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Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "
by levocardia 10mo ago
Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"
- TulliusCicero 10mo agoPeople complain about the gambling/loot box stuff, and yeah there's legit ethical concerns there. But overall Valve just seems straightforwardly less shitty towards the consumer than other major companies in their space, by a long shot.
- asacrowflies 10mo agoThey even seem to be on of the rare companies that recognized the issues of this and massively pulled themselves BACK from these dark patterns. They seem to have major restraint and working to undo the evil..... imagine if a Activision blizzard had something like the steam market place for cards and gifts..... They would be full face in the cocaine to make it all WORSE and more egregious
- avhception 10mo agoWe really shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good here. Of course they have their faults, but I'll take Valve over any of the other players in their market all day every day without even thinking twice. EDIT: You're absolutely right, is what I'm trying to say.
- haunter 10mo ago>They even seem to be on of the rare companies that recognized the issues of this and massively pulled themselves BACK from these dark patterns ??? They didn't All the 3rd party trading and gambling sites are up and running on the Steam API. They didn't change anything at all
- nialv7 10mo agoValve is estimated to make $16.2 billion from Steam alone in 2025 [0], and CS:GO loot boxes only netted them ~1bn in 2023 [1] (and CS:GO player count is only slightly higher now compared to 2023, so I expected the income number is similar). Why don't they just take a 6% pay cut and make sure there is nothing to criticize them about :/ [0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-makes-almost-usd50-million-per-employee-raking-in-more-cash-per-person-than-google-amazon-or-microsoft-gaming-giants-350-employees-on-track-to-generate-usd17-billion-this-year https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-mak... [1]: https://csgocasetracker.com/blog/2023-Year-Review https://csgocasetracker.com/blog/2023-Year-Review
- jimbob45 10mo agoTo be fair, they may have just wrecked the CS lootbox economy permanently.
- ceedan 10mo agoThey need to keep wrecking it. Skins should just be fixed cost items.
- bigyabai 10mo agoDisagreed. Games like Fortnite and League of Legends went down this road and ended up at even more unfathomable $500 microtransactions. The only issue with skin trading is that people will take it more seriously than it is, which is a problem with all cosmetic systems.
- ceedan 10mo agoThere are huge gambling cultures around skins. All kinds of theft and scamming. There is no "only issue". There are tons of issues
- internet101010 10mo agoNah. Digital items should be transferable, similar to physical gacha like Pokemon cards.
- xbmcuser 10mo agoThe major reason is they are a private company with good business. The don't have a need to keep adding to shareholder value ie stock price instead just need to generate a yearly income. We have reached a point where the shareholders are a companies real customers and that is who they all try to attract.Everytthing else a company does is just to attract shareholders
- nish__ 10mo agoExactly. Going public is like leaving your baby to be raised by wolves.
- londons_explore 10mo agoIf you IPO but the founders still have more than half the voting rights, you can fully ignore the public in all your decision making and there is nothing the other shareholders can do.
- consp 10mo agoCan't they sue you out of control? Fiduciary duty and all?
- londons_explore 10mo agoIf you employed your cousin on a huge wage, probably yes. But if you're just running the company 'badly' (in the shareholders eyes), probably no.
- triceratops 10mo agoFiduciary duty means "put the shareholders' interests above yours". Not "make the shareholders more and more money no matter what".
- triceratops 10mo agoOnly kind of. The most obvious examples are big tech companies such as Meta or Alphabet. But they pay their employees in RSUs. If the stock price falls employees make less money and can be lured away.
- MattDaEskimo 10mo agoLet's be honest about this current situation. Valve pushing for Linux gaming is for survival, not charity. Windows is closing in on them: stricter kernel access (tougher time for anti-cheat) Encouraging users to use the app store, or more accurately: discouraging users to install from binary They threaten Valve's business model, and Valve is responding with proton & SteamOS
- eecc 10mo agoWhy is it though. Just release a SteamOS with Secure Boot enabled and you’re done. It’s really simple
- sheepscreek 10mo agoYour argument doesn’t make any sense. What does this have to do with supporting Arm chips? It’s not like AMD and Intel are waging a war against Valve. If anything Steam helps them by strengthening the PC gaming market, leading to higher CPU/GPU sales.
- lallysingh 10mo agoSlowly getting their stuff independent of wintel gives a lot of flexibility. And the big gaming market's on phones / tablets. A steam controller could find itself paired to an iPad running steam in a year or two.
- Miraste 10mo agoWe're too far into the grip of monopolies for that. Apple would never let a full version of Steam run on iPads. Google wouldn't either. I think more ARM Valve hardware is likely.
- sheepscreek 10mo agoThe only play I see here is a legitimate Valve console to take on XBOX and Sony. Plus Arm on a Steam Deck would improve the battery life considerably (assuming they are able to integrate with some powerful GPU solution).
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoI still put them in the same box as Apple until they fix the price parity and/or adjust their cut. Even Apple is finally having their hand forced there. They are relatively better, but we still need to keep monopolies accountable. Valve is just smart enough to remember what worked 30-40 years ago compared to the rampant greed these days.
- LtWorf 10mo agoThe difference is that you aren't forced to buy a game from steam.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoYou're not forced to buy an Iphone. You also weren't forced back in the day to use Internet explorer. We should remember our history so we aren't doomed to repeat it.
- LtWorf 10mo agoYou are forced to have a phone and there's only 2 bad choices.
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoTechnically 3. Not much different from the Desktop situation. Just replace Microsoft with Google because Microsoft had the grace to bow out early. Similar to desktop, I choose the middle ground between true freedom and walled garden. At least you Can de-googlefy 95% of Android. More than you can de-microsoft Windows.
- LtWorf 10mo ago3?
- michaelbuckbee 10mo agoEven there, didn't they recently make some changes to the CS go skins ecosystem to devalue much of the aftermarket sales.
- enedil 10mo agoDon't forget GoG which is an alternative game store with a strong anti-DRM stance (all the games there are DRM free).
- 5d41402abc4b 10mo agoSteam makes installing windows games easy. With GoG i would need to setup wine myself.
- M95D 10mo ago^ The essence of why we're doomed.
- LinXitoW 10mo agoBecause Steam gives customers useful features that are good? GoG should also directly support Linux.
- M95D 10mo ago> GoG should also directly support Linux. GOG is an online shop. It shouldn't support anything but browsers, bank cards and download managers.
- monerozcash 10mo agoThe charitable interpretation here is that GOG should ship linux binaries, whether native or wine-wrapped installers. This would be a perfectly reasonable ask despite GOG being a webshop that only supports browsers.
- M95D 10mo agoWine wrapped installers for ... which distro? They ship a shell script that extracts the linux game binaries to user's home dir. Works on all linuxes. GOG ships what's available. If game devs never made any linux binaries, then there won't be any linux binaries. What? You expected GOG to make a linux port of the game? Games with wine don't require any special installers. Just open the wine desktop and install the windows game from there, like any other windows program you use in Linux. If you think that's too hard, then get a PS/Xbox and see my original reply, the one with the "we're doomed". BTW, you can set up your linux to directly execute Windows binaries using binfmt_misc, but that may also be too hard for some...
- anilakar 10mo agoWhen you're skimming 30 % off worldwide PC game purchases you can afford to do that.
- kryogen1c 10mo ago> gambling/loot box [...] legit ethical concerns I've never understood this argument. Dopaminergic and attention pathways/systems are under full assault from every angle, and parents give their 6 year olds phones, and people take a moral stance against... loot boxes? Thats like taking a moral stance against flavors in alcohol. I kinda think youre missing the point.
- renewiltord 10mo agoThat's more a property of the community than of the company. If the community were differently inclined then the comments would be about how Valve is making money by addicting children to gambling and so on and so forth.
- txdv 10mo ago"We will make linux a viable gaming before we increment that number to 3!" But I totally agree, I still install windows for gaming on my machine, but it looks like that for my purpose of gaming I can stay with Linux (I play mainly older games or indie games).
- YmiYugy 10mo agoI have plenty of complaints about them. The highly addictive gambling mechanics in their games, the extortionate cut afforded them by their dominant market position or the very rough UX in many parts of the Steam client (takes forever to startup, shows pop up ads on startup, is quite the resource hog, the store that is a pretty poorly optimized website and a lot of cruft in the less well trodden areas). But they do make some very nice open source contributions.
- eggsome 10mo agoAds can be disabled in the settings.
- estimator7292 10mo agoNot an excuse. It is not okay to abuse someone just because they can ask you to stop.
- squigz 10mo agoDescribing those 'ads' as "abusive" is quite a stretch. It's like going to the store page itself and complaining they're telling you about products they sell. Particularly when you can easily disable them. No other game client I know of offers that.
- matheusmoreira 10mo agoAdvertising in general is absolutely abusive. I like to think of advertising as mind rape: it forcibly inserts brands and trademarks into your mind while you're trying to read or watch something. On the other hand, I don't classify what Steam is doing as advertising. When I open the Steam store, it's because I want to see the games it has on sale. It's not advertising, it's the exact information I asked for. It would have been advertising had it kept spamming me with game deals while I'm watching a film or something.
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- Waterluvian 10mo agoIncentives happen to be aligned on this part. That’s all.
- ralusek 10mo agoIt genuinely makes me see the value in private companies. Public companies must grow. They're accountable to so many different interests. Private companies can be happy sitting at whatever profit level they want. They can take time to tinker on something that they care about. If it doesn't pay off, that's fine. I think I would say it this way: private companies can be good or bad, but public companies must ultimately become bad.
- citizenpaul 10mo agoIts scary that nowdays a company is simply doing "good business" and it is so unusual that its worth praise.
- chaostheory 10mo agoI strongly feel it’s because Valve is not a publicly traded company where they’ll eventually give up their values to meet Wall Street analyst quarterly targets.
- andy_ppp 10mo agoThis is because it’s still majority owned by the original founder(s).
- romanovcode 10mo agoIt's kind of scary that in a way future of gaming is in the hands of one man (who is getting old btw). When Gabe is gone I cringe thinking MS will do everything in their power to buy Valve and turn it to complete shit couple years later.
- niek_pas 10mo agoThis really makes me wonder if publicly traded companies are just a bad idea.
- breakbread 10mo agoFWIW Epic is also privately owned.
- bluescrn 10mo agoIt's an interesting case study. They're essentially another 'App Store middleman' raking in a huge 30% cut for selling games digitally. But they do enough really good stuff to keep both gamers and developers generally very happy.
- js8 10mo agoPeople are mostly perfectly happy with authoritarianism as long as their lives are improving.
- jama211 10mo agoThis doesn’t apply because valve doesn’t have a monopoly.
- jeroenhd 10mo agoThe difference between Valve and the other app stores with an actual user base (i.e. not Microsoft's Windows Store) is that PC gaming isn't tied to a single app store. To be fair, neither is Android, but Steam actually gets real competition from GOG. The Amazon App Store was never really popular and the Epic Store doesn't seem to contain anything interesting if you're not playing one or two popular Epic games. Small projects can use itch.io. Large companies build their own launchers. With the Steam Deck and now the upcoming new Steam hardware, that may change, depending on how hard Valve makes it to integrate with Steam's UI. Right now, Heroic works fine, from desktop mode, but if a company like GOG would like to actually take part in SteamOS, they'd need some kind of integration capability. So far, nobody but Valve seems to have even considered supporting Steam and Linux' market share is small enough that it barely affects the gaming market, but if their Steam Machine explodes in popularity and they make mistakes, they can end up on many people's bad side just as well.
- Sophira 10mo agoI feel like many other companies would have bought out the technology and then applied for patents to stop anybody else from developing similar things. This is what you get when you go completely the opposite direction, and it's wonderful.