Community for memes about the goldsrc/source engine and Valve games.
Private ownership capitalism.
Stock owners want line to go up forever. Hence we get sociopath CEO's who want to sell DLC for different types of breathing. Private ownership means Gabe can say, "We're making good money, no need to nickle and dime." and focus on product.
Valve is very much a profit focused company. The difference is that they're able to look beyond the next quarterly results and take a more long term view.
Well yes, but that's the difference between profit focused and growth focused
Being profit focused without being growth focused is very much a unique position compared to other market leaders in tech
This! The idea of "shareholder value" as the ultimate and singular goal was a mistake, as the world and particularly the US is slowly finding out.
They don't do nothing though. They maintain a distribution platform, do a lot of work to improve a giant database of games and classify them in terms of hardware compatibility, curated user reviews, genre, recommendations. They develop HW produces setting trends in the industry.
They are taking good strategic decisions in their business and it's paying off. They use their leadership position to improve and innovate rather than enshitify. I think, because the leadership at Valve are passionate people. You can't have passionate leaders if you are directed by a board of shareholders...
That's why they deserve to get 30% of game revenues and end up with a yearly 6.5 billion profit while having 330 employees. Because they curate user reviews.
I think that 30% is too large of a cut, but nobody is forcing devs to release on Steam. Valve has created enormous value for that 30% that has kept both Devs and Players on their platform, and preferring over the open competition.
Its different than say, Apple getting 30%, because both users and developers are locked in. Apple has no reason or incentive to improve their platform. To offer more, or make the experience better for Developers. Every single steam user is free to use Epic or GoG or anything else on PC. Developers are also free to release anywhere on PC and free to go outside of steam for addons and DLC.
For that, I don't get overly upset at Valve's cut. The provide value and basically zero lockin.
nobody is forcing devs to release on Steam
Right, just like “nobody” is forcing retailers to sell on Amazon. Everyone is “free” to not sell on the single largest marketplace for their product which is also the first (and usually only) place the vast majority of potential customers will look for that kind of product. Get out of here with this “zero lockin” nonsense.
Still, he's right. Other publishers have tried and failed to bring a competitor to steam, and it's not because valve doesn't allow it (like Apple) but because steam is simply superior in terms of features and usability.
Even epic with massive investment in their store hasn't caught up to half of what makes steam great for gaming.
I'm pretty certain if someone makes a real competitor to steam, it could dethrone it eventually. Epic isn't hated because it's not steam, but because they tried to buy their market share through anti competitive clauses.
Granted, it's harder by the year because steam has a huge head start, and users may be unwilling to switch now after spending a lot on the platform. Maybe some form of forced legal interoperability would help foster competition
Valve’s lockin is your Steam library not being portable. A better comparison is switching from iOS to Android, or better yet Xbox to PlayStation, and having to leave behind any apps or games you purchased on one platform.
I agree that interop would be the best solution. For a brief period, GOG had a program that granted free licenses for games you already owned on Steam, verified by linking accounts. That is what has to be available for the entirety of everyone’s libraries, prospectively even if not retroactively, for there to even begin to be a level playing field.
Yeah it's a lock in but like you show, it's the same everywhere.
I don't know a way we could really have interoperability between stores without major financial agreement between them, because hosting the platform and services has a cost that is paid by the cut, if you move your games elsewhere they have to provide the bandwidth for you to download your games "for free"
Valve getting praised for being a competent store chain owner while having so much love from the gamers tells more about the market than it says about Valve.
Yeah, like, they were clever about lots of things. But they don't throw freebies. Even Deck and SteamOS are not a charity, these are timed bites at empty handhelds market and Win10 retirement. Sales are as predatory as they are in any other store, gambling is there although contained, AI-marking is a calculated effort to win shoppers' gratitude and avoid another wave of oversaturation with slop products they'd need to work on refunding etc. It's all just a healthy business with big margins and not being braindead.
Like every other media industry, it's just too deeply fucked that we cheer on Valve alone for doing convinient services you want to unseal your mom's credit card on. And the level of fuckedness is so gross that a money-printing machine like EPIC can't get the same level of adoration by giving free games every other day. It's almost surreal how deep Steam hardcoded itself into gaming by not being as sloppy as other takes on that idea, besides Sony\Xbox\Nintendo console-locked subs.
And while I've heard some users are afraid of losing Gabe as the head commander of Valve, I honestly find it utterly irrelevant. He is not a saint, and he's completely capable of fucking up things like limiting family sharing because he may find it's not a turning point for buying extra games anymore. He may introduce his own Steam+ subscription plans to bet big on future hits and showel in trash that doesn't get the predicted number of sales (or getting bribes). He can make x64 Steam only accessible in SteamOS to hardline the Apple approach of providing the best UX under ultimately controlled conditions. It just doesn't make money and is tried times again by his peers to various results he can see.
But anytime now, Valve can get a 180 turn, not because they are inherently evil or whatever, but because we delegated them that much power that Steam is PC gaming, and no other company has that power.
As different scriptures of the past tell us, don't make an idol for yourself. It's a build up for a disappointment. Get most of them as a consumer, but don't be blind of the ways they don't even act on the market, but how they shape it.
I mean yes, but every other platform is trying to weasel away shit you paid for and nuking your face with ads for no reason
And the only - ONLY - reason steam don't do this is because they dont feel like it right now.
Overall I agree, but there are a few flaws.
It’s all just a healthy business with big margins and not being braindead.
Exactly. When I was little, the most accepted and loved buisnesses weren't the ones that mass produced shit and tried to push it down your throat, but the ones that were healthy both for themselves and the community. My country was a bick backwards back then, yes. Sad that it shows with this. Anyway, this is pretty much what Valve is doing. It bring back some value to community, works for it's users while still not being idiotic and keeping profits on stable level.
You mention Deck and SteamOS - yes, these are exactly what you say, a bite into a niche that was filled with dissapointment by other people. But you omit that what they provided with these is a great product that people actually love and feel it's price is justified. The quality, usefullness and price align, according to most with slight advantage in the first two.
Fuckedness of cheering on Valve and Valve vs Epic
Honestly, this is nonsensical. If you are bullied by five guys, and the sixth one pretty much ignores you, sometimes protecting you for money, of course you're gonna see the sixth one as a savior,
And Epic is a no-go due to exclusives and hopeless UX. Steam does all it can to show you what users think about product. Epic does all it can to show you what companies think about product, cutting user reviews altogether. Steam is somewhat snappy, Epic loads forever. Honestly, Epic just feels hostile to me as a user. So yeah, their free games are nice, but that's it, I am not gonna spend money on there. It's not shilling for Steam if Steam actually just cares about the UX.
Gabe not being saint
Yeah, he's not, but he has firm grip on reality and looks beyond the horizon. At this point, Gabe pretty much doesn't say anything in terms of what gets done in Valve, just keeps the main ruleset in place - and that's why people are afraid of his death. Will the next person upkeep them or will they become corporate shills? Will they go for IPO or whatever it's called?
And useless fearmongering with what-if's doesn't work as long as there's not a pattern you can fall on. We can expect Gaben to tolerate gambling further, this is an actual bad side to him. But there's no trace of anything suggesting cash grabs.
As different scriptures of the past tell us, don’t make an idol for yourself. It’s a build up for a disappointment. Get most of them as a consumer, but don’t be blind of the ways they don’t even act on the market, but how they shape it.
This is true. Yet again, Valve mostly shapes the market for consumer, whereas other companies shape it against them. For now.
Shareholders ruin everything.
Gabe can see that profit line plateau and knows he's still got more money than him or anybody else in the company would ever need.
A shareholder sees it, and dumps shares for something with better growth. And since it was all a fucking bubble, none of it was worth a tenth of that, so now a bunch of greedy CEOs panic and shit everything up in order to protect their own wealth.
When is the bottom going to fall out, though? Gabe is going to die in the next couple decades most likely, and although I've heard his son has a similar mindset to him he could sell Valve or he could pass away. Then I think the gaming industry is going to go to complete shit, and it's possible we could all lose our steam libraries worth thousands of dollars.
It's not just possible. It's inevitable.
We allowed Gabe and others to kill physical ownership of games.
We need rights to actually own it, and nobody seems willing to grant us that. If I can't trade my license to somebody else, I don't own it. If I can't play it when the servers are gone, I don't own it.
Well, I can tell you if I lose access to my steam library I'm pirating every single one of my games onto my harddrive.
I'll wager that when that happens you'll no longer be able to actually buy 99% of those games anyway.
The good thing is taht the standard steam drm is so easy to break that all of the games that just rely on steam for drm can be cracked without much work at least for single player.
Time to make valve a coop then.
We do need new paradigms of ownership. Ultimately, corporate entities can be democratic, if the shares are distributed to many people and not concentrated in the hands of a few. What would happen if everyone just bought into it? Player owned company? It could be done.
I think what you're describing where the owners are the users/clients/members is called a mutual, but yeah co-op, mutual, non profit, etc structures all are better options. and if you need to go with a c-corp or not, unionize.
They make an ungodly amount of money off of underage gambling with CS go skins. A bunch of gambling streamers credit Valve and the Skins economy they've created as being where the addiction started. Valve are not super-based good dudes. Gaben is a Billionaire, who exploits children for personal financial gain.
Gaben owns a fleet of 8 megayatchs worth a billion, costing an estimated 150 million in yearly maintenance. He enjoys the soft monopoly like all the other players and takes his 30% cut like everyone else.
Steam is just as bad as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo in terms of their negative impact on consumers and the game industry.
Imagine defending and even glorifying Elon Musk because you like and use Twitter. The Gaben Simp Squad really needs a wake up call.
Owning megayatchs... is not equal to being an evil corporation like Sony or Nintendo. Steam is not a monopoly either, or at least it doesn't try to become one with predatory tactics like, say, Epic.
As for defending, I know people suffer due to what people like Elon did and does. I know no person who suffers from what Gaben did or does.
It's not Gaben simp squad story, it's Gaben hate squad story. And I don't see adequate reasons for that hate. Guess some people just like dividing everyone into "good peasants" and "evil multimillionaires".
Pursuing long term profits. Most companies only pursue short term profits, it's absolutely insane.
It's called a Napoleon:
'Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake'
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
They are maintaining a system in a good working order not chasing ideals of profits or growth.
Steam really hasn't done anything different in a long time, not anything massive. They still have their business model, which they obviously love.
Part of the winning strategy.
See: Microsoft.
Imagine having a market almost entirely captured only to shill AI products that no one cares about and including them into your OS. Imagine selling operating systems and still including advertisements in them.
And not being content with ads only on the start menu, but also pushing them on windows explorer. Oh, and killing notepad for an "ai enhanced" new version
On the other hand, look at Nokia. It is possible to lose a overwhelming market dominance rapidly by missing a trend.
I have to assume they aren't exactly doing nothing. They have like 2 or 3 people that ultimately maintain the store and a couple games but their whole culture is that they do whatever they want to work on. They probably do contract work in fields outside of gaming. I know Gabe is working on BCIs, but they also don't talk a lot about what they are doing there, specifically.
Monopoly.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'd rather have a wells regulated (whether externally or internally regulated) monopoly than a farcical competitive environment.
Looking at power companies, I grew up in a market that had a regulated monopoly. The power company had strictly enforced (by state government) regulations on how much it could charge for services, cost per kWh delivered, reserve components for maintenance, etc. They owned and ran the infrastructure so they served as a single point of contact to install solar. Life was simple.
I now live in a deregulated area. At least once per month, I have someone coming knocking on my door trying to get me to swap to their provider, my bill is an arcane mess (I still don't know how much I pay per kWh), and its be autocratic mess trying to get the solar/home batteries spun up for my house.
I think steam is doing great for an internally regulated company. I have my druthers (see everyone else's comments about not owning your games), but its way better than the streaming wars with Netflix and Disney Plus and such. We see how bad it could be, but it isn't. That's what I see "breaking up" Steams "monopoly" would become.
Unfortunately, internally well regulated monopolies tend to turn to the dark side the moment the founder is out of the picture.
Yeah, def dread the day Gabe leaves the company.