5 ms·

Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got into games in order to compete

Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got into games in order to compete against his former employer which would suggest to me that this plan has been in motion since before 1996, almost 30 years. At least from my point of view, if I wanted to take on Microsoft, doing what he did for the past 30 years is how I would go about doing that.

frakkingcylons 1y ago
Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge. Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.
- elbear 1y ago
  Yanis Varoufakis?
  - frakkingcylons 1y ago
    Yes he was a visiting professor for like a semester or two.
    - cgio 1y ago
      He was also working for Valve for a while.
      - frakkingcylons 1y ago
        Yes that’s why he and Gabe were speakers at the talk. In game economies were the topic.
      - pdpi 1y ago
        And CCP (EVE Online)
    - yeasku 1y ago
      Yanis basically created steam market and the dota/cs economy
      - wiseowise 1y ago
        No he didn’t. TF2 economy existed long before him and he sure as hell wasn’t “basically created dota/cs economy”.
        andruby 1y ago
        nitpick but Yanis Varoufakis was born in 1961 and TF2 was released in 2007 so he definitely existed first. I do agree that he didn't create the dota/cs economy
        yeasku 1y ago
        He started to work at Valve in March 2012 and steam market was released 9 months later. He created the dota 2 economy and the cs team copied the Dota 2 economy.
    - fulafel 1y ago
      His recent stuff is pretty relevant to tech. Eg https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/category/books/technofeudalism-what-killed-capitalism/ https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/category/books/technofeudalis...
- icemelt8 1y ago
  but games are a niche, nobody in my circle or extended circle plays video games.
  - croon 1y ago
    Windows is a niche too.
  - bccdee 1y ago
    I think you may live in a bubble. By some estimates, the game industry is worth as much as music and film put together
  - devnullbrain 1y ago
    Your bio says you were formerly a game developer?
    - happymellon 1y ago
      Presumably why they are "formerly".
ppseafield 1y ago
I don't think it was explicitly to compete with Microsoft. Gabe explicitly said when the Windows 8 App Store was announced that Valve was going to ensure Microsoft couldn't lock them out of the desktop market. He said Valve benefitted for PC's openness (up until it was threatened). Microsoft also had Games for Windows Live at the time, which provided similar functionality to parts of Steam (friends, multiplayer, voice chat, achievements), so with that plus the App Store, one could easily see it as Microsoft coming for their market. > Mr Newell, who worked for Microsoft for 13 years on Windows, said his company had embraced the open-source software Linux as a "hedging strategy" designed to offset some of the damage Windows 8 was likely to do. > He said the success of Valve, known for its Half Life, Left4Dead and Portal titles, had been down to the open nature of the PC. > "We've been a free rider, and we've been able to benefit from everything that went into PCs and the internet," he told the conference. "And we have to continue to figure out how there will be open platforms." > "There's a strong temptation to close the platform," he said, "because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors' access to the platform, and they say, 'That's really exciting.'" > https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  If I was going to take on Microsoft I would say a lot of things that were not “I’m going to take on Microsoft,” best not to wake the sleeping giant. You can fix a lot of orgs by attacking them. Also I think Valve is set up as a bit of an anti-Microsoft, a flat(ish?) org structure as opposed to the matrix org structure. Having worked at MSFT I was definitely thinking that these people are going to fumble and a getting into position ready to pick up the ball when that happens might be a good strategy - though clearly a long term one.
  - leoc 1y ago
    I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the story in so many of Valve’s early games—Half-Life 1, Portal, Team Fortress 2—is about how corporate work environments are amusingly terrible.

frakkingcylons 1y ago

Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge. Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.

elbear 1y ago
Yanis Varoufakis?
- frakkingcylons 1y ago
  Yes he was a visiting professor for like a semester or two.
  - cgio 1y ago
    He was also working for Valve for a while.
    - frakkingcylons 1y ago
      Yes that’s why he and Gabe were speakers at the talk. In game economies were the topic.
    - pdpi 1y ago
      And CCP (EVE Online)
  - yeasku 1y ago
    Yanis basically created steam market and the dota/cs economy
    - wiseowise 1y ago
      No he didn’t. TF2 economy existed long before him and he sure as hell wasn’t “basically created dota/cs economy”.
      - andruby 1y ago
        nitpick but Yanis Varoufakis was born in 1961 and TF2 was released in 2007 so he definitely existed first. I do agree that he didn't create the dota/cs economy
      - yeasku 1y ago
        He started to work at Valve in March 2012 and steam market was released 9 months later. He created the dota 2 economy and the cs team copied the Dota 2 economy.
  - fulafel 1y ago
    His recent stuff is pretty relevant to tech. Eg https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/category/books/technofeudalism-what-killed-capitalism/ https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/category/books/technofeudalis...
icemelt8 1y ago
but games are a niche, nobody in my circle or extended circle plays video games.
- croon 1y ago
  Windows is a niche too.
- bccdee 1y ago
  I think you may live in a bubble. By some estimates, the game industry is worth as much as music and film put together
- devnullbrain 1y ago
  Your bio says you were formerly a game developer?
  - happymellon 1y ago
    Presumably why they are "formerly".

ppseafield 1y ago

I don't think it was explicitly to compete with Microsoft. Gabe explicitly said when the Windows 8 App Store was announced that Valve was going to ensure Microsoft couldn't lock them out of the desktop market. He said Valve benefitted for PC's openness (up until it was threatened). Microsoft also had Games for Windows Live at the time, which provided similar functionality to parts of Steam (friends, multiplayer, voice chat, achievements), so with that plus the App Store, one could easily see it as Microsoft coming for their market. > Mr Newell, who worked for Microsoft for 13 years on Windows, said his company had embraced the open-source software Linux as a "hedging strategy" designed to offset some of the damage Windows 8 was likely to do. > He said the success of Valve, known for its Half Life, Left4Dead and Portal titles, had been down to the open nature of the PC. > "We've been a free rider, and we've been able to benefit from everything that went into PCs and the internet," he told the conference. "And we have to continue to figure out how there will be open platforms." > "There's a strong temptation to close the platform," he said, "because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors' access to the platform, and they say, 'That's really exciting.'" > https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

cjbgkagh 1y ago
If I was going to take on Microsoft I would say a lot of things that were not “I’m going to take on Microsoft,” best not to wake the sleeping giant. You can fix a lot of orgs by attacking them. Also I think Valve is set up as a bit of an anti-Microsoft, a flat(ish?) org structure as opposed to the matrix org structure. Having worked at MSFT I was definitely thinking that these people are going to fumble and a getting into position ready to pick up the ball when that happens might be a good strategy - though clearly a long term one.
- leoc 1y ago
  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the story in so many of Valve’s early games—Half-Life 1, Portal, Team Fortress 2—is about how corporate work environments are amusingly terrible.