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Sometimes I wonder what we did to deserve Valve and how long it can possibly last.
by herpdyderp 5mo ago
Sometimes I wonder what we did to deserve Valve and how long it can possibly last.
- seanw444 5mo agoGabe better be immortal.
- wvbdmp 5mo agoHe’s going to die in a fucking scuba diving accident, I have nightmares about it constantly
- nialv7 5mo agoHave you warned Gabe about this
- vablings 5mo agoI highly doubt it for a number of factors. - Most of his dives look to be rec depth - He isn't running any crazy gear like a CCR - He has instant access to a chamber, so any DCS worries are virtually zero - There is no go-itis for him. If weather is bad, he just packs up and sails to somewhere nicer Out of all the rich people hobbies, scuba is about the safest
- dghlsakjg 5mo agoScuba diving is a pretty risky activity on the scale of things that rich people do in their everyday life. Golf and cycling are a lot safer. Scuba fatalities fall into a few buckets, the big two are inexperience/bad decision making, and older folks with health issues (underwater heart attacks/respiratory distress, basically). As a former dive pro, an overweight 63 year old is someone that I would keep a very close eye on while diving. The odds are pretty low, but there is a reason that many life insurance companies exclude scuba divers from their coverage. That said, I'm happy to let him live as dangerously as he wants, he deserves it.
- vablings 5mo agoIt's not that risky Scuba diving is about as dangerous as driving in terms of fatality per 100,000. The mitigation of this risk is different too. Theoretically if you do everything correct in scuba your chance of death is virtually zero which means that your risk profile decreases with experience. Driving does not enjoy the same luxury you could be a perfect driver and get obliterated by a semi-truck running a red light at any time. The most common reason people die while on scuba is running out of air, if you always buddy and you have a bail-out cylinder that should be essentially impossible while rec diving "but there is a reason that many life insurance companies exclude scuba divers from their coverage." They will refuse to cover you outside of rec diving because of all the reasons I just stated
- dghlsakjg 5mo agoThe stats you cited normalize for participants but NOT frequency. The average diver spends several hundred times less time diving than they do driving. Most certified divers dive once or less per year. As I stated, the most common way to die diving is from a heart attack or other health incident according to DAN. Running out of air is a very uncommon cause of death in rec diving absent a primary factor like entanglement. So no, you are absolutely not reducing your chance to 0 by doing everything right. You are eliminating the chance of suffering a death from one of the things that doesn’t kill a lot of divers. An overweight old person doing an activity that stresses your lungs and circulatory system in an unforgiving environment is inherently high risk no matter how thorough their skills and preparation. Double check your health insurance, many exclude rec diving as well. Every single dive instructor has a story of seeing an old guy have a heart attack, myself included (he survived, barely). The only other death I know of besides old guy heart attacks where I worked was a young guy that had a heart attack.
- wtetzner 5mo agoI'm pretty sure just riding in a car is more dangerous.
- dghlsakjg 5mo ago
- benoau 5mo agoHe owns hospital ships as part of his fleet so presumably they are equipped for literally any medical issues that might befall him.
- kgwxd 5mo agoHope Linus isn't on that same expedition.
- BigTTYGothGF 5mo ago> I have nightmares about it constantly There's no nice way to say this, but maybe you need to re-evaluate your relationship with this video game company.
- giobox 5mo agoI really wish the company would talk more about the post-Gabe transition, or at least begin to give us a rough indication of where the company plans to go. Those of us who have been customers over 20 years often have a pretty significant investment in Steam content, and Gabe is getting old.
- ecshafer 5mo agoAFAIK his son has been working there for quite a while and is the heir apparent.
- deafpolygon 5mo agoThey have a vat with brain hookups[0] waiting to place Gabe in, so immortality is nigh. No post-Gabe transition needed. [0]: https://imgur.com/a/2XbM18n https://imgur.com/a/2XbM18n edit: fixed image link
- kgwxd 5mo agoNo company will ever do that. Even if they did, no one on the planet should expect it to play out as described. The whole anti-DRM position is based on the fact promises aren't worth a damn thing.
- giobox 5mo agoPublicly announced succession plans happen fairly regularly, especially for a company as stable as Valve. Tim Cook is 65 and just did so for Apple. The announcement of Ternus was hardly a bolt from the blue, either. Gabe is 63, and there is little to no indications.
- colechristensen 5mo agoI think many more companies would operate like this if acquisition and mergers were much more difficult.
- benoau 5mo agoWe let kids gamble so much money in games that they don't have to nickel and dime the adults.
- franga2000 5mo agoThat's true now, but Valve has been like this since the start, way before skins and microtransactions.
- bitmasher9 5mo agoYou’re ignoring how much of a role the TF2 hats played in pushing microtransaction skins. Steam came out in 2003. TF2 hats came out in 2009. It’s lived in the world of micro transactions way longer than it lived in the before times.
- regularfry 5mo ago2013 rather than 2009, I think? The pyro dropped in 2010, and I'm pretty certain hats came later.
- Polycryptus 5mo agoI'd call crates the beginning, and those came with the Mann-conomy update in 2010.
- georgeecollins 5mo agoI think you are blaming Valve for forces way beyond Valve's control. Valve isn't perfect, but it is a way better steward for PC gaming and PC gamers than any other American tech company would be.
- Cpoll 5mo agoIt's harder to say that when they invented loot crates. Sure everyone's doing it now, and someone else would've done it eventually, but Valve pioneered it. I suppose, yeah, some things would be a lot worse without Steam, so there's that.
- pjmlp 5mo agoUntil the current management retires, as it usually goes.
- ReptileMan 5mo agoIn my experience family held companies do tend to keep their values somewhat intact on succession.
- idiotsecant 5mo agoThis seems like the opposite of almost every family dynasty company that has ever existed. The second generation might keep things on track. The third generation never will.
- tjpnz 5mo agoI'm optimistic provided they continue to be privately held and don't parachute in a professional executive to be CEO after Gabe departs.
- kridsdale1 5mo agoThis is the answer. Enshitification is a requirement of the fiduciary duty of public companies. A private company can stay good forever.
- thrownthatway 5mo agoFiduciary duty doesn’t mean what you think it does. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042915/what-are-some-examples-fiduciary-duty.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042915/what-are-som...
- u_fucking_dork 5mo agoFiduciarily speaking, you don’t know what I think it means
- ZekeSulastin 5mo agoIf your “we” is Australia, you could have implemented consumer protections then sued Valve for ignoring them: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million-in-penalties-for-misrepresenting-gamers-consumer-guarantee-rights https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million...
- thrownthatway 5mo agoThat was 9 years ago. Are they compliant in the Australian market now?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- SXX 5mo agoThey are, but they only implemented proper refunds after being pushed by Australia.
- thrownthatway 5mo agoHow long do you plan on holding that against them?
- SXX 5mo agoI am not holding that against them whatsoever. I just not count this as one of their good deeds for industry because it was done under regulatory pressure.
- HDBaseT 5mo ago[dead]
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoI just wish they made more games than they currently do. Their games are always nicely polished and unique / creative in their own respect.
- coffeecantcode 5mo agoI agree, but I think two factors are at play here: 1) Valve is not in desperate need for capital, Steam and their older games are money printing machines therefore they don’t feel the need to release new games all the time. This is a pro and a con, they don’t feel the need to release same-y, barely iterative titles to make ends meet which means the overall quality of the games we do get is much higher. But at the same time it’s no telling when Valve just decides the juice isn’t worth the squeeze anymore. 2) the games that Valve do release are always a standard deviation above the other games of that similar genre at the time. Their ability to take a mechanic, or an engine, or a combination of the two and meaningfully expand and revolutionize in that space cannot be understated - and as game technology progresses, making similar impacts at that scale takes longer and is much harder than the previous title. Half Life Alyx was such a quantum leap in VR quality and I don’t think it’s talked about enough. Deadlock takes the MOBA genre to a whole new level in terms of gameplay depth and complexity. I think they’re taking their time with titles and they know the predecessors that came before them. For that, I’m willing to wait.
- mghackerlady 5mo agoValve will only be good if it stays privately owned. Good things go to shit as soon as investors become involved
- riffraff 5mo agoI felt the same about early 00s Google. It will probably not last forever.
- Night_Thastus 5mo agoThey're a private company. Not all private companies are good, but all public ones inevitably turn terrible.
- lysace 5mo agoThere are some counter-examples of companies that have been publicly traded for a long-ish time and still aren't "terrible": Berkshire Hathaway, Novo Nordisk, ASML, TSMC, Saab, Atlas Copco, Texas Instruments. (Perhaps not that many from the US though, relatively speaking? Not sure TBH.)
- benbristow 5mo agoPrivately owned company, GabeN is getting on a bit now, he does have a son mind, we'll see what happens later on.
- uncircle 5mo agoHe has three, that's a good redundancy plan.
- lexicality 5mo agoso he can count to three after all, interesting
- artursapek 5mo agoValve practically has a monopoly on PC gaming, I think they're pretty fat and happy too ;D
- fareesh 5mo agoson of gaben may live upto the legend, otherwise it ends with him
- robotswantdata 5mo agoDon’t mention the cs case gambling
- noncoml 5mo agoThat's what you get when a company is not public and makes more money than the owner(s) can spend. *Owner must be a decent human being
- notnmeyer 5mo agoi hope i’m wrong, but probably as long as gabe does.
- artyom 5mo agoIt's the other way around. Valve is the company where we spend a lot of money and they deserve it. The rest is companies that trick people into giving them money (battlepass! lootboxes!) and they don't deserve it. People often forget that consumers as a whole are the ones holding the power, and the sad part is that rewarding a company with a good product with your money stopped being the business model and it's now the exception.
- xingped 5mo agoI don't disagree with most of your statement, but Valve has and continues to make lots of money from loot boxes in both CS and TF2. Just want to point out that they do do stuff like that too.
- stevehawk 5mo agopeople are still buying tf2 loot boxes?
- xingped 5mo agoThe lootboxes drop as a normal course of gameplay, you buy keys to open them. People still play TF2 so presumably some still open boxes. It's also the base unit of trading for high value items.
- alifeinbinary 5mo agoI agree that turning CS into a casino wasn’t a tasteful choice on Valve’s part but as someone who has played CS at least once a week for decades I can understand that they needed to find a way to cover server costs somehow. I paid $15 dollars for CS:GO and have clocked 4,500 hours in the game. I don’t gamble but I’d rather those who choose to fund the server costs than Valve charge a monthly subscription to everyone. Skin sales alone would have accomplished this without having to have loot boxes and keys and that’s where I think Valve went overboard with it. Also, for a game that provides so much revenue I expect better anti-cheat and more VAC bans, which are rare.
- denkmoon 5mo agoA triumph of private ownership and stewardship over publicly traded corporate governance.
- sourcegrift 5mo ago~30% commission on each game
- taneq 5mo agoI was recently saying to a friend and fellow fan (after getting a Steam Deck, for work purposes obviously) that the stuff Valve does is absolutely how “f#%k you” money should be used.
- JXavierH 5mo agoI know. Long live Gabe.
- sonofhans 5mo agoValve is what our culture deserves from all corporations. The fact that it seems like such an outlier is an indictment.
- gyomu 5mo agoOur culture only deserves what we feel strongly enough to enshrine and enforce as law. Americans like to clown on the EU, but consumer protections and privacy laws don’t magically pop up on their own, and businesses don’t all magically act in the consumers’ best interests unless they are legally made to.
- Petersipoi 5mo agoThe number of big innovations out of the EU in the past 25 years also rounds to 0. Don't fool yourself into believing the two things are unrelated.
- everyone 5mo agoStill essentially Steam is a DRM system + another invasive program running on your pc, that absolutely doesnt need to, in addition to the game you want. .. I vote with my wallet, I avoid buying anything from Steam. Gog and Itch.io are where I go out of my way to spend my money. Itch.io is amazing! All the coolest games are there + the developer experience is about a million times better than Steam, just sensible and utilitarian. Steam dev experience is a kafkaesque nightmare. .. Back in 2000 because of these features Steam was the epitome of digital evil. it's just that all other tech companies (google, apple, MS, sony, samsung, etc.) have become so supremely evil over time, whereas Valve has remained at its year 2000 level of evil and so now seems positively angelic compared to its peers. ... I will also note that Valve probably are one of the biggest heralds of the year of the Linux desktop just by doing tonnes of work making games run in it well and hassle free. The biggest barrier to entry for Linux had long been that games dont work, thats basically solved now. So they get a bonus point for that.. Steam is still filth I dont want or need on my system tho.
- account42 5mo ago> I will also note that Valve probably are one of the biggest heralds of the year of the Linux desktop just by doing tonnes of work making games run in it well and hassle free. The biggest barrier to entry for Linux had long been that games dont work, thats basically solved now. So they get a bonus point for that.. And that's not charity either. Valve realized they needed to hedge their bets when Microsoft threatened to fuck them over with the Windows Store. Linux (or more specifically, SteamOS) is their backup plan.
- vjk800 5mo agoIt's just due to one person (GabeN) holding majority of the stock and choosing to run the company this way. Gabe will retire or die at some point and then anything might happen.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- sevenzero 5mo agoProbably more CEOs should go diving regularly. Valve will stay good as long as Gabe is president. I fear it'll go down the drain once he leaves.
- muse900 5mo agoReally? I mean are we forgetting about kids gambling lootboxes in CS and Valve doing nothing to regulate it? I mean yes compared to the rest of the gaming companies that are long way gone like Blizzard etc, Valve seems to be the better, but its not like they are saints... It always amazes me how us as people forget the past (which is not even far away).
- cultofmetatron 5mo agoventure capital are the real enemies here. valve has stayed out of that game which is why they've managed to focus on delivering value to their users. as soon as venture capital gets involved, investors are now the customer and the customers are effectivly the product.
- blitzar 5mo ago> what we did to deserve Valve Privately held company > how long it can possibly last Till VC's or IPO day
- fnands 5mo agoYeah, it seems that it is much easier to avoid enshittification when you are publicly held (and print money)
- scrollop 5mo agoExcept for their strong arm tactics forcing software companies to not be able to sell their games cheaper on other platforms: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2g1md0l23o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2g1md0l23o
- halter73 5mo agoNot that I defend all of Valve’s business practices, but last I heard, you’re only prevented from sell games cheaper on other platforms if the thing you’re selling is Steam keys. AFAIK, this restriction doesn’t apply if you’re distributing via a different market place. If that’s true, that seems fair since you’re relying on Valve’s infrastructure to support the sale.
- artyom 5mo agoIs that a thing anymore? Humble Bundle 100% does both, sells games cheaper and redeemable through Steam keys, and has been doing so for many years.
- atomicnumber3 5mo agoHumble bundle might have a deal with them, given the charitable nature and also how long-running it is.
- ubercore 5mo agoDropping half life is the biggest sin, and I will never forgive them.
- kitsune1 5mo ago[dead]