Remember when we all loved Google?? No? How about Firefox? Or maybe some of you might remember when Elon was our real-world Tony Stark?
Yeah. So…. There are two types of tech companies:
Those that suck, and those that have yet to reveal how they suck.
well valve does the whole gambling for children shit so they aren’t exactly saints. They are just the least shitty. Also it helps that they are still private so they don’t have to answer to investors. But still, the whole skin trading, steam market stuff isn’t great
Just wait. They’ll get so much worse.
Remember that Gabeface chamber?
… They’re like the opposite of doing nothing.
MSFT in particular has been essentially utterly out manuevered by Valve and their developements.
Its… its actually rumored (by Moore’s Law Is Dead) that the specific weird custom chip the Steam Machine is using…
… was originally going to be used in something like like a planned Surface Super Duper Pro tablet.
But MSFT cancelled it.
After AMD had already made a bunch of the chips.
… And… then Valve comes along, figures out how to build a PC/Console out of MSFT’s abandoned scraps, which also functionally hammers the final nail into the coffin of Xbox as an actual hardware device.
Valve beat MSFT at large segments of literally their own game.
Proton and Vulkan, both largely funded by Valve, flipped the fucking game table into another dimension, but MSFT did not notice untill it was beyond too late.
… Thinking with portals, you might say.
This is what you can accomplish when you don’t have shareholders forcing you to be an idiot.
Private companies are perfectly capable of self sabotage through growth drivers without shareholders unfortunately…
Execs chasing bonuses and chasing w/e 3rd party “consultancy groups” say they need to do.
well companies decide to go public for a reason
Yeahhhhhh but at least there’s a fall guy to dunk on. The shadow “investors” looming in the dark hold no accountability and yet demand profits at the cost of everything (usually) good about a game or series
Fostering developers to go ham on windows to Linux comparability and now the same for X86/64 to ARM is much more than nothing. Valve have actually been the ones doing the most to pave the way for theirs and anyone who follows’ future.
I’m not too jazzed about their virtual monopoly but that’s sadly because they’ve just been working for consumers in more ways than the others. They’re not the best at everything like GOG trumps then when it comes to actual ownership but it’s sum of all of their parts that puts them head and shoulders above the rest.
They’ve done so much that they’ve paved the way for non gamers to be able to switch over to Linux much easier (I wouldn’t say it’s all on them but they’ve helped foster cross compatible development on Linux in general). I don’t think you could say the others have done as much to affect the space outside of gaming as valve either. Except Microsoft, but their decisions have been much more controversial.
I hate to see myself glazing valve as much as I have here but it is what it is. I’ll criticise them when the context allows and praise them like this in other times.
Stop giving credence to valve being a monopoly. That’s tech bro propaganda. They are literally not a monopoly. There is multiple digital storefronts for PC gaming. There is options. There is choice. Do not further the narrative and get fucking valve antitrusted for no goddamn reason other than Microsoft wants them dead.
That’s why i said a virtual monopoly not an actual one. Their prevalence in the industry among pc gamers makes them seem like a monopoly even though there are choices. The rest of my comment also explains why people choose them over other options so I don’t know what your trying to get at…
I would go further and say that all that they’ve done are “”“merely”“” sound elements in a strategy to avoid that in the era of always-online remote updateable software, Microsoft successfully uses their position as the provider (and, more importantly, controller of some of what runs in pretty much all consumer instances) of Windows to squeeze out Steam as a games store.
Microsoft slowly transforming for Windows applications into the equivalent of Apple for iOS applications (and their move towards signed applications could be part of that) would be a nightmare scenario for Steam and it’s a realistic possibility, especially if you notice that Microsoft is moving towards “everything must be cryptographically signed by Microsoft” to run in Windows.
So it totally makes strategical sense for Steam to invest into getting as many gamers as possible away from the Windows ecosystem, and one path is to get more games to as easily as possible run in the already existing and established alternative to Windows - Linux - the easiest way being to invest in an ever improved Windows-Linux adaptor layer (i.e. Wine/Proton) backed by a Steam store in Linux which just seamlessly uses that layer when needed, whilst another path is to sell their own game machines which do not run Windows and there again using Linux makes sense as the OS, both because it already exists and is mature and because using it on their machines has synergies with their investment in the “make games targeting Windows seamlessly run on Linux without needing changes”.
This isn’t Valve and Steam being nice guys doing nice things because they love their customers who use Linux, it’s just good long term business planning and management of maybe their greatest external risk - Microsoft.
I mean, “Yay for choosing Linux!” and “Respect for their business sense”, but lets not deceive ourselves into thinking they’re good guys because of doing what just makes sense strategically to manage Microsoft as a risk.
I agree, it’s just nice that they chose a platform that others can use what they’ve implemented whilst they’re still around and if they somehow go tits up on Sunday.
Their decision to do it open source is the nice guy side but you are right they have ulterior motives that just make perfect business sense rather than it just them being “nice”.
Look, failing at selling video games people want to buy, is like failing at selling porn, or running a casino full of machines that tabulate a set amount of winnings before giving back a predetermined amount.
Doing nothing is sometimes the smartest way to make money.
But what if I want to confirm I am rich for being smart and thinking out the box instead of having rich parents and exploiting people like half of those poors think I am?
Well they apparently have people you can pay to whisper such in your ear.
Remember, you are mortal.
Playstation isn’t lazy. They happily shoot themselves in the foot every other week. For every 1 good thing Sony does with the brand, they do 3 or 4 fucked up things.
look, im very grateful for valve employee’s work on proton (& other technologies), and i recognize that out of the major gaming companies, valve is one of the least bad…
but they’re still a corporation. they’re still unethical. they popularized gambling mechanics and they basically have a monopoly on PC gaming distribution.
don’t worship companies. they don’t care about you. need i remind you, in the late 2000s/early 2010s, nintendo was the good guy. just making good games and innovating, while everyone else was busy making yearly slop, day one DLCs, paid online, microtransactions, broken games on release… and now, look at them.
what were you smoking? nintendo has never been the good guy…they successfully patented the “digital representation of water” back in the day
sorry, i should’ve said “was seen as the good guys”. nintendo’s been doing shitty stuff since at least the 80s
but that wasn’t the popular narrative back in the 2000s/2010s! just like valve now, people were more than willing to gloss over their shitty stuff because everyone else was worse. people worshipped iwata & reggie just like people worship gabe newell now.
I think that more in general, from the change in the image of Elon Musk over the last 5 to 10 years the younger generations of Techies should’ve learned the vast chasm that is possible between perception and reality when it comes to those people who manage/own the companies making the Technology we love.
Maybe Gabe is a good guy, maybe he’s neither good nor bad, maybe he’s a bad guy - if you don’t know the guy personally and well as a person, all you have to go by is the tightly managed public image you see, and as Musk so painfully demonstrated not that long ago, you can wrap an Nazi in a “nice techie pushing the world forward” managed public image which for decades the overwhelming majority of Techies (especially young ones) believes is real.
So, yeah, going back to your original post, its safer “not to worship companies” or the people who lead them.
nintendo has always had it’s weird fanboys, say what you want but their business strategy of re-releasing the same old shit for next generation of kids works.
plenty of people out there more than happy to consume mindlessly it seems
Valve is worker-run and largely worker owned, it’s literally 350 people who just work on whatever they think is a good idea
They’re technically a corporation, but also an amazing argument for collective ownership
gaben should’ve called valve the “foremost gaming collective ever formed”. seriously!
they popularized gambling mechanics
Probably their biggest sin. Gab’s mega-yacht was paid for with neurodivergent teenagers sucked into anime-themed slot machines.
That’s before you get into how modern online gaming has become this nightmare of bigotry and misogyny. Not a Valve specific problem, but one they’ve turned a blind eye to in the name of laissez-faire business.
need i remind you, in the late 2000s/early 2010s, nintendo was the good guy.
Well… tap the brakes there. Nintendo had a very different business model, but their Disney-eque sadistic defense of IP was its own kind of problem.
As I wrote elsewhere, their support for Windows-Linux adapter technologies and even their games machines with Linux, are things which make total business sense as part of a strategy to try and move gamers away from Windows to manage the risk that Microsoft might use their control of Windows and ability to remotely update pretty much all consumer Window machines, to squeeze Steam as a games store for Windows games, for example via enforcing a requirement for Microsoft-signed applications and even a for usage of a Microsoft-store (no doubt justified as a consumer protection measure) like Apple does with iOS.
Steam isn’t doing this because they’re “nice guys”, they’re doing this because they’re managed by competent managers with an outlook which is much longer term than the typical “next quarter” of publicly traded company and if you’re looking at a 5 or 10 years period Microsoft doing this kind of thing is a real risk.
This doesn’t mean that they’re bad guys, it just means that from their support for gaming in Linux alone we cannot deduce that they’re good guys since being managed by competent people who are trying to manage the risk of Microsoft turning Windows into what iOS is for Apple is an equally good explanation (probably an even better explanation, since “good guy” actions in business is a rare exception) for their support for Linux.
Uh oh, you’ve kicked the hornet’s nest now. The brigade comes for anyone who doesn’t worship at the feet of valve. The brigade comes at night.
Is it a brigade of worshippers or just pointing out a bad take is bad?
Why is it a bad take? Valve is indeed a corporation. I’m also someone who has grown irritated by their ways of screwing up good games for profit (you know, hat simulator, gambling, push for centralization, etc.). There is also a history of really sketchy anti-consumer choices basically no one is aware of, like them getting sued for not issuing refunds and being forced to implement refund system or accepting money from Microsoft to not release a free DLC to L4D, but rather as a new game (just so they don’t set a good example), paid mods fiasco, barely fighting back against adult content purge, etc
screwing up good games for profit (you know, hat simulator, gambling, push for centralization, etc.)
I actually don’t know what you’re talking about. To me adding cosmetic purchases to free games doesn’t count as “screwing up good games for profit”.
There is also a history of really sketchy anti-consumer choices basically no one is aware of, like them getting sued for not issuing refunds and being forced to implement refund system to
This is incredibly misleading. Valve always have refunds, it’s just that they did not have a written policy at first and it was administered case-by-case. In 2014 they got sued by an Australian in a case that was more about jurisdiction and whether Australian consumer protection laws could apply to digital goods sold by a US company. That was the impetus for Valve to publicly release a written policy, which is widely considered to be one of the most consumer-friendly on the industry.
accepting money from Microsoft to not release a free DLC to L4D, but rather as a new game (just so they don’t set a good example),
Do you have any more info on this? I think you’re getting this confused with the controversy around Crash Course, the 2nd DLC for the first game.
Valve released Left4Dead 1 and an ounces their plans for free updates. The first update released for free everywhere. Crash Course released for free on PC, but cost money on Xbox Live. Valve claimed that it was Microsoft’s decision, not theirs. Afaik Microsoft has neither confirmed nor denied this, but it seems pretty plausible to me. It also lines up with what Todd Howard has said in interviews about the infamous Horse Armor. Microsoft has a history of pressuring DLC prices up on Xbox- i don’t blame Valve for that.
paid mods fiasco
This always seemed to me like a very complicated and nuanced discussion that always gets described as a “fiasco” or “catastrophe”, whether it’s Valve or Bethesda or whoever else. I always thought it was an incredibly cool idea to have a framework for monetization, which could lead to bigger and better mods. I think it’s reasonable for the original publishers/developers to get a cut since they made the game. I think it’s reasonable for Valve to get a cut if it is done through the Steam Workshop and Valve is handling the payyment processing.
Heck, Valve in particular has a history of supporting mod makers. DOTA was a mod of Warcraft. Counter-Strike was a mod of Half Life.
barely fighting back against adult content purge
We’re at the point of literal victim blaming. Blame Collective Shout. Blame Visa and PayPal. Blame governments for not having (or enforcing) legislation forcing these payment processors to be neutral. What do you want Valve to do here? The payment processors are orders of magnitude larger and can destroy Valve overnight if they wanted to.
I actually don’t know what you’re talking about.
The whole lootboxes thing has been in high focus for the past decade, but you’re the first gamer who doesn’t know what are people talking about and it’s just cosmetics? I’m sorry, WHAT?
This is incredibly misleading.
Please learn why they were sued and stop spreading lies like they were easily issuing refunds. Your argument suddenly starts falling apart when you learn the facts and remove the gabe-glasses.
Do you have any more info on this?
Actually, I likely don’t. This comes from era of forums, constant leaks and insider info. You might be able to find more after terms like “L4D and Xbox dlc pricing”
Here is one article that touches on the topic of why this happened: https://www.xboxachievements.com/news/news-3496-l4d-1-dlc-pricing-down-to-ms-not-valve.html
Note that this was a problem for Xbox, but valve for whatever “mysterious” reason decided to do that for PC too.
Rest of your comment is basically downplaying shitty things. Yeah, no, sorry, you did not convince me yet to join this religion
In other words, you’re just making all this shit up. Cool story.
It’s a brigade of worshippers.
Ya sure.
They ship one thing every decade and it somehow changes the whole industry.
It’s going to be a very, very interesting series of events once Gabe passes away.
Enjoy him while we’re able.
That scares me. I’ve been a huge steam fan boy since it was in beta. Lots of nostalgia. When the OGs pass away and valve is sold off to Amazon… the end
Optimistic take: Linux gaming might become normal if this works.
Religious gamers should be praying really hard to their Deity/Pantheon for Gabe not to have a traffic accident and exercise a lot and eat healthy food so as not to have a heart attack, because after he dies many if not most of the games you “licensed” from Steam via a button in their app which says “Buy” might simply disappear from your account with some shitty excuse and you’ll have no effective recourse unless you have a couple of millions of dollars to sue them for it in whatever court their EULA says you have to sue them on.
Made large contributions to Linux gaming compatibility
Also platformed independent game developers.
Monopolized a market by offer good services to both end users and buisness clients.
Lets not forget the evil though : helped set the 30% cut for apps/games that became the standard across all digital spaces, arguably started online gambling and microtranactions in gaming.
The very first instance of microtransaction began with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You know the one, the horse armor for $2.50. That was in 2006.
Team Fortress 2 didn’t come out until 2007.
Online Gambling has been a thing for quite a while beforehand. You can’t entirely blame Valve, here. Inspired? Perhaps, but it took them quite a time to even start giving in.
Yep.
This is, at least initially, Todd’s fucking fault, and I am never going to forget, nor forgive that.
I can still remember seeing that pop up on Steam and being baffled, thinking it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen.
Then, within a few years, as I’m getting a degree in Econ, (during the GFC, lol) I realized…oh no… this is going to become the new paradigm for funding game dev, making money off of games, and that there need to be proactive pushes and discussions now to figure out how to manage and regulate this before it gets out of hand.
Unfortunately, most gamers are fucking idiots, so that discussion did not even start at a wider scale untill the paradigm was well established, and I had the same idiots who 5 to 10 years prior were telling me ‘methinks the lady doth protest too much’, well, now they’re just telling me ‘pff, bro, what are you gonna do about it? just shut up’.
Ross Scott from Stop Killing Games had been saying the kind of stuff he’d been saying about games preservation and DRM bullshit for a solid decade before he got any large amount of attention.
I know because I’d been following him since even before his Mind Of Freeman days, back when he was basically just making skits in either GMod from before Gmod was sold for money, or he was just basically writing his own HL2 mods eseentially, to set up and block out and film the skits.
People just fundamentally do not seem to understand that preventing an egg from falling off of a table is much easier than unbreaking an egg.
See also: Climate change, current US tariff policy.
Just a side note:
TF2, released in 2007, hasn’t had lootboxes till 2010. Valve was not even the first game to have them.
spoiler
FIFA was 1 year ahead, but not the first one either.
Also, TF2’s lootboxes are not the same as Dota2 and CSGO/CS2. TF2 weapons have an actual change of gameplay to them while Dota/CS has just skins. Not to mention, you can get all weps in TF2 by just playing the game.
I agree with your sentiment, but you’re wrong.
Horse armor was nowhere close to the first microtransaction. Maple Story released in 2003 and is widely considered to be the first videogame with micro transactions. You could make a strong argument that arcade games were the origin of micro transactions even.
Part of what made the horse armor so egregious was that it was for a full-priced game. And it’s also worth pointing out that Microsoft was involved in that mess too. They had purchased times exclusivity for Oblivion on Windows and Xbox. An unnamed Microsoft executive allegedly went to Todd Howard and compared the pricing to things like Xbox system themes or iPhone ringtones, when at the time a 30s crappy quality version of your favorite song might cost $5.
Gambling has existed for thousands of years. I don’t blame Valve. I don’t really play their FtP games much, but my understanding is that the micro transactions are mostly cosmetic and not pay-to-win. There were times in my life when FtP games were a great boon and I had the discipline to not buy micro transactions, but today I prefer games that are just one purchase. Still, just because I don’t like FtP games doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist or that I hate Valve for having some.
Online gambling existed well before Steam.
How did they start microtransactions?
Selling loot boxes, where you pay 2-3 currency units to “unlock” a box that definitely won’t have something of value the vast majority of the time. TF2 cosmetics, CS:GO gun/knife/glove/player model skins
To be fair those are cosmetic only items. I’ve played a ton of those games and didn’t spend s dime, because I don’t care about how cool my gun looks.
same. But to a lot of people, those pixels are valuable. So valuable an entire secondary market opened up outside of Steam. And the lootbox mechanic is literally gambling-- No different than a slot machine. When opening a box, it even gins it up with graphics and fanfare, just like a video slot machine.
Multiple billions of currency units in “value” all situated around virtual gambling. Valve created the most successful, valuable digital casino, ever.
And is still effectively DRM even if it’s fairly non-invasive
Other companies running game stores/platforms must think like this which is why their stores end up competing with a 2008 Steam. Does nothing is incredibly incorrect
Valve could’ve legitimately done nothing and still be winning in comparison to the big three, but instead they’ve slowly and steadily been helping the gaming community to give Windows the middle finger by making huge contributions to Linux gaming.
Honestly, its downright shameful how many companies have forgotten that a good way to make money from customers is simply to treat them nicely while they’re buying your goods.
Valve’s big business strategy seems to be just wait for your competition to shoot themselves in the foot
Helping the gaming community by popularising not owning your games, lootboxes and child gambling, early access and asset flips as well as being the first to cave when visa and MasterCard started pressuring companies to stop selling certain games?
You never owned your own games, you just never read the documentation that came with your discs and cartridges before.
Even GOG, who pays lipservice to “owning” your win games, just sells the same “license to access” the software that everyone else does. You can’t re-sell it, you can’t reverse-engineer code or modify most games, you can’t leave these “possessions” in your estate. You don’t own them.
You never owned your own games, you just never read the documentation that came with your discs and cartridges before.
??? You think Nintendo was going door to door to pull nes cartridges away from people for violating their tos???
No, they didn’t break down the doors of individual gamers. They targeted retailers and producers instead. They introduced DRM in their hardware. And with the rise of the internet they HAVE been breaking down the doors of people who make tools to extract the software from their cartridges. Even after emulation was established as legal in the Sony vs Bleem case, Nintendo continues to use their money and lawyers to bully emulator developers. They famously sent DMCA takedowns to people who made Let’s Play videos or streamed the game, or even speedrunning videos.
Speedrunning events have had to cancel or ban Nintendo games because of their legal actions. Nintendo has taken legal actions against tournament organizers for competitive multiplayer games.
Here’s another website dedicated to tracking Nintendo’s bullshit.
Abd that makes steams licencing bullshit ok?
What licensing bullshit are you referring to?
Most games on steam are drm-free or have a very weak DRM which is easily removed. Not great, but not the worst.
Lootboxes kinda suck, but at least they only use them for cosmetic items, it’s not pay2win, more like pay2lookgood.
About the child gambling… Pretty awful, but I think the ones who should bear most of the blame should be the parents. I have younger family members (not my kids) and their parents couldn’t give less of a shit about ensuring they only have access to age appropriate content. Steam has parental controls implemented, USE THEM. Starting to think that allowing kids to access these features (when parental control is available) should be considered some kind of negligence.
…???
Most games on steam are drm-free or have a very weak DRM which is easily removed.
Blatantly false. Take a glance at all the novice/low budget devs who tightly couple their game to Steam’s proprietary multiplayer api.
Lootboxes kinda suck, but at least they only use them for cosmetic items
That doesn’t mean they weren’t trailblazers for one of the most parasitic features of the 21st century.
Steam has parental controls implemented
The controls don’t even work for this. Even if you scrutinize every game before white listing, the devs can patch in loot boxes (or any toxic mechanic) at any time without your knowledge.
And putting that aside, “bad parenting” is such a shit cop out when Steam’s main page is devoted to high revenue [toxic] games. This is like blaming parents when cigarette companies made ads specifically appealing to children, as if the inability to legally buy their product absolves them from the damage done.
How the hell haven’t you heard if steamless it easily removes steamdrm
I think lootboxes and child gambling should be the same category if we are talking about steam.
Not so much of an actual gambling imo. All you can know is that you will pull something out of a fixed list. But that is all the gambling part. At least with cases you know for a fact that you going to get something. Actual gambling happens off-site with skins that are traded using bot accounts. These services are actual gambling sites with games and chances to win something or lose everything.
Valve probably can ban skin trading and then we’re done. Also, they probably can ban skin market while at it. But, I bet steam market brings tons of money. And, it is not like they are responsible for children gambling skins out off-site. Also, Valve did made restrictions on gambling. This month Valve has banned skin gambling logos/ads on tournament teams jerseys. And also a restriction that would render your newly purchased skins non-tradable for a week. Drop parental control in the mix - children wouldn’t be able gamble anymore.
>made their own linux distro
>develop Proton and Lepton
>all that in Valve-Time™
>Windows gave up
Microsoft practically handed it to Valve. Microsoft wanted gamers off the PC and on to the xbox so they ignored the PC platform they were already dominant on. This gave free reign to Valve. One of the biggest mistakes in PC history if you ask me.
Yeah. I wanted to play Midtown Madness 3, after loving and modding the first two. But it was Xbox exclusive. I refused to save up for one, or ask for one as a gift. I was eventually gifted one, with MM3, and it is the only game I have for the Xbox.
When Halo 2 for Vista dropped, and they tried to force players to Live Gold bullshit for voice chat, but we were all using Xfire. Eat shit, I’m not paying $10 a month to do something I can for free that my friends all have already. And I wouldn’t play another Halo title until the MCC dropped on steam - fuck locked down hardware and arbitrary limitations on the software and os. And they want money for that shit? Lmfao.
My deep… ‘loathing’? For the dumbass decisions ms made regarding gaming for windows from 00 to 16, arguably longer. With ms driven by greed, and most folded for the games and series they loved… but I’m an absolute pain in the ass, never forget, never forgive kinda guy. I have a couple series of ms titles I like and buy, but they can fuck off with trying to get another red cent from me. Their slow sinking into stagnation and failure is… closure, for all the debates and arguments about how fucking stupid it is to pay for the ability to play with others, after already buying their box, and after already paying for internet. And then they can kill the servers at any time, and nobody seems to bat at eye. Yet I have games that are 20+ years old that I can run a server for and boom, me and friends can play. No money, no limitations, no bullshit.
They fucked themselves. I’m just watching the ship sink. 🍿
i guess i’m the only one excited as hell to buy a steam machine.
I am not gonna buy it. But fuck man, I am exited as hell for what is going to happen with PC gaming and OSes. I feel that thanks to Valve we going to finally break MS’ iron grip on OS market.
Same here.
Whilst I don’t necessarily think Steam are doing it because of being good guys (I just think it makes good business sense for them to move gamers away from Windows), that doesn’t mater for the outcomes for gamers, what maters is that what they’re doing helps us all out to escape the ever tightening clutches of Microsoft which nowadays is basically an Evil Tech Corp.
A few years ago? I would have said “oh that’s near for laypeople, but I am better off building my own PC”.
With the prices of GPU’s, RAM, and SSD’s… The Steam Machine might legit be a better value than building it myself.
I’m considering one to swap out the Xbox in the living room, but I also have a Lenovo Legion Go that I rarely use so I may just use that.
