• Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    27 days ago

    You know sometimes I actually straight up FORGET that Steam is run by the same company that created Half-Life?

    They:

    1. identified a gradient of human wants
      (Video games exist; I want them on my computer)
    2. Created a vector for that want to be satisfied
      (Digital distribution that conveys the games I want to my computer)
    3. Stayed the FUCK OUT OF THE WAY

    When you do something well, people don’t notice you’ve done anything at all.

    • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      25 days ago

      I think the key was that Steam wasn’t created to make money, but to solve problems they themselves had, like “How do we get new versions of Counter Strike out to all these players?”

      Then as Valve wasn’t the only company having these problems, the solution could easily be sold to others.

      If the other companies really wanted to crack Steam’s near-monopoly, the solution would be to tackle the problems associated with not having all your games on Steam. Work together on a open-source launcher supporting all stores, similar to GOG Galaxy. First make something useful that tackles an unsolved problem, then you can make money off it when it becomes successful.

      Instead they go in just trying to make a buck, and end up just being worse versions of Steam.

      That ended up being a bit of a rant, but I’m frustrated at their shortsighted market strategies :p

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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        25 days ago

        Oh indeed! And that’s why I love GOG! I actually try to check GOG first just in case I can buy a game I want there before I go through with buying it on steam. I would actually gladly pay MORE for the GOG version because it removes bullshit like DRM!

        • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          23 days ago

          I used to do the same, but I lost a lot of confidence in GOG after they retroactively restricted their cloud saves to 200 MB.

          My hundred-hour Witcher 3 save is exactly the kind of thing I want backed up, but that’s no longer possible. And the very low limit they set, and the urgency with which they started deleting the very data they were expected to keep safe, reeks of a desperation to save money that makes me hesitant to invest more in their ecosystem.

          I really want them to succeed though, and I think they have the right idea with Galaxy. Even Epic giving me games for free doesn’t make me actually use their client or store.

          But somehow the obvious idea of forming a consortium to develop open standards and implementations for game clients, doesn’t seem like something that will ever happen.

  • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    Honestly, the secret is not being a publicly traded company. All the others have to make the shareholders happy while steam just does steam. If the line doesn’t have to constantly go up you can pretty much do whatever you want as long as you’re still making profit. And if what you’re doing is already working you don’t need to add gimmicks or advertisements to milk it as much as you can just to appease the shareholders.

    • CountVon@sh.itjust.works
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      28 days ago

      Being a private company has allowed Valve to take some really big swings. Steam Deck is paying off handsomely, but it came after the relative failure of the Steam Controller, Steam Link and Steam Machines. With their software business stable, they can allow themselves to take big risks on the hardware side, learn what does and doesn’t work, then try again. At a publically traded company, CEO Gabe Newell probably gets forced out long before they get to the Steam Deck.

      • jia_tan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        28 days ago

        Man Intel are so dumb for firing Pat. And they did it while seeing positive reviews for their second gen GPUs!

        • CountVon@sh.itjust.works
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          28 days ago

          That’s just what happens to CEOs of publicly traded companies when they have a bad year. And Intel had a really bad year in 2024. I’m certainly hoping that their GPUs become serious competition for AMD and Nvidia, because consumers win when there’s robust competition. I don’t think Pat’s ousting had anything to do with GPUs though. The vast majority of Intel’s revenue comes from CPU sales and the news there was mostly bad in 2024. The Arrow Lake launch was mostly a flop, there were all sorts of revelations about overvolting and corrosion issues in Raptor Lake (13th and 14th gen Intel Core) CPUs, broadly speaking Intel is getting spanked by AMD in the enthusiast market and AMD has also just recently taken the lead in datacenter CPU sales. Intel maintains a strong lead in corporate desktop and laptop sales, but the overall trend for their CPU business is quite negative.

          One of Intel’s historical strength was their vertical integration, they designed and manufactured the CPUs. However Intel lost the tech lead to TSMC quite a while ago. One of Pat’s big early announcements was “IDM 2.0” (“Integrated Device Manufacturing 2.0”), which was supposed to address those problems and beef up Intel’s ability to keep pace with TSMC. It suffered a lot of delays, and Intel had to outsource all Arrow Lake manufacturing to TSMC in an effort to keep pace with AMD. I’d argue that’s the main reason Pat got turfed. He took a big swing to get Intel’s integrated design and manufacturing strategy back on track, and for the most part did not succeed.

        • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          The GPUs aren’t even a drop in the bucket for Intel. While Gelsinger had the right ideas, he wanted everything all at once which just wasn’t doable.

          • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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            26 days ago

            When “everything is AI now” and your motion board/investors are watching nvidia nearing 1T, then they want you in the GPU business.

            And now we’re back to the public companies are terrible at innovation argument. If the line can only go up, you can’t take risks and you have to hurt people to continue at some point.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
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        28 days ago

        Linux was also the only way to make sure Valve was viable long term. Eventually Windows was going to have an Xbox store built in and would’ve basically been a monopoly on PC gaming, cutting out steam altogether. I think windows now sort of does have that, but it can’t compete with Steam quite yet.

      • Natanael@infosec.pub
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        28 days ago

        The steam controller didn’t really fail, but the patent fight was a mess that took way too long (much too late disqualified patent over paddle buttons). That sucked a lot of energy out of the project. Don’t forget the steam deck kept those touch pads (although with a different design)!

        Steam Link IMHO also wasn’t bad, but there didn’t seem to be much interest in it then. (interestingly enough I think it could be recreated today in a Chromecast-like form factor)

        Stream machines was definitely a big mess however, there just wasn’t enough interest, too limited compatibility, the machines just wasn’t versatile enough for average Joe to pay for one.

    • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      28 days ago

      And also not be backed by venture capital firms expecting to make infinite profits. Private or Public, if the company shareholder’s only goal is to continue to receive 10% gains on their investment after already making back 20x their principal, they’ll squeeze the company for all it’s worth.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      Publicly traded companies mean that the people who invested get a say in how the business is run. Those same people are typically riding the success of other people’s decisions and have no idea how to not fuck up. So they demand the company make stupid fucking choices or the CEO will be replaced by someone who will listen.

      The trick is to remove the power of the board to remove the CEO and keep them as advisors instead of drivers. The CEO should cook and if they drive the business into the ground, that’s what happens. Businesses need to fail because otherwise the wrong people end up leading.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        28 days ago

        Businesses need to fail because otherwise the wrong people end up leading.

        When businesses fail, their competitors buy their assets, employees, customer bases, and get bigger. Keep playing that a few more rounds and you get a monopoly that can and will prevent or buy new entrants. Then anyone including the wrong people in the industry enter this one company because that’s the only company in this industry.

        This isn’t an argument against letting businesses fail. It’s an argument to show that the game of competition doesn’t produce stable competitive environment in the long run. Instead it’s a temporary stage that some markets exist in on the way to consolidation. You can find countless examples for this around us. And therefore letting businesses fail through competition isn’t a long term solution to these problems.

        • Jumi@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          And that’s why you have laws and agencies to prevent that like the German Bundeskartellamt.

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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            28 days ago

            I’m not familiar with the corporate landscape in Germany, but the US and Canada also have anti-trust law and competition agencies whose purpose is to prevent consolidation. Why hasn’t that prevented it?

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      28 days ago

      Honestly, the secret is not being a publicly traded company.

      Valve fortune doesn’t come from not being traded publicly. They built a nearly monopoly on pc videogames with their walled garden proprietary third party launcher.

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        27 days ago

        Valve isn’t a walled garden. They allow other apps to be launched through their app and devs can sell steams key on other platforms.

        It is still a mega corp, but trying to attack it from the walled garden angle is pretty dumb.

    • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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      27 days ago

      I mean it’s true for TF2 also, overwatch killed itself lol

      They did the bare minimum of banning bots so TF2 has been going pretty great recently. I think I’ve encountered 1 or 2 bots in the last 2 weeks and I’m pretty sure those were just blatant cheaters and not actually bots

  • Reygle@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    Does nothing? DOES NOTHING?! He spent the last few years ripping Microsoft a new a@@hole, rendering their operating system meaningless for gamers! …but nice meme

  • wizzim@infosec.pub
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    27 days ago

    I have a mixed feeling about Gabe and Valve.

    While I am insanely grateful for proton (even if it was strategically important for them, they didn’t do it out of kindness of heart), some other stuff disturb me:

    • Valve being so lenient on CS2 skin gambling, hurting the young people
    • A steam account being un-inheritable, making you defacto a tenant of your games
    • The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs
    • Gabe spending his money on multiple mega yachts, like every asshole billionaire, instead of making the world a better place
    • Gabe claiming to be a libertarian, like Elon and other pieces of shit
    • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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      27 days ago
      • The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs

      Sigh. Here we go again. I’ll just copy one of my older comments about that attitude.


      Steam is not a parasitic middle man, it is a collection of services that would have to be provisioned and operated by the developer otherwise. The 30% cut pays for:

      • A massive infrastructure to store and deliver the game and its updates, worldwide, and at an acceptable bandwidth that Valve operates
      • A storefront that enables monetizing the game
      • The audience and discoverability that would not exist otherwise
      • The Steam API, achievements, cloud saves
      • The client itself, content management, validation, and Linux compatibility tools
      • Network and operational security
      • Also keep in mind that Steam and its services are operated by experts. A game developer would have to hire the experts or get training.

      If the revenue from the cut exceeds the operational costs: it’s called profitability, not theft. The world doesn’t run on good vibes.

      • wizzim@infosec.pub
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        26 days ago

        Yeah you’re of course right, they are not a charity and shouldn’t have to provide their service for free.

        I expressed myself too quickly (the rage!). What I meant is the this cut of 30% is fucking predatory, mafia or middle-age money lender style. You get one third of the rewards of my efforts just for delivering my product? And don’t talk about promotion because this store is now stuffed with too many games for visibility.

        You can argue “but this is it the standard rate of the industry”. Well it is predatory everywhere else and I hate Google and Apple as much for it.

        A cut of 10% would be more humane. Or whatever to reach a “normal” profitability. But now the discussion becomes complex because we don’t have the concrete numbers.

        What is sure, is that it is possible without pain to take way less than 30%. This is something EGS got right, even if I dislike them for many other things (Epic and Tim Sweeney).

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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          26 days ago

          predatory, mafia or middle-age money lender style.

          Your words have lots of sentiments, but present no facts. I know that Wolfire and Sweeney are independently throwing a tantrum, and we all hate taxes, but I don’t see public exposés showing game developers who went hungry because they couldn’t afford the 70-30 split.

          I’ll also remind you that the EGS (12%) is barely profitable, and operated for years at a loss, only sustained by Fortnite (which used dark patterns to extract money from kids, in case you want to see something actually predatory).

          • wizzim@infosec.pub
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            26 days ago

            I have read your link but they didn’t say the EGS is at loss specifically because of the 12% cut nor that the Fortnite money is subsidizing the lower cut.

            It could be that the EGS is at loss because creating a new store and client from scratch costs money ?

            To be honest here, we don’t have the numbers to say exactly how much margin Valve is making. But my guess is the following: if EGS estimated that with a 12% cut they could be profitable if they had enough customers, it makes me think that the cut of valve is way overinflated in regards to their costs.

            And yes Fortnite is awfully predatory. But the topic is Valve and Steam there 🙂

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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          26 days ago

          You get one third of the rewards of my efforts just for delivering my product

          you have not read the comment you responded to.

          • derbolle@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            and forgot or ignored that it often is not the dev who gets most of the money at all but publishers like ea and ubisoft. why should customers act in defense of those companies who actively try and make gaming worse for everyone?

            an indie dev paying 30% is expensive but steam is really a premium platform for distributing games. it would be nice if it were cheaper but I don‘t really understand the outrage here

    • rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      27 days ago

      The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs

      This is a pretty spicy take. Let’s consider two possibilities:

      1. Game devs choose to distribute independently, and sell their game for $20. They sell 100,000 copies and make $2 million in revenue, and keep the entire $2 million.

      2. Game devs choose to distribute via Steam, promote it with a 50% off sale, it goes to the Steam front page, sells 500,000 copies at only $10 each, for a total $5 million in revenue. Steam takes $1.5 million and the devs take $3.5 million.

      In scenario 2 the devs make 75% more than in scenario 1. Did Valve steal from the game devs?

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
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        26 days ago

        Obviously Valve and the developer collaborated to steal money from the consumers who wouldn’t have bought the game without the promotion.

        to make sure: /s

    • Owl@mander.xyz
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      27 days ago

      A steam account being un-inheritable, making you defacto a tenant of your games

      Can’t you just give your kids your steam password ? How would they notice ?

      • wizzim@infosec.pub
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        27 days ago

        Yes you can workaround it. But this is still a society right they forbid you. And who can say that in 2100 they won’t implement a cleanup job that lock all accounts that are over 100 years old ? 🤪

      • sensiblepuffin@lemmy.funami.tech
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        27 days ago

        I’m not sure about that either - unless you really want your real name on a Steam account, you just change the password and the payment method and you should be fine, right?

        • derpgon@programming.dev
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          27 days ago

          You can’t change the login username. That’s about it. You can change the profile link, profile name, avatar and other cosmetics, and edit payment methods.

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      26 days ago

      I love Valve for a lot of things but I’ll never forget that they spearheaded some of the most predatory microtransactions in the industry (loot boxes and battle passes) and were happy to help Bethesda try to sell mods until players raised a huge stink.

    • Im_a_GDeveloper@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      I didn’t knew about he claiming to be a libertarian. Rothbard must be turning over in his grave.

      • sensiblepuffin@lemmy.funami.tech
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        27 days ago

        Here’s the thing - Theoretically we shouldn’t give a shit about his political leanings and we don’t have to, because he and his company deliver a good service. I can privately think he’s another asshole libertarian tech bro whose only guiding principle is “everyone should be able to do what I want, but only some people should have the money to do those things”, but it doesn’t change anything about Steam or Half-Life 3.

        • wizzim@infosec.pub
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          27 days ago

          But this is a problem right ?

          Because the libertarian view of the world DOES have an impact on Steam: they have so much inertia to fight against hate speech and extreme right, they do nothing against gambling, and so on. All under the pretense “free speech” which is so convenient.

          IMO this is the view of the modern libertarian: all the money, none of the accountability.

          • sensiblepuffin@lemmy.funami.tech
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            26 days ago

            It is a problem, you’re right. We shouldn’t have to rely on people with the motivation to do good. Capitalism is failing because without regulation, it motivates people to fuck each other over for an extra dime.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      A steam account being un-inheritable, making you defacto a tenant of your games

      This is unenforceable under US Law

          • wizzim@infosec.pub
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            27 days ago

            Maybe, maybe not.

            Frankly I don’t even know if this clause can be enforced in Europa. I wanted to point out that we shouldn’t rely on the customer protection laws of each country to address that: this clause shouldn’t exist in the first place.

            But to be frank, it most likely doesn’t come from Valve and rather from the games company themselves.

    • rabber@lemmy.ca
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      27 days ago

      Not to mention his insane Porsche collection, yeah he’s just another billionaire

      Valve ruined my favourite game (dota) by flooding the game with ridiculous cosmetics that even change particle effects with no way to disable any of this

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        There’s nothing wrong with having money or expensive hobbies. It’s not like he’s collecting Senators or buying himself a seat in the Oval Office

  • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    His plan isn’t based off trying to squeeze blood from stones, it’s to sell some video games. Not a very capitalist mindset, but there you have it.

    • Kilgore Trout@feddit.it
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      26 days ago

      Valve takes 30% from every sale on Steam, which is quite landlord-like. Although there are much worse practices in the market.

      • Zron@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        Oh no, a sales platform that takes a cut of revenue.

        Valve isn’t a charity, and they provide very good services for what developers pay.

        Devs don’t need to host download servers, they don’t need to staff customer service reps, they don’t have to set up banking infrastructure or worry at all about handling payments from hundreds of different banks across hundreds of countries.

        It’s not like valve takes 30% and sits on it. They put that money to use.

  • fussganger@discuss.tchncs.de
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    27 days ago

    Wu wei is a polymorphic, ancient Chinese concept expressing an ideal practice of “inaction”, “inexertion” or “effortless action”,[a][1][2] as a state of personal harmony and free-flowing, spontaneous creative manifestation.

  • dipcart@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    Just my two cents but as others have said, not being publically traded helps a lot. The focus on short term benefits that come with shareholders stops “master plans” when they come with mistakes. Learning from relative failures, like the steam controller and the like, ultimately contributes to major successes like the steam deck. Being able to stay committed to improving the software experience over time, instead of killing the product when it didn’t immediately succeed, is fairly rare in the tech industry. And in all honesty, it would be better if they released a polished profuct, but being committed to it made it a success.

    I feel like the pressure to have a majorly successful product day one means that smaller companies can’t innovate the way they want to, so they have to find other ways to produce revenue. Huge companies, like Apple can afford to do both but still stumble, like with the vision pro. Maybe it’ll be a success, but for now its not great and iteration makes it more difficult to maintain the original vision.

    • sensiblepuffin@lemmy.funami.tech
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      27 days ago

      You can either be publicly traded and let greedy shareholders sell things for parts or you can have private ownership and pray to God that they’re benevolent. There has to be another option, surely. Maybe one where Valve becomes employee-owned with a trust/foundation backing it once Gabe dies?

  • Integrate777@discuss.online
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    28 days ago

    Private company with long-term strategy VS public company chasing short-term profits to pump stock prices for shareholders.

    • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works
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      28 days ago

      That’s the primary reason I abhor the stock market. It no longer works for the creator/owner or the customers at all. It simply feeds the greed of the wealthy (special call-out to private equity here).

      • jonne@infosec.pub
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        28 days ago

        Yeah, the flaw there is that money can flow into and out of the stock market basically instantly, so you always have to manage their expectations to make sure your price doesn’t crash.

          • stoly@lemmy.world
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            28 days ago

            There are some very rare exceptions where someone just happened to make the best thing out there at the time. Minecraft is a good example. Those people move on and live their lives rather than exploit.

            • index@sh.itjust.works
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              27 days ago

              Minecraft is yet another example of no expections. Minecraft is proprietary and they never lowered the price even after making millions, they actually increased it. It was sold to one of the worst company in the world for even more money.

              After making millions a normal person would have make the game publicly available or at last free and they wouldhave never sell it to microsoft.

          • Lem Jukes@lemm.ee
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            28 days ago

            the idea of earning billions of dollars is a fallacy, it requires an amount exploitation plain and simple. Steam has a great product that works really well. But they also are basically the seed crystal for a whole ecosystem of gambling with the CS loot boxes that preys on addicts and children.

  • snekerpimp@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    I’m not quite sure they have “done nothing”. They have made a digital storefront that other storefronts strive for, they have help with Linux compatibility with windows only games, have released a few bits of awesome hardware every now and then. I think this is what happens when you are not beholden to shareholders and the mantra “make line go up at all costs”

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    I can’t really get my head around why people dislike Gabe Newell. As best I can tell, he’s been a fantastic steward for Steam.

    • vga@sopuli.xyz
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      26 days ago

      Some people hate all rich people regardless of what they have gotten due to their work.

    • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      28 days ago

      Just wait till he dies and the next person in charge decides to go public to make a quick buck. That’ll begin the immediate enshitification of Steam. How many years do we got till he croaks? Ten? Fifteen? Better hope we have a better alternative before then.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        28 days ago

        I’m not going to use something that’s shitty now in hopes it will be better later in order to avoid using something that’s better now out of fear it might become shitty later.

        If Steam becomes shitty I have no issue dropping it and pirating my already paid for collection.

    • ysjet@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      A massive, massive astroturfing campaign Epic Games paid for in hopes of tarnishing Valve and Gabe Newell’s reputation to try and bolster their failure of a shop ecosystem.

      Unfortunately, it worked, because there are people on the net who don’t remember the and days before steam, or even the initial versions of steam that people had Actual problems with, and not just made up ones.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      28 days ago

      Gabe Newell has a net worth of $9.5 billion and there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. Steam is great and as long as the company behaves well there’s no reason not to use it, but billionaires are not your friends.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        28 days ago

        They are some rare cases where someone becomes a billionaire because something suddenly took off.

      • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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        28 days ago

        Sort of agree but look how much he’s done for Linux gaming. Also the steam deck was well thought out and designed to be user serviceable.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          28 days ago

          Was that all Gabe? Or was that people at Valve who had the ideas and executed the ideas and Gabe is given credit for?

          • Natanael@infosec.pub
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            28 days ago

            “yes”? He’s definitely not building any significant fraction himself, but if he didn’t care for these things he wouldn’t let the company put so much resources into them.

            Credit for the things built goes to the people building them. Credit for it being possible to build goes to the people who founded and funded the teams

        • index@sh.itjust.works
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          27 days ago

          Sort of agree but look how much he’s done for Linux gaming.

          Let’s not forget that Steam is a proprietary third party launcher that doesn’t share any values with linux. Valve built the apple store of videogames, while they are now moving in a better direction keep in mind that they are part of the problem.

          • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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            27 days ago

            Sort of agree still. Steam deck is a great example. They built it to be user serviceable, and you can literally switch to the Linux desktop and use root, and reinstall your OS if you want. It’s not locked down crazy like other systems. Remember the PS3 other os? Didn’t even get graphics drivers, then they ultimately removed it when it was used to jailbreak it.

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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      27 days ago

      You can’t become a billionaire ethically. Steam has a pretty big market for lootboxes and cs skins gambling is pretty widespread.

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      27 days ago

      We are on lemmy, a decentralized and open source platform. Steam is closed as much as reddit is.

      Promoting gambling to kids and use the profits to buy multiple mega yachts is peak scum.