I just read in Wikipedia that Valve is privately helded.
There must be something magical in the fact that they don't need to feed their shareholders with mountains of cash every quarter, and actually focus on their customers, as happened in this post.
True, private companies are generally more focused on customer satisfaction, but that can suddenly change, for instance when the owner dies, and the new owners don't share the same ideals.
Private companies have a certain single point of failure built-in by having often just one or sometimes a small number of owners.
Nobody really knows what will happen when Gabe dies.
I just hope that valve becomes a worker cooperative... That would be the most stable form of company that probaly stays focused on customer satisfaction long term, since workers tend to favor providing long-term profits via good service instead of short term gains, for high frequency traders.
It's addictive. We regulate other addictive things like cigarettes, no reason we shouldn't put guard rails on gambling. We already do, but I think we've got to the end regs in a few areas.
Also to be fair they tried to kill PSN store on the PS3 but the resulting backlash made them realize to do so would kill customer faith in the PS4 and PS5 PSN stores and so they backed off. Nintendo could only get away with it because they already trained us not to trust their online stores and buy physical only. Since Steam doesn’t have a physical option they need to play their cards right.