Valve is a whole company of people like Gaben.
Valve is a unique company with no traditional hierarchy. In business school, I read a very interesting Harvard Business Review article on the subject. Unfortunately it’s locked behind a paywall, but this is Google AI’s summary of the article which I confirm to be true from what I remember:
According to a Harvard Business Review article from 2013, Valve, the gaming company that created Half Life and Portal, has a unique organizational structure that includes a flat management system called "Flatland". This structure eliminates traditional hierarchies and bosses, allowing employees to choose their own projects and have autonomy. Other features of Valve's structure include:
- Self-allocated time: Employees have complete control over how they allocate their time
- No managers: There is no managerial oversight
- Fluid structure: Desks have wheels so employees can easily move between teams, or "cabals"
- Peer-based performance reviews: Employees evaluate each other's performance and stack rank them
- Hiring: Valve has a unique hiring process that supports recruiting people with a variety of skills
Kinda sounds like how worker cooperatives work tbh, but with Gabe still technically being the owner.
I remember reading a news piece a while back about how the founder of a food company made sure to transfer ownership to the employees before leaving. While we're talking about worst-case scenarios, let's also hope for the best and hope that Gabe has a similar plan.
PeopleMakeGames has a two part series on Valve that's pretty interesting. The second part (here) dives into the structure of the company. It does have a bit of an angle, fwiw, so if you'd prefer something more objective, it might not be a great watch. Personally I think the issues they bring up are valid, but figured I'd mention it.
Stack ranking is toxic and removes individuality from a given employees expectations in my opinion.
People should be qualified to give proper unbiased reviews. Just because someone is an excellent engineer does not mean they are good at understanding other people's expectations and work outputs.
I worked at a company that had no 'managers' just the owner, and everyone else. I hated that I had no real way to settle disputes and every single disagreement has to ultimately be resolved by the literal one person who was in charge.
I think there is merit to flat structures, but I don't think the extreme is always the way to go.
This, and as long as the company is legally structured to prevent restructuring things will be fine.
Do you know everybody who works there and what their ambitions are?
Also, nothing is impossible when you can deploy thepower of acquisition lol i’m less worried about them internally polluting themselves and more about externally being destroyed. We’ve seen this over and over again.
Also, the big tech bastards haven't managed to kill off emulation, so that's encouraging.
Realistically, it's only a matter of time until Steam becomes as enshittificated as any other services. There is profit to be made from Steam selling advertising space and customer data. They can either choose to capitalize on the profits that are in front of them, or allow another company to and take that capital from them. For a business it's not a matter of what's right and wrong anymore but consume or be consumed. If Steam isn't willing to do that someone else will be willing to play the long game and do it. Then it'll be only a matter of time until Steam gets acquired by another company and then it's game over.
This doesn't make any sense. The reason Valve hasn't been acquired is because it's privately owned and not up for sale, not because it doesn't have "enough profit". In fact it's extremely profitable, for all we know.
Sure, another company could come along and build a competitor. It's happened already multiple times, and Steam is doing just fine despite some major titles these days being exclusive to other platforms. Unless Steam drops the ball on something big time, it's unlikely that people will move to another platform en masse, especially one that is less focussed on consumer interests. No-one can just come in and "take capital away" from Steam, whatever that means, by building a competitor that sells advertising space and "monetizes user data" — they need users first.
... And then there's the fact that Steam is already "selling advertiser space" today. Games don't just get featured on their storefront because Gabe likes them. They make deals with publishers for this.
I'd drop Steam if that happened. There are other ways to get games and managers like Lutris make organizing them easy. I'm sure Valve knows this and with how long they've been successful, fucking with gamers would not make sense. Look how it's working or for some of the bigger gaming companies recently.
Proton is open source. Anyone can pull it together and integrate it. Gog have been doing DRM free games for a while, they'll be quite keen to fill this niche. Epic probably won't care. If none do, someone will want to.
What are you smoking? GOG Galaxy doesn’t even have a Linux client. In fact it has been one of the most requested features for years and nothing has happened.
Edit: it’s also the reason I stopped buying from them when I got my Steam Deck.
They do provide Linux support in other ways though. They even troubleshoot me once with a game I tried to play on Linux and offered a refund.
Gog Galaxy not on Linux is a shame, yes, but its DRM-Free and Linux installers are enough for me to continue to buy from them.
Edit: Heroic Launcher makes a great replacement of Gog Galaxy, maybe even better than the Windows client, from what I'd tried. No multiplayer though.
So you're saying if Valve enshittified, they wouldn't fork and try to capitilise on that market?
They probably do not see the point right now as Valve have it sewn up. Lemmy grew when Reddit scored own goals. When Valve do, opportunities are there and would be taken.
Valve is a private company whereas GOG belongs to CDProject - a publicly traded company. GOG might want to fill the void but they're more likely to do dumb, shortsighted decisions in contrast to Valve.
Maybe, but DRM free content isn't exactly shareholder value...
It's better shepherded than Epic. They probably don't fill the space because Steam do it better, but you invest more if the return is higher.
The case I'm referring to is in the future if Steam badly enshittified.
Gog have been doing DRM free games for a while
As far as I know GOG also sells drm content and Steam also sells drm-free content. So what's the point
they'll be quite keen to fill this niche
I also don't remember them doing anything for Linux apart from releasing a broken port then badmouthing people who complained that the game they bought is broken.
Gabe is helping, sure, but he isn't holding up gaming. People were gaming on Linux before Proton even existed, myself included. Also, even if Valve went away completely, Proton is open-source and there are people like GloriousEggroll who work on Proton entirely as a community member. Proton will live on, specifically because it is open-source. All the progress made on Proton won't suddenly disappear, all the games that were previously playable on Proton will still be playable on Proton.
It's a somewhat reasonable fear but it's not a realistic fear. Proton isn't going anywhere.
Proton will live on, specifically because it is open-source.
Don't just thank open source; thank copyleft for the fact that Valve couldn't make a closed-source fork of it even if it wanted to.
Additionally, if Steam would start to morph into what is posted here, it would simply be integrated into Heroic and / or lutris just as Epic is right now. There would be no need to actually launch steam anymore but just use it as a background service to pipe your games into something else.
I think Gabe has been getting healthy lately. Last picture I saw of him he was looking like he lost a lot of weight. Maybe repost this in 10 years and then we can panic.
GOG.
We need to support GOG and it's model as much as possible.<3
If only they would support Linux more.
The ship has sailed about 4 times now, gog galaxy on Linux has constantly been at the top of requests but we made a stinky about the Witcher 2 so gog and epic will forever hold the community as not worth it. Now the community has done the leg work they have no reason to mess about with translating all those .net calls
I used to support them but when they opened the floodgates to trash games I didn't get much reason to stick around. I miss and crave curation over volume. If both stores have heaps of garbage and steam has far better Linux support with valve actively contributing to and improving the Linux ecosystem.... I'm going steam most of the time now.
Sad as in theory I would support gog more but it seems like they've discarded what made them special.
Could you expand on that pls?
Im wondering how does the excess amount of games offered by a store affect your experience. How would you even notice that?
And - that they were a more closed store was what made them special?
Then I think of GOG I think about licencing, how I actually own a game purchased, how I have a key for it, how I'll still own that game even of GOG stops existing. Thats not true for any of the other stores (outside of physical copies if some sell them, idk).
Whenever you are afraid of the negative impact on your life of a corporation's possible failure, it means that you have become reliant on someone you can't trust. You must act accordingly.
Reject modernity, move to the woods, return to monke.
Does this mean I should buy games from GOG? Or support physical media/indies?
Yes. GOG. itch.io. Direct from some other website. That's right.
Steam is very good; but the hidden cost is that you depend on them maintaining their service. If they turn evil, you're screwed. You either have to bend to their will, or you lose your library of games.
On the other hand, GOG and itch.io are arguably not as good as Steam right now, but they don't have any kind of lock-in. So if they start to backslide, you can still walk away with your full library of games. I do think it's a good idea to 'not put all your eggs in one basket.'
For sure, valid to fear the enshittification of steam. But they aren't killing proton. Maybe ignoring proton at worst. But Steam has profit motivations for not being reliant on Windows, which has actively been trying to supplant them with the Windows Store for years.
As another separate, profit-motivated company, with a gaming division and a lot to gain from eating Steam's lunch, Microsoft is not Steam's friend. Proton is a critical bargaining tool for them, and not having to include windows licenses for devices like the Steam Deck helps their costs too.
My fear is them going public or selling. If that happens, it'll probably be Microsoft willing to spend any amount, and the government hasn't really been in a "preventing monopolies" mood for a while now.
Wish they were serious about Linux support.
Yeah I do have a similar fear. Valve is something special. I tried to hate them, they're filthy-rich corpos after all, but I can't. Something of value will be lost when Valve finally succumbs to enshittification, which cannot be said of a lot of other big companies.
But my fear isn't necessarily about Steam. I have like 20-30 games in my library. Steam is simply the least shit way to play games you have/want to pay for.
I love valve, I have 1000+ games in my library. I also have every crack for every game I could fine. For the rest, I have live virtual machine snapshot of the running game. Of course anythibg live service will not work without a server simulator. To do that we need to, for each games, using wireshark, record all server and peer traffic while also saving all privaye encryptions keys used in the session.
Once games start using TPM processor, they will become uncrackable. Make sure to use a compromised TPM in that case.
If you don't expect enshitification these days you are dumb. Very rational fear
What many posters in this thread fail to realize is that there is a very good reason why steam hasn’t been hit by the enshittification that otherwise permeates human existence in 2024.
Of course, Gaben as their CEO has the last say in it. And he’s just a good guy. But wait, aren’t there other companies that have good guys as their CEO and yet the enshittification persists?
The profound reason is that Valve is not a publicly traded company. They have no obligation to any investors to make number go up. They are a private company, they can do whatever the fuck they want. If they stay flat and keep paying their employees, that’s totally fine, and there is 0 pressure on them to change anything. THAT‘s why Valve seems like such a different company compared to everything else that’s out there.
Of course it’s still a choice to go public or not, and they have made the right call (for us consumers).
Based take imo. I think many posters fail realize the insane amount of money steam makes Valve. Rough estimates are that Steam sold 400 million games last year. Average cost for a game is ~$15.5. Steam has a platform fee of 30%. That means that, roughly, Steam made Valve ~1.86 billion dollars just through the sell of games. Not considering microtransactions or hardware sells. Reportedly, Valve made 1 billion dollars just off cases from CS2 crate openings. Let's just give Valve the benefit of the doubt and assume they made $5 billion dollars last year.
Impressive, but honestly not that impressive when you consider that Xbox brought in 18 billion and PlayStation brought in 30 billion last year. However, if you factor in that Xbox has a head count of ~$20,100 and Sony has one of ~12,700. While Valve has a head count of about ~400. We see that Xbox and Sony are bringing in about $900K and $2.4M per head respectively. Valve is bring in 12.5M per head. Plus Xbox and PlayStation have multiple studios and campuses. While I believe Valve only has the 1 or 2 campuses and they are their only studio.
My point being that, Valve has a ton of liquid cash for investment and growth opportunities. I'd wager Valve brought in more than 5 Billion last year, but with them being a private company, it's hard to pin down what exactly they could've made.
there is a very good reason why steam hasn’t been hit by the enshittification that otherwise permeates human existence in 2024.
Come again? Steam is enshitifed af. from forcing CS:GO players to move to CS:2 to adding DRM left and right, they do it all. They even release remasters of old games that are essentially always broken one or another.
Steam doesn't control the quality of remasters. That's up to publishers. I'm not the most active gamer and might have missed something, but didn't valve release a major revamp to the way the Library and Store were layed out in the past year or two? They also recently expanded family sharing and remote co-op. The only L I can remember in recent memory is the whole "You can't leave your games to another person when you die"
I think there are important considerations to keep in mind.
First and foremost, Valve is not a public company. I don't know if it has investors, but it is not driven by profits like many typical public companies are. These companies tend to allow themselves longer investments without any clear visibility of immediate profits. They also do things for the greater good, even though it does not bring profits.
But also, I think the whole of valve is a set of gamers and people who genuinely care about the gaming business and making great products. I think they all share Gabe's values and goals. It's not like Gabe is the only one holding everything together or else it would instantly crash into the profit driven company it could be.
Both of these scenarios keep me hopeful that this is a longer lasting stance and doesn't hinge on just one person. It's not a proof it will never be a typical profit company but these are barriers which are not typically present. Let's hope for the best and keep rewarding them for their contributions to gaming, open source and for their good actions.
I don’t understand where this myth came from that if a company is a public that they aren’t potentially ruthlessly profit driven.
Valve is not special. Gabe is to a certain degree (though I would also caution people from deifying anybody period). We can never take for granted that the valve and steam experience we largely enjoy today will be there tomorrow. That’s a simple fact.
In the US, there are multiple Supreme Court precedent cases that force profit-maximizing. Shareholders can sue the CEO and board to maximize profit seeking.
So yes, increasing shareholder value is enshrined in US law. Only private corporations can get around that rule. Also, a corporation cannot be forced to break the law to maximize profits, that's just something most CEO's are willing to do for fun.
It’s not that they can’t still be profit driven, it’s that they can’t be sued by investors for not being ruthlessly profit driven. Private just means that they have the choice at all
Publicly traded companies are, by law, driven to make as much money as possible for shareholders. Privately held companies are not held to this same limitation. So while a company like Valve could be highly profit-driven (let’s be honest, all for-profit companies in a capitalist system are driven by this motivation), it doesn’t seem to be driven to maximize profits in the short term. This means that they can focus on things other than profit if they so choose.
It would be so awesome if they went employee owned. I get the impression the employees are people who are passionate about video games. I feel that they would choose leadership that is both good for the community and good for the long-term health of the company.
More important than who works there is who inherits Gabe's ownership of the company. A new owner can completely change a company and drive out or fire anyone who doesn't go along with the new direction. Look at what happened with twitter when Musk took over. Or his inheritors could take Valve public and introduce all the issues with that.
I think this post massively overestimates the power a CEO has. The CEO is beholden to the shareholders. Valve is private,
soand its shareholders are its workers. It would be useful to know how many shares Gaben has of valve, but I still don't think the next CEO would suddenly also be the majority owner.Also, I know things have changed a lot in the last 12 years, but 12 years ago regarding the total dissolution of Valve, Gaben said:
“It’s way more likely we would head in that direction than say, ‘Let’s find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate."
Also, forcing users onto windows is THE way to kill valve's profits. The whole point of the Linux push was a direct response to the windows store, and msft's threat of forcing valve to give them a cut of purchase through steam. Msft will still do that the first chance it gets. So even the most profit-minded new leader wouldn't make that choice, as it's plainly shortsighted.
Shareholders is the owners and since they are private we don't know who they are. Right now it could be all Gaben or it could be a mix but Gaben is majority resulting in the culture is what he wants. Private companies don't have to be maximizing profits focused but will die if they don't make money. When people die it is whoever inherits or has majority share that pushes what happens.
"Valve is private, so its shareholders are its workers."
I don't know who keeps telling you libs this, but they're lying.
You are most definitely right that the major shareholders aren't the workers. The major shareholders are Gabe Newell, and some bankers in Japan.
Still, it is known that Valve employees are partially compensated with stock for working in the company, so most of the employees are still shareholders. They just aren't the major ones.
Sorry, the way i phrased that does sound causal. It should say "and".
Any real lib knows, public or private, there's no way out of our capitalist downfall.
Employees are stakeholder, not necessarily shareholder. Management, likely. The grunts, I think not so much.
How are you differentiating stakeholder and shareholder? The employees are certainly shareholders.
Valve doesn't really hire "grunts". The people who are actually considered employees of valve are very few and highly skilled. The number of Wikipedia from 2016 is very out of date and estimates 360. But valve's LinkedIn still says "over 300".
Also Valve isn't the charity they believe it is. It's a de-facto monopoly, and it has serious moderation issues (basically if you bought enough games, they will less likely ban you for hatespeech and such).
They're not a defacto monopoly? There's many different ways to buy games online and valve does not have anti-consumer practices like exclusivity deals. I have not heard anything about them not banning for hate speech? Every time I've ever reported something its been taken down within 48hrs
...you can load right to library?
Edit: holy crap you can, all these years..
... You can disable that advert window?
I think we're failing at life bro
I actually don’t mind the advertising. Good way to know what games are popping off or are just released. I’m not great about keeping up with everything coming out every month, so it’s honestly one of my number one ways of knowing what’s being talked about/releasing besides specific reccs from friends and forums.
I also find it’s a great way to know that a game I used to play a lot dropped some beefy DLC. It’s not like we all keep tabs on every game we’ve put down thinking that we might return to it.
My Steam launches on PC start into tray. I launch games from tray icon. I only open Steam window to buy stuff.
Considering how much money they make with gambling, I think Valve is not as saint-like as people think it is.
They're far from perfect, I'd be the first person to tell you.
But they're still light-years ahead of anyone else, because they're perfectly happy just making tons of money instead of trying to squeeze every last cent out of the storefront at our expense.
They're getting sued often because they're greedy sloths suffering the ego trip just like epic did when Fortnite was on the top of the world second only to Minecraft of course.
Aside from valve probably having a hit by bus plan, I'm pretty sure ownership of valve is actually split pretty evenly so it will likely fall to another senior dev who understands what to do.
I've heard they've hidden three immeasurably invaluable CS:Go Knife skins throughout the platform, and the first person to find all three will unlock Half-Life 3 and annoint the winner as Gaben 2, God Emperor of Valve and owner of Steam. Also, they get a chocolate factory.
Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, We’ve got a perfect riddle for you, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, If you are wise, you’ll listen to me.
Three precious knives, in Counter-Strike they hide, Find them all to claim your prize worldwide, The first to collect, in triumph shall stand, To unlock Half-Life 3, the game so grand.
Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, Follow the clues and you’ll be through, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, Just one more knife, and then you’ll see.
A crown awaits, a throne so high, Steam’s vast empire, you'll rule the sky, With Half-Life 3, your reign begins, All hail the gamer who truly wins.
Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, The ultimate prize belongs to you, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, Gaben 2, you shall always be.
gaben is a smart man, i doubt that he isn't aware of his own mortality, and presumably has someone who he trusts, that he will appoint the position.
It would be beautiful if he just handed the keys over to a true believer when it's time. Just a quality, stand up person who already has a pocket full of cash and just wants to help gamers get games and indie devs distribute them without squeezing every drop of profit they can at every step.
edit: it'd be even beautifuler if he turned it over to a trust managed by a panel of elected employee representatives
i feel like there have to be at least three, from his (family? Does he have one? I believe he does, but can't be bothered to check)
to someone in the company, perhaps there are numerous positions that exist solely to prevent this kind of hostile takeover from happening? Who knows!
So did Lenin, and look how that turned out.
stalin lasted quite a bit, he was also insane, but it was really post stalin that shit kinda went fucky.
Categorically wrong since Gaben lost weight.
I came here to say this but I see my arch nemesis made it firrrrrst
Flies away
It's inevitable.
But if steam becomes enshittified I'll move onto something else and use torrent sites to download the older games I care about that I've bought on steam. It wouldn't really be pirating them, since I've bought them already.
For now steam is fine, and I appreciate the work they've done on supporting Linux, so I'll keep on using it to buy games.
Many won't like it, but this is the reason we need competition like Epic games and GOG.
The steam fanboys certainly aren't going to make this problem any better.
We need competition like GOG. EGS is shit, we need competition better than EGS.
EGS can't compete on features for sure (it really is quite a shit platform), but they would be very competitive if their 12% fee (vs. Steams 30% fee) could be passed to buyers as lower prices. As it stands, Valve's policies essentially strongarms the market to prohibit this (publishers selling on Steam may not have a lower price on a different platform, or the game can be de-listed from Steam). The Wolfire v. Valve case is highly relevent here.
My plea is for you not to get mad at Epic for being shit. We should be accepting of crappy platforms if their fees reflect that (Epic charges 40% what Steam does). Focus your frustration at Valve for preventing the market from fairly allowing you select the quality of the platform you'd like to pay for.
Competition like gog, I'm all for it. But what is epic providing? I fail to see it.
Their own host of anti-competitive practices.
The life expectancy of 75 is an average (of the US population i assume), billionaires are likely to live longer
75 years of nation-wide life expectancy is also likely to include early deaths due to accidents, cancer and such. People who die of "old age" typically do later than 75.
When people talks about life expectancy 99.99% of the time they mean life expectancy at birth, at every year the life expectancy change. Using this life table someone with 61 years, have a life expectancy of 19.7 years, that means he's expected to live until he's 80.
Yep, and that was true even going all the way back through history. People weren't routinely dying in their 30s or whatever before modern medicine; it's just that a lot more of them were dying in infancy/early childhood and that brought down the average. (That's the situation anti-vaxxers are trying to go back to, BTW.)
I would say it’s appropriate to loop cancer deaths into the “old age” bucket – DNA getting old and making mistakes replicating seems relevant.
Gaben is not exactly an inspiring portrait of health...
The latest pictures of him look good, though. The man has definitely lost some weight.
Plus Gaben has been doing some serious work on his health recently so the fat part no longer applies.
Fit billionaires do. What happens to gaben's heart and arteries are anyone's guess. He is getting healthier but you can't undo damage completely.
A billionaire who is 61 is very likely to outlive 75, even if they're fat.
He actually lost a bunch of weight recently
Well, at least we’ve got global climate change and multiple other threats to the survival of humanity, we won’t have to worry for long.
He is a gazzillionare. We better hope he is working on a foundation or something that is legally bulletproof.
Anyone who thinks their steam libraries will be safe forever is delusional.
Eventually a for-profit motivated individual will gain control and they will use all their MBA learnings to maximize subscriptions, per play revenue, per download revenue and overall provide a cheaper platform.
There isn't an mba on the planet that doesn't recognize that advertising is highly lucrative and being the company that sells the most pc games means you have metrics no one else has. They'll instantly monetize advertising and the popups we get when we log in today will turn into mandatory non-skippable ads on the free tier to start a game, and they'll add their wrapper on top of games in their store, especially games that do not currently need steam to play today.
It'll only get way worse. Expect everything to be pay to play.. once gaben is gone. They have a monopoly and any leader would think they are too big to fail. No one can just take their games elsewhere... we're locked in. We're committed. We can't escape. They've got us by the balls.
We can switch to piracy. I don't only because of the benefits steam offers. If that ever changes in a way that tips the scale I'll never buy a game from them again and I'd never need to. Even if they start making all new games online only in a way that can't be circumvented there's a big enough backlog of games to keep me going the rest of my life.
This so much. The thing for me is, pirated I get everything from my library back FOR FREE. So there is no loss money wise for changing things up for me. Without the convenience and fairness there is nothing holding me there. at all.
Steam with Gabe at the helm cannot ever fail. Steam without Gabe, that's a while different story.
It’ll only get way worse. Expect everything to be pay to play… once gaben is gone. They have a monopoly and any leader would think they are too big to fail. No one can just take their games elsewhere… we’re locked in. We’re committed. We can’t escape. They’ve got us by the balls.
Sure you can escape, at least for any future purchases. There are other stores and you can take your business there, and the moment Steam does any serious enshittification under new management post-Gaben those other stores are going to be trying to pull customers from them hard. Likely to EGS or GOG (probably EGS unless GOG makes a big move at that point, like bringing back and expanding GOG Connect).
A couple of years down the road from there and Steam is known as that thing you only use to play older games and exclusives.
Good news. Unreal Engine 4 is usable on Linux and works pretty well too.
Learn some C++, get some ppl and make good games.Also, GoG means old games don't die. (well at least the non DRM ones)
GoG does DRM free, and not just old games. Not many new AAA because convincing a big company to sell their game DRM free is hard, but Baldur's Gate 3 is on there.
How about "Customers in low income countries will pay the same full price for your game." as a pitch.
Ue5 as well, not sure why you went back a version
I mean, its possible.
But then again, people have now known the beauty of steam. If this does happen as you say it could, it does open up the possibility for someone to make a Steam_v2.
I have faith that there are enough people who are passionate about Linux that it's possible for Windows to lose some of its dominance in the future. Maybe the enshittification of steam is needed to make that a possibility.
I mean yea, but all your games are still locked in Steam_v1.
He has 2 sons
maybe they can take over - and not fuck it up (they literally have to do nothing to achieve success!)
Can't even count to three when it comes to sons either.
Valve is numerically challenged.
Well thankfully Gabe has lost a ton of weight in recent years. Man is looking absolutely svelte these days. Here's hoping he has many more years of good health.
I'm also guessing he'll hand pick a successor that will carry on his views, instead of dying in office and having some kind of CEO election free-for-all.
Steam, my Steam library and Proton could disappear. But at least it will have supported a big traction in the ecosystem : Wine, DXVK, Lutris, Heroic Launcher, Bazzite, etc... are all open source projects (so they can't really disappear) that have never moved as fast as they are today.
I think anon has it 100% correct. The instant Gabe is out of the picture, I expect to hear talk about how "you don't understand, we have to fuck out users, won't someone please think of the IPO?!"
Steam is just another profit business. I don't get why people think they're about anything else. They take a huge part of the sells and don't even let you own the games. Owning means you can sell, give or do whatever you want with your games. Oh and "likely to die before 75", lol, says fucking who, the 4chan doctor?
There is regular, for-profit business, and then there is EA/Microsoft/Amazon level for-profit.
The complete disregard for their employees, massive firings for "AI powered optimization", the use and abuse of dark pattern methods(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern), are some of the things that I haven't yet head of from Steam.
Sure, ultimately Steam is a capitalist business, but it could be much, much worse.
I mean, there is your regular serial killers, and then there's ___ Insert most dangerous killers here____ . Sure ultimately I've killed a few people, but it could be so much worse. See what I mean? Steam is an ok platform but in the end they only cares about profit. But since 90% of the gamers get wet when you mentioned the company name, there's no need for them to change anything right now. Why in the world is it considered normal that a business that basically only provide server space gets to take 30% of sale price, while the devs who spent thousand of hours on a project only get 70%. Maybe it made sens 15 years ago, but not in 2024.
On the one hand, yeah it's absolutely important not to idolize any company, because they have no sense of loyalty or generosity. Telling yourself otherwise is a guaranteed path to disappointment.
On the other hand, of all the shit sandwiches we've been served, Steam is one of the fresher ones. Though they developed Proton for their own benefit, it's pretty undeniable that it has made gaming on Linux way more viable than it has ever been, and it's open source. I mean no shade to FOSS solutions like Lutris, but having paid developers work on a project full-time certainly has its advantages.
I do think that the concerns about Steam's pricing rules are valid, as are gripes with its DRM for first party games. But, overall, they've brought a lot of convenience to PC gaming that is hard to find elsewhere in the gaming world.
I get that steam is a pretty nice platform to browse, and being a linux user, Proton is amazing. But steam is business, they build Proton to sell the steam deck, not for Linux users. And aren't they in trial right now for overcharging millions of dollars? We now have eveything in place to replace steam with a fair, user controlled alternative. I will gladly pay a 5% or 10% fee, on top of the game's price, to finance a user controlled infrastructure and dev team for projects such has proton.
Extreme Obesity is defined as being 100 pounds or more over your ideal weight. It is known to decrease life expectancy up to 14 years.
It's just one factor but it's a big one. Living past your 80s is really tough... and working into your 70s is really hard as it is. The reins will go from his hands likely before we die.
Dr Chan is a pretty cool doctor. Eh diagnosed one of my friends as a b-tard and doesn't afraid of nothing.
Fuckload better than ‘you need to pay a subscription just to play the game you already paid for’ cuz oh you launched it from their app.
What digital game platform lets you resell your games? That's just a bad point to try and make.
It's not because none of the current platform let you do it that it's a bad point. People have traded games for decades before digital platforms, it wouldn't even be innovation lol. You can suck on Steam all you want, it's just your usual capitalist business, they dont care about you and will fuck you up the very second they evaluate they can make more money by doing so. But in the current state of things, they basically make tons of money by doing almost nothing (providing server space, wow) and "gamers" will rip their shirts off at the slightest criticism of that company.
I think they were just going off US averages. Our average lifespan has been declining past few years but it's pretty close to 75 if you're poor.
Gabe hasn't always taken care of his body, but he's rich, he'd be likely to hit around 88 in the US. The average lifespan in New Zealand is also a bit higher, so if he stays there then it may add a few years.
No no..it’s going to be much worse than that.
It’ll be a subscription just to play the game you already own.
$15.99 monthly library access fee? Who knew!
Or, if you’re only a casual gamer, just $1.99 per launch.
assuming I will ever close games
if steam dies we need to support GOGS
Or just buy games on GoG.com now to ensure they’ll be there in the future. Why wait?
Piracy is a service problem. They'll reap what they sow if they change course. I'm not afraid to hoist my sails again when I need to. ;)
And that one "old fat guy" is constantly under attack from degenerates because "sTeAm mOnoPoLy".
I don't understand this mentality. If we oppose monopolistic sales platforms when it's Amazon, Google Play, or the Apple store why should we turn a blind eye when suddenly we like a particular company.
I'm not contesting that Steam offers the best user experience by a mile (it truly beats Epic and Gog by miles), but that doesn't erase the downsides of having a single entity with a grip on the entire market.
I don't think it's quite as simple as "let's crack down on steam like other monopolies" as what do you crack down on?
They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).
All these other monopolies do lots of shady stuff to get and maintain their monopoly, so you generally want to stop them doing those things. Steam doesn't do anything shady to maintain it's monopoly it just carries on improving it's platform and ironically improving the users experience and other platforms outside of their own.
Like what do you do to stop steam being so popular outside of just arbitrarily making them shitter to make the other store fronts seem ok by comparison?
The 30% cut is often something cited and maybe that could be dropped slightly, but I'm happy for them to keep taking that cut if they continue to invest some of it back into the eco system.
Look at other platforms like Sony, MS who take 30% to sell on their stores, THEN charge you like £5 a month if you want multiplayer and cloud saves etc. Steam just gives you all this as part of the same 30%.
Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.
Steam has improved how I play games, it has cloud saves, virtual controllers, streaming, game sharing, remote play together, VR support, Mod support and this is all part of their 30%, the other platforms take same and do less, or take less but barely function as a platform.
Anti monopoly is great when a company is abusing it's position, but I don't feel Valve is, they are just genuinely good for pc gaming and have single handily made PC gaming a mainstream platform.
I think the whole "monopoly bad" notion is a bit off. You start opposing monopolies, but then people realized that duopolies are also bad, and next thing you know we talk about triopolies and centiopolies and whatnot.
So I think the actual number is not the thing that matters, and instead the thing we should be worrying about is cartels.
The defining feature of a cartel is the ruthless action it takes to kill competition. The monopolies everyone are so mad about are cartels of single companies, but the bad thing about them is their cartellic behavior - not the fact they are along in the market.
Steam is not a cartel.
Steam isn't a monopoly, I can get my games elsewhere (epic, gog, humble store, origin etc). But Steam is dominating the market because it does it better. It offers value and features that others don't, and it generally hasn't abused its dominant market position to squeeze the consumer or crush their competitors. The closest thing to enshittification we've seen from Steam was them allowing third party DRM and launchers, which isn't something they wanted, it's them backing down from a stand-off.
I want competition, but there's good competition and bad competition. Good competition is what we see from Steam and gog, where they stand out by being good at what they do and giving customers what they want.
For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don't want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn't to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.
I think it's easy to look at all the bullshit EA and Ubisoft and the like pull now, and imagine that same pattern from streaming playing out in gaming.
Tbf monopolies are sometimes unavoidable. Like the water company or the energy company (at least the ones that actually own the cables). Usually natural monopolies are nationalized though.
Even if steam is not a natural Monopoly, competition is possible, we allow it to be a monopoly because we like it, not the other way around. There are plenty of digital stores, you can at any time buy almost any game from an alternative, I'm not aware of steam having any exclusivity agreement with any game (except the ones that valve made).
Valve also doesn't use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.
It also doesn't bundle 100 unnecessary services to the subscription. It doesn't even have a subscription.
Sure, you can't move your steam games to another platform, but you can get new ones. It's not much of a problem having games from different platforms anyway, GoG for example even let's you launch steam games from the GoG launcher. And you can always go back to good old shortcuts on a folder.
The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.
It's not their fault epic sucks
Because it isn't a monopoly, shut up already.
Steam/Valve is pretty much one of the only companies I actually am perfectly willing to let be a monopoly as they currently stand. Especially since they have come a long ways towards making gaming so much more accessible to Linux users, like me, who don't know how to take full advantage of wine.
What will happen to the Steam Deck? Will they discontinue it and support for existing units, or replace the OS with Windows (causing degraded performance and exposing their users to Microsoft adtech enshittification)? The Steam Deck is a star product of theirs, which hopefully will count for something.
It’s important to remember though that the steam deck itself is not the end goal for them. It’s part of building a larger Linux gaming ecosystem and solidifying their hard-core followers. Last I checked it it only sold 2 or 3 million. That’s impressive, but if you’re thinking about it as a competitor to say, the switch (which you see it compared to all the time) it’s clearly not a massive money maker. So it’s not hard to imagine a short term thinking leadership ending it.
Ad Deck
Can't Gabe do what John Bogle did with Vanguard and transfer ownership to the employees and clients?
I think I have enough to worry about already without worrying about what ifs.
I kind of hope gaben has set up something smart for his death. Eg Valve is owned by a trust.
I don't know why Gabe Newell would die before 75
Cryogenic suicide to preserve his brain for a robotic body?
It is funny that people think Valve would sell out instead of becoming the big evil.
As Valve continues developing an OS agnostic platform, they start building into various tools that require a Steam account to play games in order to defend their app store. Maybe they buy Unity and make it a Steam exclusive, maybe they make their own engine that can be played on Windows or Linux.
Integrate Chromecast technology to make a console like multimedia device to compete against XBox and PlayStation. Then, start selling video and integrating streaming access.
Push the Steam Store to become bigger. Sure, you aren't forced to use the Steam Store on most Valve developed hardware, but it is default.
Then, like Google did with Android, pull the tech stack from the open source tools to become wholely integrated with Steam Services.
Most of this already exists and they haven't taken that tack, though. SteamOS is just Arch and KDE, with access to anything Arch has access to. If you don't like that, Valve made it trivial to put another OS on the Deck, like Bazzite.
Steam Play is already a streaming technology, which works great and is free to use and has been for like at least a decade.
Steam Store is already gigantic, despite having some well funded competition who has to resort to exclusives and free game giveaways to entice users. It's already the de facto default game store for PC, and provides lots of extra features beyond just game delivery.
Most of the technology Steam uses (like Proton or GameScope or Arch) are open-source. We can (and do) fork their work for our own purposes regularly.
I don't think Valve is perfect, but I do think they value their open approach to technology. I think as long as the company is never publicly traded, I would imagine anyone who currently works at Valve would share that attitude with GabeN, otherwise I imagine they wouldn't work there long.
If they go public and have to report to shareholders, then I completely agree that the enshittification will be swift and merciless. I hope Gabe makes Valve an employee-owned co-op or something when he decides to retire. I can only imagine he has strong plans for the transition of power.
I'm commenting more on how Valve could become evil while maintaining and expanding its markets. Part of that is using open source as a way to reduce development costs while still controlling and monetizing key parts of the tech stack.
You know, as long as their management structure stays relatively similar to what it is, I think I'd be more fine with them being the big evil, compared to basically anyone else.
Edit: and also as long as they stay a private company, that would also be a big concern, but I guess that's maybe the same as saying their management structure stays the same
Sucks being old.
Is it just prejudice? Stereotype? Laziness?
You see this happen to everything. It all gets enshittified. These corps that started out for the end user all end up selling out for profits.
It’s not a secret, not a revelation, nothing new.
The direct transfer of power in tech is often to someone that will carry the torch. It's quite rare that a successor is picked that has been at the company for years, but wants to change practically everything about it. For that reason, I can see Gabe passing to a like-minded person that already knows that they are a succession candidate.
But ultimately none of us know Gabe, or what he plans to do. He may have a 100 step plan to secede power, or he might get to 65, say "that'll do" and just sell up and retire to a remote island somewhere. The plans might have been in place for years, or he might not want to consider Valve without him. Hell, he might not even think that Valve should exist without him. It's impossible to guess, so it's not worth worrying about...
It seems worth worrying about if only to try and make valve think about the future.
Who'd have thought not actually owning the games you purchase was a bad idea?
Even if you buy them on gog you don't own them. Download and keep - sure, but you could do that with many games on steam too (also you could download torrent versions which wouldn't be different from buying on gog). The point is about actually keeping these copies alive, properly updated and working, for which these services exist.
So, I think owning a disc is also risky, that means your copy can degrade. Owning games in this context have lost its meaning for me.
I already have enough games to last a lifetime, stored to my storage
Yeah hate to say it but by the time this golden age ends with valve I'll prob either not be gaming as much anyway or to your point have enough that I won't really care about the newer games.
I mean, I'm not even bummed! Life has gotten very busy, but I have about 10 old standbys in multiple genres. When time allows, I can get tons of enjoyment out of them.
I look forward to playing them years into the future and don't feel limited. It's rare that a new game piques my interest and rarer that it hits my "list"
This is silly. Valve is already a profit driven company. You don't see the walled garden? The DRM? Valve supports proton because it's in their monetary interest to do so.
There's "profit-driven" and "seeking exclusively the profits of the next quarter". While capitalism has a lot of downsides in the long run, the vast majority of bullshit people get outraged about is due to publicly traded companies being organized in such a way that their CEOs and shareholders sacrifice all sustainability and instead try to loot your kitchen.
Whatever Steam policies you think are bullshit right now (and I can name a couple more, too), they're not too much in comparison to what they'd be under more typical management.
How is it walled garden when you can add any non-steam game to your library?
You're thinking in reverse. Walled gardens keep you in, not out. Without logging into your Steam account (pretending you don't have one), try to download a mod for a game you bought on GOG and see how it goes for you.
I have seriously no idea, but can you take them out easily? If not, it's a walled garden.
Since it's not publicly owned it doesn't have to focus on quarterly profits.
If it gets sold to Microsoft they're probably going to start stripping it down to please investors and get rid banking on how most people will be too lazy to leave it. We've seen the same thing happen with reddit and twitter. I'm pretty sure enshittification is inevitable.
Capitalism bad. Support Epic Games instead. /s
Valve doesn't need infinite growth to survive wallstreet. Proton is open source and very popular.
That post is pure hysteria. First no one knows when Gabe is going to die, and even if he live very long he may step down due to old age still.
- also worrying so much about something that may happen 14 years later according to op is unnecessary and distorted thinking.
- why assume there is going to be a power vacuum? can't he and his leadership make pans of succession?
- then believing a whole made-up story going down the rabbit hole of the worst case scenario is again unnecessary and distorted thinking. Is okay to think of worst case scenarios but to take them as if they were real is gifting ourselves anxiety for free.
- in any case, the mental exercise of thinking of some undesirable possibilities allow us to take precautions and prepare to the extend that is appropriate and reachable. Which would be the most efficient behavior that thwarts "actual fear" as OP writes it.
I think your fear is justified. Gaben needs a personal trainer
Deep discounts are locked behind a subscription
I wrote about this a few months ago: https://www.spacebar.news/steam-time-bomb/
Someone's been gaming too much.
Gamers truly are the most oppressed minority group
Don’t blame gamers because
some ofall the shitty MBAs want to speed run capitalism.
This is not "a prediction" - this is inevitably what's going to happen.
Everyone here who has drank the Valve kool-aid and pretends like they can do no wrong is dangerously short-sighted. Steam's virtual monopoly on PC gaming is a huge issue. You think Epic has a monopoly on the concept of "Store Exclusives?" Fucking spare me. It's a matter of time before Steam locks in its own exclusives, kills Proton, and locks every. single. game. behind always online DRM.
If you want to distribute your new PC game, guess what? You don't get to contract with both GOG and Steam. You don't get to say your game is Linux compatible because it runs well in the Proton compatibility layer. Oh, and if you say "games could run on Linux before Proton!" then you're deluding yourself by remembering a time when games were distributed with their own launcher and weren't packed to the gills with platform specific code so that the game integrates seamlessly with a specific third-party launcher and its DRM tools. You bought a Steamdeck? Cool. The version of Arch it runs is no longer supported. You have to upgrade to "Windows for Steameck." Yes, you have to pay for a fucking Windows license. Yes, it has fewer features than baseline Windows. No, it's not less expensive.
You think what's happening to YouTube is bad? Fucking strap in, boys. Welcome to digital content distribution in the age of unfettered capitalism. I wonder how many of you are gonna eat this shit up, huff lethal quantities of copium, and say it's "not that bad" once it starts happening and you're faced with either standing by your own stated convictions and giving up almost all PC gaming in general or bend the knee so you can get your precious Steam Library back. Probably most of you.
What you're saying is "inevitable" hasn't happened for the entire 20+ years of Steam. I'm going to guess Valve is going to continue being a private company and doing whatever the fuck they want, without investor pressure towards enshittification.
Steam's monopoly is actually what's holding PC gaming together. Other types of digital distribution services are so fucked up by exclusivity deals that any "competition" is always going to mean "megacorporation uses existing wealth to deny competition".
Epic is trying really hard to bring the exclusivity nightmare over to PC gaming as well, but so far Valve still holds.
What you’re saying is “inevitable” hasn’t happened for the entire 20+ years of Steam.
Something being "inevitable" by definition means it will eventually happen, but has not already occurred.
Steam’s monopoly is actually what’s holding PC gaming together.
"Steam good. Steam has monopoly. Therefore, monopoly good."
Woof.
I would argue that they are financially motivated to keep proton and Linux gaming going and not just out of the kindness of their hearts. They are competing with Microsoft and their store. When your competition has complete control of the OS you need to run your store on, you are at the total mercy of them. They can't afford not to keep on their current track. Especially now that they are successfully doing it, going back would be a death sentence.
PC gaming is not here to stay. One day, someone, will finally do a cloud /saas streaming solution which works, which solves the latency and fidelity issues and which will be accepted and trusted by the masses.
Hopefully that will be a Valve solution. Not Nvidia, MS, Google or Sony.
From that moment on the client will not matter anymore and you will just stream it to your device and from there cast it to your big screen.
Hopefully I'm full of shit and this will never happen. But I'm afraid I'm not.
Unless you change physics the latency will never be solved.
Speed of light says no
Fiber internet was invented around the 80s. I only got fiber installed at my house a month ago. Most homes around here still have expensive low bandwidth cable. For cloud gaming to actually work you would need to upgrade the world's internet infrastructure to an incredible degree. This article highlights the issue (in the US, one of the most developed countries)
Yes, I also believe in invisible pink unicorns. You'll get to see one soon, I promise.
