8 ms·

> It’s fiscally irresponsible for company directors to close that door in preference over a hobby emulator, while pretending that it isn’t intended to infringe

by Folcon 3y ago

> It’s fiscally irresponsible for company directors to close that door in preference over a hobby emulator, while pretending that it isn’t intended to infringe on copyright. I'm not sure if this applies in Valve's case, as I understand it, Valve is privately owned and held by Gabe Newell and what he says goes, so really the question is does he want to do this or not?

henriquez 3y ago
Right, Valve is privately owned so they are free to be fiscally irresponsible, but they aren’t. Burning bridges with Nintendo is just bad business.
- me_me_me 3y ago
  Give me a single reason why nintendo would even begin to consider partnering with valve. Nintendo is famous for its closed and closely controlled ecosystem. Partnering with apple to release a mobile game is a bad (outlier) example as nintendo has no capabilities to release their own phone. Why would Nintendo invite/open competition with steam deck? Why would they make it easier to pirate their games and give steam cut on the sales via steam store. All the while nintendo has their own console their own store. Its like apple allowed android store on iOS. Sure they could do it but why would they?
  - lapetitejort 3y ago
    You could have asked this question about Sega in the 90s. Why would Sega ever consider partnering with Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony?? And then the Dreamcast tanked and they pivoted to software only. Other platforms were there for them to port all their games. If Sega had done something more boneheaded than "Sega does what Nintendon't" then Nintendo could have told them to pound sand and they wouldn't have a successful platform on which to save their business. Will Nintendo suffer the same fate? Highly unlikely. The Switch is doing great, the successor will probably do great. But then again, so did the Sega Genesis. There's no need to burn bridges.
    - me_me_me 3y ago
      As a counter argument in one sentence you say > Will Nintendo suffer the same fate? Highly unlikely. In next you suggest not to discount something "Highly unlikely". That's basically a Pascal Wager territory. Building closed off ecosystem is Nintendo's whole business, you making business decisions based on idea Nintendo might upend their whole business is... wasteful?
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        The odds are low, but we're kinda skirting the real question here: What does Valve have to gain by allowing an emulator on the store anyway? It's free so no platform cut, it's open source so it's unlikely to ever be monetizable, and it's legally dubious on top of all that. If this was some billion dollar piece of software like COD I'm sure Valve would fall on the sword like Sony did. But there's literally nothing to gain here except headaches.
        me_me_me 3y ago
        Thats a fair point. One could argue that making easy to install Dolphin is an incentive to sell steam deck. So people can play switch games without having switch
  - easyThrowaway 3y ago
    Nintendo historically has enormous leverage on multiple Japanese publishers and developers. Speaking for previous experience in the music industry, It wasn't uncommon for some A&R or label to become "persona non grata" for personal or "political" (rocking the boat too much with some untouchable manager or artist) reasons and getting the boot from most if not all big publishers and distributors. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was going on in the gaming industry.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    Nintendo had released their games on other platforms in the past. On other consoles and on PC. They do what they deem good for business.
- Teever 3y ago
  I know it's semantics, But I dont think 'financially irresponsible' is the right semantics to use the context. Gaben could put a video out tomorrow of him burning piles of Nintendo merchandise and swearing that Steam will never do business with Nintendo and both Gaben and Valve would be fine. It's hard to conceive of how much money an entity like Valve has and how fast it continues to accumulate. Steve Jobs was notorious for shit listing companies like AMD or Nvidia and it doesn't seem to have been detrimental to Apple whatsoever.
  - wolpoli 3y ago
    > Steve Jobs was notorious for shit listing companies like AMD or Nvidia and it doesn't seem to have been detrimental to Apple whatsoever. The difference is that Apple has alteratives to AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. Whereas the Nintendo products are unique.

by Folcon 3y ago

henriquez 3y ago

Right, Valve is privately owned so they are free to be fiscally irresponsible, but they aren’t. Burning bridges with Nintendo is just bad business.

me_me_me 3y ago
Give me a single reason why nintendo would even begin to consider partnering with valve. Nintendo is famous for its closed and closely controlled ecosystem. Partnering with apple to release a mobile game is a bad (outlier) example as nintendo has no capabilities to release their own phone. Why would Nintendo invite/open competition with steam deck? Why would they make it easier to pirate their games and give steam cut on the sales via steam store. All the while nintendo has their own console their own store. Its like apple allowed android store on iOS. Sure they could do it but why would they?
- lapetitejort 3y ago
  You could have asked this question about Sega in the 90s. Why would Sega ever consider partnering with Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony?? And then the Dreamcast tanked and they pivoted to software only. Other platforms were there for them to port all their games. If Sega had done something more boneheaded than "Sega does what Nintendon't" then Nintendo could have told them to pound sand and they wouldn't have a successful platform on which to save their business. Will Nintendo suffer the same fate? Highly unlikely. The Switch is doing great, the successor will probably do great. But then again, so did the Sega Genesis. There's no need to burn bridges.
  - me_me_me 3y ago
    As a counter argument in one sentence you say > Will Nintendo suffer the same fate? Highly unlikely. In next you suggest not to discount something "Highly unlikely". That's basically a Pascal Wager territory. Building closed off ecosystem is Nintendo's whole business, you making business decisions based on idea Nintendo might upend their whole business is... wasteful?
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      The odds are low, but we're kinda skirting the real question here: What does Valve have to gain by allowing an emulator on the store anyway? It's free so no platform cut, it's open source so it's unlikely to ever be monetizable, and it's legally dubious on top of all that. If this was some billion dollar piece of software like COD I'm sure Valve would fall on the sword like Sony did. But there's literally nothing to gain here except headaches.
      - me_me_me 3y ago
        Thats a fair point. One could argue that making easy to install Dolphin is an incentive to sell steam deck. So people can play switch games without having switch
- easyThrowaway 3y ago
  Nintendo historically has enormous leverage on multiple Japanese publishers and developers. Speaking for previous experience in the music industry, It wasn't uncommon for some A&R or label to become "persona non grata" for personal or "political" (rocking the boat too much with some untouchable manager or artist) reasons and getting the boot from most if not all big publishers and distributors. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was going on in the gaming industry.
- pandaman 3y ago
  Nintendo had released their games on other platforms in the past. On other consoles and on PC. They do what they deem good for business.
Teever 3y ago
I know it's semantics, But I dont think 'financially irresponsible' is the right semantics to use the context. Gaben could put a video out tomorrow of him burning piles of Nintendo merchandise and swearing that Steam will never do business with Nintendo and both Gaben and Valve would be fine. It's hard to conceive of how much money an entity like Valve has and how fast it continues to accumulate. Steve Jobs was notorious for shit listing companies like AMD or Nvidia and it doesn't seem to have been detrimental to Apple whatsoever.
- wolpoli 3y ago
  > Steve Jobs was notorious for shit listing companies like AMD or Nvidia and it doesn't seem to have been detrimental to Apple whatsoever. The difference is that Apple has alteratives to AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. Whereas the Nintendo products are unique.