Do they realize that what they really said was: having shareholders destroys businesses.
Anyone who isn’t head deep in Capitalism understands that, yeah.
The full quote in the context of the article makes it even worse:
“As long as Valve is independent and not a publicly traded company, they probably have a certain ambition, but not an extraordinary ambition,” Rosier says. “So I think they can still decide to make some decisions that are player-first, and that helps, right? To get the goodwill from the players.”
So, customers like using a product that focuses on the customers to create profits, rather than extracting profits by abusing the customer? How unambitious… /s
and that helps, right? To get the goodwill from the players
It helps?! It HELPS?!! That’s the fuckin customer base right there, that’s engagement, customer retention, customer satisfaction and THE top reason for sales.
“It helps” pffftt… it does not help, it’s the ENTIRE PRODUCT
The industry is unwilling to cope with this fact
oblig
I mean both true but yeah
Gabe will eventually die and the MBA that takes over will see the quick paycheck.
Gabe will probably have it own by all of valve employees, so enshitification would be less likely.
Maybe I’m wrong but hey let me have some hope.
turn it into a coop you say?
Steam could be assholes.
They are not.
Best argument for no public trading of the company.
Public trading results in short-sighted planning because investors can always buy/sell stocks and move on to whatever is profitable moment to moment. Private companies plan longer term because the investors benefit from the company’s long-term success. Their profits come from the company’s profits, not the value of the stock.
Make no mistake, Valve is in it for the money. They’re as greedy as anyone. But they operate under a corporate structure that values the long-term viability of its platform.
And they’re still assholes. They are all about lootboxes, DLC, etc. And they take a massive cut of sales. Do Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo do the same? Yeah - but they also provide the hardware platforms. Does Best Buy and Gamestop charge similar fees? Yeah - but they have the overhead of the retail locations. Steam makes stupid money off a download platform and game launcher.
Gabe is a billionaire yacht collector, not your friend. His greed just takes a longer view than that of someone looking to sell their shares from minute to minute.
The biggest thing these days is that they are not hostile towards their customers. The bar is that fucking low.
So Gabe is a billionaire asshole who is not your friend. But unlike other billionaire assholes that aren’t your friend he doesn’t choose to go out of his way to fuck over his customers and his products for a few pennies more. There’s gotta be a term for that.
