Guys I know he is not perfect but it's understandable that people like him in a world where the average CEO drinks the blood of newborns daily.

I am a fan of Valve, but this is just way exaggerated. For example, encourages you to save money by having sales? Isn't that about manipulating you into buying more games than you would otherwise, because you perceive the value as being better?

Mmmm billionaire boot must be delicious

Steam is not a bad company but it is still a company that holds a lot of power, don’t forget that.

Gaben and steam are not perfect, but are monumentally better than what we would be stuck with on sony-soft

STEAM- Give a reasonable good platform for gaming.

OTHERS- Kill themselves with shitty optimization and spam policies.

STEAM - Sit. Enjoy the sunny day. Drink a coffee. Improve a bit the navigator to help you find new games.

OTHERS - Keep their shitty platforms unoptimized and double down on AI Slops.

STEAM - Doing some yoga. Walk the dog. Add an AI disclaimer for the games.

(update) OTHERS - Complaining about Steam AI disclaimer on socials without fixing a single fuck on their platforms.

STEAM - Trying the new Turkish restaurant down the street. Read a book. Add a disclaimer to alert the user if there's a cheaper bundle for the same game they are buying in the cart.

BTW the way refunds work is that steam withholds the money for a month to pay refunds with it. The publisher has no say, they just get gross - 30% - VAT - refunds.

This is such a controversial person to discuss. On one hand, loot boxes, the steam market for trading, and a lot of gambling and profiteering going on. At the same time, all of the OP comments are also true.

Out of all the billionaires, I dislike gaben the least. The net good he's done for gaming may not balance the scales entirely, but at least there's a discussion to be had whether what gaben has done is for the better, or for the worse. Which is more than I can say about most billionaires I know of.

I know this novel strategy that Valve employs might be difficult to conceptualize for people whose thinking only extends as far as "company evil, success bad", so let me summarize it in a format that is easier to understand:

They only began giving refunds when the European Union mandated it, back then only Origin (EA) gave refunds. Some times the EU is useful.

People saying that when Gabe dies so does Steam seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle.

From everything I've read and can tell they work using an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program). Meaning each employee working there today is becoming partial owners in Valve. If you think they will allow some new face to show up when Gabe dies and flip the table you are missing the piece where the owners of this company are extremely well compensated today and a core part of making Valve successful today.

Believing that sales exist to save people money is the funniest shit i have ever seen.

Step 1. Make a good product
Step 2. Corner the market
Step 3. Build up good will
Step 4. ...?
Step 5. Keep building up good will

I was extremely impressed that Valve did an RMA replacement for one of my Index base stations even out of warranty. They explicitly did not have to do that. It’s been years but I’m still amazed

When he dies gaming lives on within us.

"Sells hardware at a loss to hook you into the steam ecosystem and make more money by selling you software" FTFY

Don't get me wrong, as companies go I like valve, but to say they aren't making decisions based on making more money and just out of altruistic motives is madness. Businesses that aren't healthy and competitive die, even if they have rabid fans.

I think this is factually wrong, Steam only introduced refunds because they were forced to for the European market

Lets pray valve never goes public

2 words though "Kiddie gambling".

Sure Steam is one of the less evil companies out there, but they're far from innocent.

I suspect translation later for ARM will be industry shaking

I'd say Zuckerberg's $77B disaster is not a forced mistake but a self-influcted wound. If anything, it's the Cambridge Analytica scandal that pushed him towards the rebrand they would have been better off without.

They sell their hardware at a loss?

Also, that's not necessarily because they put the consumers' needs advice above anything else. Sony and Microsoft do this all the time simply for market share.

Edit: didn't check autocorrect before posting

As a fan of TF2, I'll quote another greentext: "does nothing, competition keeps shooting themself in the foot." It was about Overwatch vs TF2, but it's mostly similar.

Steam refused to issue refunds for a long, long time. In the end they started allowing refunds for everyone because governments started requiring it and it was easier to just allow them for everyone than having to do the legal footwork to have different policies based on geography.