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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.
It’s crazy to think the Steam Deck may not have been a reality due to this. And crazier to realize that Valve probably, at the very least, doubled their annual revenue due to all these new Deck owners, some who may have never had an account before, now buying all these games because of the cheap handheld.
Not only that, all the lack of proprietary things on the Deck like locking down the OS or forcing only Steam games and discouraging emulation or disallowing mods and upgrades like the removable SSD, even on the cheapest option with eMMC that is usually reserved for cheap soldered storage.
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.
If revenue growth is farther out than end of next quarter, it doesn’t exist
- capitalist
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.
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.
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.
I’m 99% sure this is totally in regards to software/Steam. Valve’s HW/FW departments are 🔥
Valve over here revolutionizing Linux gaming and they get told they “did nothing”.
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.
Inventing the most lucrative online casino with a game attached isn’t nothing.
Even in the context of just Steam, Valve is doing great
It’s way more lucrative than any casino… They never have to pay out…
The operating costs are possibly lower too, but not sure…
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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
Isn’t Gabe a submarine guy or am I thinking of someone else?
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It’s the same thing Brother Printers is doing.
Who is this guy?
Game Santa
Gay Ben.
gabe.jpg
John Valve, the inventor of games.
Hater of 3s
Can someone please explain?
Gabe, the CEO of Valve, the gaming company that makes Steam, the dominant non-mobile game store.
“Being based”
“There’s a spy around here”
“Black mesa backalley deals”
Not being publically traded.
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
For profit publicly traded companies just look quarter to quarter and make the dumbest fucking decisions as a result
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.
Dividends are typically an extremely low percentage and I wouldn’t be so bold as to say the majority of stocks pay out dividends. I have ~20 different tech companies (some large, some small) in my portfolio and only one of them pays out dividends, as an example.
Wu wei
The first-mover advantage and network-effect.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Perspective
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.
Everybody keeps talking about “when he dies”, which given how rich he is, might never happen.
However, he is gonna retire and that could very well happen tomorrow!
I think it’s time to collectively freak out
