Valve almost makes me believe in capitalism.
If you remove stock market as a whole, maybe capitalism can work a little in a soc democracy, with stock market is impossible
A stock market can still work. The ultra high speed market we have now is a problem. Ultra fast trading encourages fast, short term thinking.
A stock market with an update once per day could work better. It would take all the fast impulse trading out of the market, while still allowing price adaptation. When runs and crashes take weeks to play out, it’s a lot easier for cooler heads and logic to prevail. This, in turn would favour the sort of traders favouring long term stable investments.
The price updates whenever someone buys or sells, so doing that once a day may be a bit difficult to implement. Forbidding day-trading / imposing a minimum holding time on the other hand may be easier.
Just run the company in a way where you don’t really care about maximizing profit. As long as you’re not at a loss and are liked, you will be successful.
Valve could probably be much more profitable at the expense of being a bigger dick, but Gabe is chill.
Also because valve is private, they don’t have any legal obligations to return maximise profit. They can purposefully lose money if they want and it’s not illegal. (At least to my knowledge)
It would be illegal if they did it to price out the competition, which I don’t think is something they do.
I’m guessing this is a big part of it. A private company can do just about whatever they want as there are not shareholders that you are working for.
Yup. And the moment he steps down (or gets hit by the greed) everything will go to shit. As is tradition.
Just run the company in a way where you don’t really care about maximizing profit.
Our system of government makes this illegal for publicly traded companies.
Our system of government makes this illegal for publicly traded companies.
Whose system of government? If you mean the USA, then no, it does not.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/
But they do run it to maximize profit. There’s just allowed to do it creatively instead of obsessing over short term gains.
I mean the company essentially gave up on AAA games for well over a decade because they were making more money from steam, and Gabe famously only approves projects that have a plan to turn a profit or expand Valve’s market.
They didn’t spread into Linux out of sheer principle. It gives them more control and influence over the market to separate themselves from Windows. And they’ve done tons of shady stuff with steam like refusing to give refunds until they were sued by state governments.
Valve is the prime example of rent seeking behavior. It’s a private company that collects economic rents on a market thanks to that market being the biggest. They’re a private company and their only goal is to preserve those rents. They do that by fostering goodwill. They’re everything I hate about capitalism, but I don’t hate them for doing it.
They are also a good example of positive middleman behaviour. While they take their cut, the value they provide to both sides is huge.
They are also in a position where they are still easily replaceable. Their dominance is from doing it well, not because they have an absolute lock in.
Part of why this works is because they don’t have to prioritise short term profit over long term. Most companies like this get brought up and pumped dry. Valve seems to be the exception.
Unlike every other company in their position they’re not complete assholes to consumers :
- steam deck not locked down at all and reparable
- steam and valve games support Linux very well
- they don’t sign exclusivity deals for games to only be on steam
Most companies in their position would lock their users in, they don’t. That doesn’t mean they can’t be abusive though. 30% of game revenue is huge!
At least gamedevs can generate keys and sell them on other sites to get a bigger cut
The 30% value exists because thats what console devs charge developers for ages. Valve is essentially just matching that.
I don’t think Steam is rent-seeking because:
- no cost to maintaining an account
- no cost for keys if you sell stuff outside the Steam store
- no cost for downloads
- no cost for improvements to games
Valve’s customers are publishers and devs, and they’re charging a finder’s fee for connecting customers to the games. To me, that’s not rent seeking, that’s a direct exchange of money for a service. If you don’t think the service is valuable or think you can do better, then generate keys and sell them elsewhere and you won’t need to pay Valve a cut.
Valve is capitalism done right imo. You only pay when you receive a service, and only when you profit from the service. Steam also has a fantastic refund policy as well, which is surprisingly rare in the digital goods market.
somebody doesn’t understand what rent seeking is.
Valve is not doing rent-seeking…
they have created a service that didn’t exist that’s beneficial to both the consumer and the seller, they don’t do any anti-competitive shit with it as far as I am aware.
in what world is what they do rent-seeking?
are you an edgy 15 year old that just learned a new word and didn’t understand it?
Valve is far from a typical company. While technically not, they operate pretty much like a worker owned cooperative. Have a look at their employee handbook: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications
(and Igalia, the company presenting in OP is really a worker owned cooperative).
holy crap I want to work there. I never had any idea they had such a radical structure (or lack thereof)
Is good, but is not the paradise: https://youtu.be/s9aCwCKgkLo?si=a2OGsoF-vHEbb0MH
Always has been
One of the few companies I’ve purchased digital good from - and they haven’t enshittified themselves yet
If anything ever happens to Gabe such that he can’t run the company, that’s the day I’m immediately downloading and backing up my entire steam library to a hard drive.
Some games from Steam can still be used without Steam’s DRM. It’s a little difficult to pull it off, but it can be done
AFAIK steam has optional drm. If the devs dont use it you can play the games without steam. I think it says on the store page if it’s drm-free
Well they did try to sell paid mods and push pay-to-play in the steam marketplace with Artifact, but luckily they ran it back. Steam is super good now but don’t get too comfortable.
I mean, I don’t have a problem with mod authors earning money for what they do instead of having to offer it for free. Especially the mods that bring the base game to a whole new level.
What’s the argument that paid mods shouldn’t be a thing?
Using someone else’s IP for making money is generally a little questionable.
It was pretty disastrous. As soon as money was at play tons of people re-uploaded other’s free mods and tried to sell them. They even tried copying their steam profiles to seem legit. There was another can of worms where paid mods would use assets from other games or made by other people. Aside from all the attempted theft, there was also tons of spam and fake/unconfirmed mods lying about what they are or trying to upload the same thing multiple times under different names to appear more in search… Etc…
Moderation didn’t keep up and the whole thing collapsed on itself. Mods shouldn’t be paid IMO, it just encourages terrible things rather than people making content for fun.
It’s because they’re a privately owned company.
The pressure for enshitification mostly comes from shareholders. Without them, the company can actually think about their long term future and decide exactly when and when not to increase profit.
I tend to avoid proprietary things whenever possible these days, but I found most things by small, privately owned companies are pretty good towards their users.
I would be so proud to be the dude who first said “enshitification” right now.
It’s probably my favorite new word I’ve ever heard in my life and seeing it widely used brings a smile to my face.
I’ve got a cousin who is probably claiming he invented it at this very moment.
It has been used so much recently that there is even a wikitionar entry for it - with a link to its original creation!
I bet Linus still thinks their code is shit tho
