Honestly, the secret is not being a publicly traded company. All the others have to make the shareholders happy while steam just does steam. If the line doesn't have to constantly go up you can pretty much do whatever you want as long as you're still making profit. And if what you're doing is already working you don't need to add gimmicks or advertisements to milk it as much as you can just to appease the shareholders.
Being a private company has allowed Valve to take some really big swings. Steam Deck is paying off handsomely, but it came after the relative failure of the Steam Controller, Steam Link and Steam Machines. With their software business stable, they can allow themselves to take big risks on the hardware side, learn what does and doesn't work, then try again. At a publically traded company, CEO Gabe Newell probably gets forced out long before they get to the Steam Deck.
Agreed, but if I'd had the money at the time, I absolutely would've jumped at the steam machine and steam controller. I want a modern one now more than ever. If it weren't for parts getting shittier and pricier, I'd probably build one myself this spring/summer and figure out which distro would be best for it. My steam deck is great and I want basically the exact same thing but more powerful at the cost of not being a handheld. Bonus points if I can easily remote play that new steam machine through my steam deck, which I think is a reasonable expectation. And I'd love to run an HDMI out splitter to easily swap between using it as a PC at my desk or using it as a console from my couch.
You are right, but let me add that Gabe knows that being tied to Windows is not a good idea, as he worked there and understood that they would block Steam if they could.
Valve supporting 'their' alternative OS, away from Microsoft (and Apple) or any other direct competitor in gaming is the only way to survive.
It's not like they pour all that money into Linux from the goodness of their heart. They need their own OS just as much as the Linux desktop community needs some stable funding.
Given how Valve lets children gamble with skins, I'm not sure how moral that company really is.
Linux was also the only way to make sure Valve was viable long term. Eventually Windows was going to have an Xbox store built in and would've basically been a monopoly on PC gaming, cutting out steam altogether. I think windows now sort of does have that, but it can't compete with Steam quite yet.
The steam controller didn't really fail, but the patent fight was a mess that took way too long (much too late disqualified patent over paddle buttons). That sucked a lot of energy out of the project. Don't forget the steam deck kept those touch pads (although with a different design)!
Steam Link IMHO also wasn't bad, but there didn't seem to be much interest in it then. (interestingly enough I think it could be recreated today in a Chromecast-like form factor)
Stream machines was definitely a big mess however, there just wasn't enough interest, too limited compatibility, the machines just wasn't versatile enough for average Joe to pay for one.
Unlike companies like Google or Microsoft, whose products are never disappointing!
And also not be backed by venture capital firms expecting to make infinite profits. Private or Public, if the company shareholder's only goal is to continue to receive 10% gains on their investment after already making back 20x their principal, they'll squeeze the company for all it's worth.
Publicly traded companies mean that the people who invested get a say in how the business is run. Those same people are typically riding the success of other people's decisions and have no idea how to not fuck up. So they demand the company make stupid fucking choices or the CEO will be replaced by someone who will listen.
The trick is to remove the power of the board to remove the CEO and keep them as advisors instead of drivers. The CEO should cook and if they drive the business into the ground, that's what happens. Businesses need to fail because otherwise the wrong people end up leading.
Businesses need to fail because otherwise the wrong people end up leading.
When businesses fail, their competitors buy their assets, employees, customer bases, and get bigger. Keep playing that a few more rounds and you get a monopoly that can and will prevent or buy new entrants. Then anyone including the wrong people in the industry enter this one company because that's the only company in this industry.
This isn't an argument against letting businesses fail. It's an argument to show that the game of competition doesn't produce stable competitive environment in the long run. Instead it's a temporary stage that some markets exist in on the way to consolidation. You can find countless examples for this around us. And therefore letting businesses fail through competition isn't a long term solution to these problems.
Honestly, the secret is not being a publicly traded company.
Valve fortune doesn't come from not being traded publicly. They built a nearly monopoly on pc videogames with their walled garden proprietary third party launcher.
Valve isn't a walled garden. They allow other apps to be launched through their app and devs can sell steams key on other platforms.
It is still a mega corp, but trying to attack it from the walled garden angle is pretty dumb.
Does nothing? DOES NOTHING?! He spent the last few years ripping Microsoft a new a@@hole, rendering their operating system meaningless for gamers! ..but nice meme
Fun fact many don't know, Gabe helped create the first versions of Windows and claims he learned more at Microsoft than he ever did elsewhere (at the time). So in a way, he's transcended Windows, vs ripping it apart.
Just my two cents but as others have said, not being publically traded helps a lot. The focus on short term benefits that come with shareholders stops "master plans" when they come with mistakes. Learning from relative failures, like the steam controller and the like, ultimately contributes to major successes like the steam deck. Being able to stay committed to improving the software experience over time, instead of killing the product when it didn't immediately succeed, is fairly rare in the tech industry. And in all honesty, it would be better if they released a polished profuct, but being committed to it made it a success.
I feel like the pressure to have a majorly successful product day one means that smaller companies can't innovate the way they want to, so they have to find other ways to produce revenue. Huge companies, like Apple can afford to do both but still stumble, like with the vision pro. Maybe it'll be a success, but for now its not great and iteration makes it more difficult to maintain the original vision.
eh, kinda think strapping a monitor to your face just isn't the future movies seem to think it should be
Yeah, Apple was able to fall on their faces with the Lisa but still get to the Macintosh and greatness.
You can either be publicly traded and let greedy shareholders sell things for parts or you can have private ownership and pray to God that they're benevolent. There has to be another option, surely. Maybe one where Valve becomes employee-owned with a trust/foundation backing it once Gabe dies?
I’m not quite sure they have “done nothing”. They have made a digital storefront that other storefronts strive for, they have help with Linux compatibility with windows only games, have released a few bits of awesome hardware every now and then. I think this is what happens when you are not beholden to shareholders and the mantra “make line go up at all costs”
"Don't interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."
Private company with long-term strategy VS public company chasing short-term profits to pump stock prices for shareholders.
That's the primary reason I abhor the stock market. It no longer works for the creator/owner or the customers at all. It simply feeds the greed of the wealthy (special call-out to private equity here).
Yeah, the flaw there is that money can flow into and out of the stock market basically instantly, so you always have to manage their expectations to make sure your price doesn't crash.
You know sometimes I actually straight up FORGET that Steam is run by the same company that created Half-Life?
They:
- identified a gradient of human wants
(Video games exist; I want them on my computer) - Created a vector for that want to be satisfied
(Digital distribution that conveys the games I want to my computer) - Stayed the FUCK OUT OF THE WAY
When you do something well, people don't notice you've done anything at all.
They simply did what everyone else refused to do, get out of their own way.
I think the key was that Steam wasn't created to make money, but to solve problems they themselves had, like "How do we get new versions of Counter Strike out to all these players?"
Then as Valve wasn't the only company having these problems, the solution could easily be sold to others.
If the other companies really wanted to crack Steam's near-monopoly, the solution would be to tackle the problems associated with not having all your games on Steam. Work together on a open-source launcher supporting all stores, similar to GOG Galaxy. First make something useful that tackles an unsolved problem, then you can make money off it when it becomes successful.
Instead they go in just trying to make a buck, and end up just being worse versions of Steam.
That ended up being a bit of a rant, but I'm frustrated at their shortsighted market strategies :p
- identified a gradient of human wants
'Not sucking'
Guy owns how many yachts? I think Gabe sucks personally.
Eh. He's a human being. I hadn't heard about his fleet.
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
It seems nearly impossible for a person to be billionaire loaded and not make some irresponsible purchases. Is there anyone with that kind of money we should be highlighting as a role model instead?
Being a private company, it's what it is called
Wu wei is a polymorphic, ancient Chinese concept expressing an ideal practice of "inaction", "inexertion" or "effortless action",[a][1][2] as a state of personal harmony and free-flowing, spontaneous creative manifestation.
Ancient Chinese philosophy has an answer for everything man
They had some thinkers back then for sure
I can't really get my head around why people dislike Gabe Newell. As best I can tell, he's been a fantastic steward for Steam.
Gabe Newell has a net worth of $9.5 billion and there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. Steam is great and as long as the company behaves well there's no reason not to use it, but billionaires are not your friends.
Just wait till he dies and the next person in charge decides to go public to make a quick buck. That'll begin the immediate enshitification of Steam. How many years do we got till he croaks? Ten? Fifteen? Better hope we have a better alternative before then.
A very typical arc for innovation is that the first organizational goal is getting people to buy it, then the next goal is getting them to keep buying it again and again. The original visionaries who were trying to solve a problem tend to lose interest by then and drop out, and the money weasels completely take over. New versions are released on a marketing schedule regardless of whether they're necessary, and the thing begins to suck progressively more and more until some new player shows up to solve that problem.
Rinse and repeat.
doesnt gabe already do basically nothing though? afaik there are other people managing valve and he only acts as valve's face
also theyd have to be extremely stupid to start enshittification when they already have the best ways to monetize games (skins in cs2, hats in tf2, etc)
im not saying its not possible, im just a very optimistic person
A massive, massive astroturfing campaign Epic Games paid for in hopes of tarnishing Valve and Gabe Newell's reputation to try and bolster their failure of a shop ecosystem.
Unfortunately, it worked, because there are people on the net who don't remember the and days before steam, or even the initial versions of steam that people had Actual problems with, and not just made up ones.
Ah, so that's who this guy is. Thanks! Tbh I had no clue and thought it might be George R. R. Martin.
Some people hate all rich people regardless of what they have gotten due to their work.
We are on lemmy, a decentralized and open source platform. Steam is closed as much as reddit is.
Promoting gambling to kids and use the profits to buy multiple mega yachts is peak scum.
You can't become a billionaire ethically. Steam has a pretty big market for lootboxes and cs skins gambling is pretty widespread.
I have a mixed feeling about Gabe and Valve.
While I am insanely grateful for proton (even if it was strategically important for them, they didn't do it out of kindness of heart), some other stuff disturb me:
- Valve being so lenient on CS2 skin gambling, hurting the young people
- A steam account being un-inheritable, making you defacto a tenant of your games
- The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs
- Gabe spending his money on multiple mega yachts, like every asshole billionaire, instead of making the world a better place
- Gabe claiming to be a libertarian, like Elon and other pieces of shit
- The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs
Sigh. Here we go again. I'll just copy one of my older comments about that attitude.
Steam is not a parasitic middle man, it is a collection of services that would have to be provisioned and operated by the developer otherwise. The 30% cut pays for:
- A massive infrastructure to store and deliver the game and its updates, worldwide, and at an acceptable bandwidth that Valve operates
- A storefront that enables monetizing the game
- The audience and discoverability that would not exist otherwise
- The Steam API, achievements, cloud saves
- The client itself, content management, validation, and Linux compatibility tools
- Network and operational security
- Also keep in mind that Steam and its services are operated by experts. A game developer would have to hire the experts or get training.
If the revenue from the cut exceeds the operational costs: it's called profitability, not theft. The world doesn't run on good vibes.
Yeah you're of course right, they are not a charity and shouldn't have to provide their service for free.
I expressed myself too quickly (the rage!). What I meant is the this cut of 30% is fucking predatory, mafia or middle-age money lender style. You get one third of the rewards of my efforts just for delivering my product? And don't talk about promotion because this store is now stuffed with too many games for visibility.
You can argue "but this is it the standard rate of the industry". Well it is predatory everywhere else and I hate Google and Apple as much for it.
A cut of 10% would be more humane. Or whatever to reach a "normal" profitability. But now the discussion becomes complex because we don't have the concrete numbers.
What is sure, is that it is possible without pain to take way less than 30%. This is something EGS got right, even if I dislike them for many other things (Epic and Tim Sweeney).
The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs
This is a pretty spicy take. Let's consider two possibilities:
-
Game devs choose to distribute independently, and sell their game for $20. They sell 100,000 copies and make $2 million in revenue, and keep the entire $2 million.
-
Game devs choose to distribute via Steam, promote it with a 50% off sale, it goes to the Steam front page, sells 500,000 copies at only $10 each, for a total $5 million in revenue. Steam takes $1.5 million and the devs take $3.5 million.
In scenario 2 the devs make 75% more than in scenario 1. Did Valve steal from the game devs?
Obviously Valve and the developer collaborated to steal money from the consumers who wouldn't have bought the game without the promotion.
to make sure: /s
-
A steam account being un-inheritable, making you defacto a tenant of your games
Can’t you just give your kids your steam password ? How would they notice ?
Yes you can workaround it. But this is still a society right they forbid you. And who can say that in 2100 they won't implement a cleanup job that lock all accounts that are over 100 years old ? 🤪
I didn’t knew about he claiming to be a libertarian. Rothbard must be turning over in his grave.
Here's the thing - Theoretically we shouldn't give a shit about his political leanings and we don't have to, because he and his company deliver a good service. I can privately think he's another asshole libertarian tech bro whose only guiding principle is "everyone should be able to do what I want, but only some people should have the money to do those things", but it doesn't change anything about Steam or Half-Life 3.
I love Valve for a lot of things but I'll never forget that they spearheaded some of the most predatory microtransactions in the industry (loot boxes and battle passes) and were happy to help Bethesda try to sell mods until players raised a huge stink.
Not to mention his insane Porsche collection, yeah he's just another billionaire
Valve ruined my favourite game (dota) by flooding the game with ridiculous cosmetics that even change particle effects with no way to disable any of this
There's nothing wrong with having money or expensive hobbies. It's not like he's collecting Senators or buying himself a seat in the Oval Office
Don't ask TF2 player how they feel about this meme
TF2 released in 2007
I mean it's true for TF2 also, overwatch killed itself lol
They did the bare minimum of banning bots so TF2 has been going pretty great recently. I think I've encountered 1 or 2 bots in the last 2 weeks and I'm pretty sure those were just blatant cheaters and not actually bots
They were not liked at first, but they've spent enough time making money while not pissing people off that they are doing far better than every public company who must find a reason to piss people off to be more profitable.
They've been able to use that time to "cook". Valve time has been known to be within its own dimension, but from that we got Linux to be just click start and play for 90% of games like Windows, and with the Steamdeck a powerful, comfortable, DIY-able handheld PC gaming device.
Idk. With that camera setup I imagine myself on a black leather sofa with a plain white wall behind it.
Gabe , what kind of movie are we making? Gaben?
You're gonna want to avoid looking down the lens of that "camera", lol
Someone hasn't played TF2 lol
Half life 3 : ReLoaded
You'd think it wouldn't be that hard for publishers with billions of dollars to hire enough competent devs for enough time to make a halfway decent storefront, especially when they don't even have to reinvent the wheel on a lot of UX and marketing research that's already been done for them by Steam existing as long as it's had.
That none of them have even come close to that is a monument to their incompetence.
Large companies do not generally innovate. Their internal inertia prevents them from successfully creating new things. Also the larger a company gets, the more layers of brainless MBA parasites latch on to suck them dry.
Large companies rely on purchasing innovation by buying up a never ending stream of smaller companies. They then take the ideas/products and launch them to a wider market.
Steam has remained small by rejecting massive buyout offers. This has allowed them to remain innovative.
Ultimately it's a slow and steady strategy. There goal is long term profitability, not short term gains. In the long term, the best strategy is not to piss off your customers.
The advantage of this is that it can snowball to impressive levels. At least until a exec with more education than brains does a pump and run on it. A mistake steam seems to know to avoid.
I'm not looking forward to what happens to steam post-gaben. I expect a stupid successor to IPO and fuck it all up.
That makes me nervous as well. Hopefully, there are enough people involved to know not to kill the golden goose for a quick buck.
He was the first to make something and its extremely hard to compete vs the entrenched giant. Also he was the only one fighting for PC gamers so we had to accept the abuse or get no games.
Yep.
And it's especially difficult to compete with the entrenched giant when that giant actually doesn't suck while some of the storefronts going up against it absolutely do, both in features and as toxic companies.
His plan isn't based off trying to squeeze blood from stones, it's to sell some video games. Not a very capitalist mindset, but there you have it.
Valve takes 30% from every sale on Steam, which is quite landlord-like. Although there are much worse practices in the market.
you gotta take into account the insanely good service both devs and players get in exchange for those 30% here is a list
Oh no, a sales platform that takes a cut of revenue.
Valve isn’t a charity, and they provide very good services for what developers pay.
Devs don’t need to host download servers, they don’t need to staff customer service reps, they don’t have to set up banking infrastructure or worry at all about handling payments from hundreds of different banks across hundreds of countries.
It’s not like valve takes 30% and sits on it. They put that money to use.
"Valve used to be a company that made games, now it just makes money" is a joke so old I can't find the source, but I know it goes back at least 15 years.
It was the first centralised gaming platform/hub/whatever on PC.
I remember having to search for matches on the All-Seeing Eye.
I lost my first Steam account. It would've been from September 2003, the same month Steam released. So apparently it would have had some real life value.
Tried restoring it once, but the email I had had on it was a service that no longer even existed so...
Anyways practical monopolies make money. Microsoft, Amazon, Google etc.
Steam isn't really in any way anti-competitive unlike the other examples, though.
Dang! You got me beat. The account I still use is from 2004, when Half-Life 2 came out. I remember thinking it was bullshit that I had to sign up for something, and connect to the internet to install a physical game I bought.
Then about five years later, I stayed at my mom's house for a couple nights, found myself bored, remembered I had my PC in her basement, and set it up. When I discovered that Steam remembered the three games I had, and let me download them (despite losing my HL2 disc years before), my head exploded. It's wild what it is now and how normalized that is.
When I discovered that Steam remembered the three games I had, and let me download them (despite losing my HL2 disc years before),
I can imagine.
Absolutely thrilled.
t's wild what it is now and how normalized that is.
Isn't it. But it was like 20+ years ago so no wonder a few things gave changed lol
"If you have the patience to sit by the river and wait, eventually, the corpses of your enemies will float by." Sun Tzu
The "do nothing and win" strategy.
Why does this photo looks like he's doing a porno
His shirt does kinda look like a white bathrobe
I was thinking more obi wan kenobi
Taking a long term view rather than exclusively focusing on the next quarter's numbers.
This is why Gabe is the goat
Fabianism
It's called making a product/service for their customers instead of for the shareholders bank balance.
<is billionaire <owns yatchs and subs People still wiping his ass with their noses?
He hasn't enshittified anything yet, and it's looking like he might not ever, which is why people respect him.
There's valid criticisms, yes, but that meme is dead accurate. I don't want to imagine what gaming would look like today if someone like EA the same vast influence over the industry instead of Valve.
Ok, but if people like him didn't exist would we even have enshittification? In my view things get enshittified so someone who's probably already well off can "earn" them and other rich people more money. I thought we were mostly all in agreement here that there are no good billionaires.
As far as billionaires go, he's the least shit of the bunch. No idea what his personal life is like, and I don't want to know. Every billionaire that makes their personal life public so far has turned out to be a giant cunt.
Every one of them whose personal life goes public is a giant cunt because you have to be a giant cunt to hold on to billions of dollars. I'd say the waste Gabe produces with his fleet of aquatic toys means he's a piece of shit billionaire. I love games and Steam but I'm not giving him a pass. And I don't care if some of his shit is used for research purposes
Monopoly and gambling reliance
Setting up an early monopoly while working to undermine brick and mortar stores?
The American automotive strategy
You mean the Japanese one after the Americans shot themselves in the foot over and over?
Valves business strategy is called something close to a monopoly.
These kinds of comments are just silly. Explain how Valve has a monopoly.
I would almost call it a consumer enforced monopoly. Steam is simply so much better than the competition (besides maybe GOG) that a lot of people will not buy a product if its not on steam. How many people do you know that won't buy most games if they aren't on steam?
I sometimes buy games from non steam platforms but I put a lot more thought into it than I would when buying on steam. I simply trust steam to not fuck me when I know the competition will.
They provide the best user experience and aren't a publicly traded company so everyone uses them >:c
/s
If a game isn't sold on Steam, It isn't going to sell well.
Because of the huge amount of Valve fanboys who only buy games if they are on Steam.
Games on other stores might as well not exist.
And more, if a game even dares to launch on a different store, it would garner unfavour of all those Valve fanboys and hurt their sales even if afterwards it does launch on Steam.
It is a user enforced monopoly.
