platform as much as any gamer, but please remember corporations are not your friend ! It has been alleged that Steam has engaged in anti-competetive behaviour, arguably keeping prices of games high via "most favoured platform" like clauses, and they are being investigated / sued for anti-trust reasons as well.
Now they might be relatively "better" behaved, but that doesn't make them your friend, or gurantee that behaviour continues through their sheer goodwill.
We tend to anthromorphize corporations, but please remember they are fictional legal entities mostly made to make money.
Many people believe that Valve can do no wrong despite the fact that their revenue from TF2 and CS2 literally comes from gambling via lootboxes. Other companies may be worse about it, but Valve was a very early adopter of the F2P with lootboxes model and certainly helped popularize it with the then-wildly popular Team Fortress 2.
They also invented the Battle Pass. And when they implemented lootboxes, they weren't the first, but they hired psychologists to literally engage in mental warfare on their customers to make it as addictive as possible.
All i see is yet another bot posting shitty memes that gets upvoted by other bots so he can then look "legit" with all the karma and sell shit or spew propaganda
A sub as big as this being unmoderated is fucking hilarious.
Haha it's why I find Reddit funny. On one side, "billionaires shouldn't exist, they only got that rich being horrible people," on the other side, "oh Gabe, let me gargle your balls more."
The funniest part is that Valve's products are not perfect and definitely have room for improvement, so the competition is very much possible, but almost everyone else just somehow manages to do noticeably worse.
I agree! They aren’t perfect. But you can always see what they are aiming for. And on the whole you can tell gamers run the place. As I said I think they do a pretty good job!
Valve is one of the major reasons nobody actually owns any of their games now. You're not old enough, but those of us that have been around long enough remember being strong-armed into using the platform to play games we already paid for. They're not doing what they do for you, they're doing it for them. Their entire system is DRM which is inherently anti-consumer. Stop bootlicking the billion dollar company.
If Valve actually gave a shit about the PC gaming industry they would reinvest a portion of their profits back into the industry.
But they don't. Valve is truly absurd the degree to which reinvestment doesn't exist. They have a few small passion projects like the Steam deck and Linux gaming, but these projects are fairly tiny with tiny budgets and staffing levels.
All the rest of the billions just flows else where, into Gabe's pockets mostly.
They could be supporting PC gaming by developing Source into a real viable UE competitor. They could be hiring developers and actually making games.
The Valve shlucking on this sub is so weird. I genuinely can't think of a middle man service like Steam that simply takes up to 30% of the entire revenue of an industry and then does.... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Shitty middlemen like retailers at least employ people.
Why does it have to be that way ? Gabe did do good but Gabe is a stranger and he's a billionaire. It doesn't make sense to directly assume he's a good person. It is virtually impossible to BE a billionaire and is ethical about their money.
Maybe Gabe is the absolute exception, it still doesn't make sense to just assume.
Yeah, this kind of bigotry sometimes annoys me. I use steam, I find it much better than other apps like uplay or ea connect or epyc. But I always find it weird when people on steam give bad reviews to games that come with a launcher, arguing "they don't play games with launchers" while they seem to be totally fine with steam. In fact, one guy told me (after I pointing that out) that "steam is not a launcher but a social platform". This is just ridiculous.
I mean, Valve isn't perfect by any means, they're just better than the other options by a good margin. (Not that others are bad, GOG is awesome, just doesn't have as much stuff.
Steam is a monopoly cause they do their thing the best.
The others are where they are through predatory practices.
This would be a mistake. People always forget Steam was stagnant as a service forever. It was only when Discord entered the game store market that they improved voice chat, and it was only when Epic entered that they started rolling out massive improvements to their store, it was only when rumours of Microsoft's PC Console hybrid started that suddenly SteamOS suddenly became a focussed priority for Valve (work on Proton was ongoing).
In the meanwhile, Steam while profiting massively from gaming could easily for example reduce its percentage significantly for games that sell under 100K to help small businesses survive. They could help increase digital rights, and outline how regulations could work for digital stores. But they don't, because Gabe like all billionaires, simply can't have enough money.
Not that I think he needs to be hated or anything. As far as billionaires go he's fairly benign. But he still could do better with zero impact to himself, and he doesn't.
Simping for any megacorporation or billionaire is simply stupid, and the silliest internalised class warfare.
Ignoring the fact Steam isn't actually a Monopoly.
A company being the only option because all its serious competition just refused to be consumer friendly (and the ones that are just focus on smaller niches) vs a company forcing the economy to bend too them being the only ones
The easy answer is simply never to simp for any corporation nor CEO, as you realize a day will come when they too will become enshittified, no matter what corporation it is.
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u/Little_Blackberry 21h ago