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Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" Well yeah. That's what a company is. Companies are

Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" Well yeah. That's what a company is. Companies are also people, and people make decisions, and those decisions are sometimes influenced by more than the mere bottom line. You can't read their minds, and it's the opposite of charitable to assume the worst. Fully agree about the rest though. It certainly makes business sense. But it took around a decade to maneuver themselves into this position, and it's pretty hard to believe they did it all solely for the green. I used to exchange MSN messenger messages with Zoid, one of their most productive Dota 2 programmers. (Boy that sounds like ancient history.) He didn't strike me as a person who was particularly ruthless and mercantile. Just a driven programmer trying to do good.

Aeolun 5y ago
I mean, Valve is still privately owned as far as I know, so wherever it’s going is entirely up to the mind of it’s founders. Edit: Tring to do good, and they made Dota 2?
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  1v1 sf mid scrub The history of dota is pretty fascinating. As someone who worked on Heroes of Newerth, I can vouch that https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is pretty accurate, based on the reactions of all of my coworkers when it came out. So there's some juicy drama for you. It's true that Valve makes decisions based on money. But it's also true that they execute on them fantastically well. Far better than S2 could ever dream to achieve. It was wonderful to have a front row seat to the steamroller. In hindsight I wish I'd relaxed and enjoyed it more.
  - oblio 5y ago
    I can believe almost everything else, and I imagine War3 mod making wasn't the "cleanest" thing ever, but this: > your first realization was that Abdul was a poor designer from here: https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is almost categorically false. I've been playing Dota since... 2004, I was there almost immediately after the Eul/Guinsoo/Neichus stuff. I did research the previous versions a ton, out of curiosity. There's almost no comparison between Icefrog's additions to Dota and what came before. The other versions were brilliant in their concept but generally very poor in their execution. Icefrog added more brilliant concepts but primarily greatly cleaned up Dota mechanics and execution. He took an amateurish mod and made it have professional level execution. Maybe he sucks to work with in a team (really hard to believe, to be honest, considering the development and testing team he built around Dota and the changelogs, OMG, the changelogs; I'd rather think he might suck to work in a on-site team, because his online team management was pretty solid), but criticizing his management/design of Dota for so many years is really silly.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      100% agreed, and I’ve said as much in the past. I winced to forget to qualify my statement with “but this part is nuts.” Thanks for calling that out.
- usrusr 5y ago
  Privately owned and operated means that squeezing out a little more profit hasn't much influence on the owner's wealth. Which happens to be the decisionmaker's wealth. And there's a real possibility that they will care how their money gets to them. But being publicly traded changes everything, suddenly a crowdsourced projection of profits into the future enters the picture, leveraged to the nth degree. This even affects companies still held by a strong founder majority. And when decisions are delegated to the salaried class, incentivized by options and bonus mechanisms, the payoff magnification effect gets even stronger. Suddenly a percentage point change in profits can cause a tenfold change in personal wealth. Or more. When there are tradeoffs to be made between decency and greed, always bet on the public company outdoing the private. It's not a guaranteed win, there are some truly nasty examples of privates, but they are outliers. Publicly traded means nasty by design.
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" I didn't say that I'm not happy for what Valve is doing, but I don't trust any billion dollar tech megacorp like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nintendo, Valve, etc. to have the best interest of the consumer in mind, regardless of how fun their IP is for my entertainment. Pro-consumer actions on their end are always motivated by their internal Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy against their competitors, but ultimately they're not your friends, they're just fighting for your money and marketshare. In the end, you're still just a dollar sign that pads their stocks or bottom line, regardless of some of how pro-consumer some of their actions seem. Yes, everyone here knows a company does things for money, and I'm not knocking Valve for wanting to make money, I'm just saying it's good to be paranoid when billion dollar tech companies are being too generous and benevolent with consumers, and try to think of what their end-game is, as that might turn out to be not be very consumer-friendly in the long run if they become a monopoly.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Yes, and we're not their friends. We'll go elsewhere as soon as we see a better deal. So what?
  - danuker 5y ago
    There is no elsewhere, when you consider network effects. The largest platform has the most to gain, when it makes use of social interaction.
    - schmorptron 5y ago
      Most of the social interaction in the games space happens on discord these days though, and has since about 2016. The only social network effect steam currently has is with game invites, since it's slightly more annoying to join a party of friends via the xbox version of sea of thieves than the steam version, for example.
      - 5y ago
unityByFreedom 5y ago
Agreed. Profit is fine, monopolies are not. It's not a hard line to draw.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  Well seeing as there is little to no consensus on whether certain tech companies have a monopoly or not... I'd say it's a hard line to draw.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    I think this is just because we misuse the word monopoly. Monopolies in tech are pretty rare I think, especially things like online services -- it is pretty hard to completely dominate a market when there are other big tech companies out there and they all dabble in everything. However, tech companies engage in anti-competitive behavior all the time. Unfortunately people want to say "monopoly" when they see anti-competitive behavior, because it sounds cooler. This is quite unfortunate because it leads to the whole "technically not a monopoly" debate, which really misses the point.
    - account42 5y ago
      There is never any 100% monopoly in other sectors either unless it's something government enforced where only one company is allowed to do something. What matters is that a significant amount of consumers do not have a choice of dealing with with the company in question if they want certain types of things. That is true in tech if you define the "type of thing" narrowly enough and is true nowhere if you define it broadly enough. The debate of where you draw the line is independt of the terms used.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games, Spotify has a near-monopoly on music, and both of these are working great for me as a consumer. Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit. I have to work out what platform a show is currently streaming on, and decide whether it's worth paying for that to see the show, and the lineups are constantly changing. Honestly, going back to piracy for video is looking good right now. The GP's statement "piracy is a service problem" is so true. And, unfortunately, to provide the kind of service we want, that means a single platform. I'm utterly uninterested in a world where I have to remember which platform that game was on. I refuse to buy games if they require Origin (or an Xbox account, or in fact creation of an account anywhere). I realise that at some point Steam is probably going to become evil and take advantage of its monopoly position. I hope we can persuade it to stay honest when that time draws near. I don't see any other option - I wouldn't want the government (which government? I live in Germany) controlling the platform either.
spaceisballer 5y ago
Yeah I think the main takeaway for me is that the work they are doing for Linux isn’t being kept only to themselves. Betting on Linux is giving people options. I would love to drop windows all together, and they are making this more of a reality (because the only key thing keeping me on windows is gaming, I can get all my other regular computing just fine on Linux).

Aeolun 5y ago

I mean, Valve is still privately owned as far as I know, so wherever it’s going is entirely up to the mind of it’s founders. Edit: Tring to do good, and they made Dota 2?

sillysaurusx 5y ago
1v1 sf mid scrub The history of dota is pretty fascinating. As someone who worked on Heroes of Newerth, I can vouch that https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is pretty accurate, based on the reactions of all of my coworkers when it came out. So there's some juicy drama for you. It's true that Valve makes decisions based on money. But it's also true that they execute on them fantastically well. Far better than S2 could ever dream to achieve. It was wonderful to have a front row seat to the steamroller. In hindsight I wish I'd relaxed and enjoyed it more.
- oblio 5y ago
  I can believe almost everything else, and I imagine War3 mod making wasn't the "cleanest" thing ever, but this: > your first realization was that Abdul was a poor designer from here: https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is almost categorically false. I've been playing Dota since... 2004, I was there almost immediately after the Eul/Guinsoo/Neichus stuff. I did research the previous versions a ton, out of curiosity. There's almost no comparison between Icefrog's additions to Dota and what came before. The other versions were brilliant in their concept but generally very poor in their execution. Icefrog added more brilliant concepts but primarily greatly cleaned up Dota mechanics and execution. He took an amateurish mod and made it have professional level execution. Maybe he sucks to work with in a team (really hard to believe, to be honest, considering the development and testing team he built around Dota and the changelogs, OMG, the changelogs; I'd rather think he might suck to work in a on-site team, because his online team management was pretty solid), but criticizing his management/design of Dota for so many years is really silly.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    100% agreed, and I’ve said as much in the past. I winced to forget to qualify my statement with “but this part is nuts.” Thanks for calling that out.
usrusr 5y ago
Privately owned and operated means that squeezing out a little more profit hasn't much influence on the owner's wealth. Which happens to be the decisionmaker's wealth. And there's a real possibility that they will care how their money gets to them. But being publicly traded changes everything, suddenly a crowdsourced projection of profits into the future enters the picture, leveraged to the nth degree. This even affects companies still held by a strong founder majority. And when decisions are delegated to the salaried class, incentivized by options and bonus mechanisms, the payoff magnification effect gets even stronger. Suddenly a percentage point change in profits can cause a tenfold change in personal wealth. Or more. When there are tradeoffs to be made between decency and greed, always bet on the public company outdoing the private. It's not a guaranteed win, there are some truly nasty examples of privates, but they are outliers. Publicly traded means nasty by design.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!" I didn't say that I'm not happy for what Valve is doing, but I don't trust any billion dollar tech megacorp like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nintendo, Valve, etc. to have the best interest of the consumer in mind, regardless of how fun their IP is for my entertainment. Pro-consumer actions on their end are always motivated by their internal Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy against their competitors, but ultimately they're not your friends, they're just fighting for your money and marketshare. In the end, you're still just a dollar sign that pads their stocks or bottom line, regardless of some of how pro-consumer some of their actions seem. Yes, everyone here knows a company does things for money, and I'm not knocking Valve for wanting to make money, I'm just saying it's good to be paranoid when billion dollar tech companies are being too generous and benevolent with consumers, and try to think of what their end-game is, as that might turn out to be not be very consumer-friendly in the long run if they become a monopoly.

robertlagrant 5y ago
Yes, and we're not their friends. We'll go elsewhere as soon as we see a better deal. So what?
- danuker 5y ago
  There is no elsewhere, when you consider network effects. The largest platform has the most to gain, when it makes use of social interaction.
  - schmorptron 5y ago
    Most of the social interaction in the games space happens on discord these days though, and has since about 2016. The only social network effect steam currently has is with game invites, since it's slightly more annoying to join a party of friends via the xbox version of sea of thieves than the steam version, for example.
    - 5y ago

unityByFreedom 5y ago

Agreed. Profit is fine, monopolies are not. It's not a hard line to draw.

cinntaile 5y ago
Well seeing as there is little to no consensus on whether certain tech companies have a monopoly or not... I'd say it's a hard line to draw.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I think this is just because we misuse the word monopoly. Monopolies in tech are pretty rare I think, especially things like online services -- it is pretty hard to completely dominate a market when there are other big tech companies out there and they all dabble in everything. However, tech companies engage in anti-competitive behavior all the time. Unfortunately people want to say "monopoly" when they see anti-competitive behavior, because it sounds cooler. This is quite unfortunate because it leads to the whole "technically not a monopoly" debate, which really misses the point.
  - account42 5y ago
    There is never any 100% monopoly in other sectors either unless it's something government enforced where only one company is allowed to do something. What matters is that a significant amount of consumers do not have a choice of dealing with with the company in question if they want certain types of things. That is true in tech if you define the "type of thing" narrowly enough and is true nowhere if you define it broadly enough. The debate of where you draw the line is independt of the terms used.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games, Spotify has a near-monopoly on music, and both of these are working great for me as a consumer. Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit. I have to work out what platform a show is currently streaming on, and decide whether it's worth paying for that to see the show, and the lineups are constantly changing. Honestly, going back to piracy for video is looking good right now. The GP's statement "piracy is a service problem" is so true. And, unfortunately, to provide the kind of service we want, that means a single platform. I'm utterly uninterested in a world where I have to remember which platform that game was on. I refuse to buy games if they require Origin (or an Xbox account, or in fact creation of an account anywhere). I realise that at some point Steam is probably going to become evil and take advantage of its monopoly position. I hope we can persuade it to stay honest when that time draws near. I don't see any other option - I wouldn't want the government (which government? I live in Germany) controlling the platform either.

spaceisballer 5y ago

Yeah I think the main takeaway for me is that the work they are doing for Linux isn’t being kept only to themselves. Betting on Linux is giving people options. I would love to drop windows all together, and they are making this more of a reality (because the only key thing keeping me on windows is gaming, I can get all my other regular computing just fine on Linux).