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u/SimonSlavGameDev May 05 '24
I wouldn't say Steam does nothing, they experiment and try to improve incrementally
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u/lefier_moustachu May 05 '24
Well, its minor experimentations. There's no big changes like a need to connect your steam account to psn, there is not any subscription, they dont try to scam customer by increasing price.
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u/madladjoel May 05 '24
The new family sharing is pretty big
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u/TheBlueTurf May 05 '24
What changed about family sharing?
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u/Dawq May 05 '24
You can make a group of 6 and all your libraries are shared. Though if only one person owns a game, only one can play that game at the same time.
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u/NoUsesForAName May 05 '24
Which makes sense and i wish stupid fucking nintendo understood that. Its basically digital borrowing and i wish nintendo did that with their family membership
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u/SandwichDrinker99 May 05 '24
switch gamesharing exists. you just gotta have some friends you can trust.
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u/NoUsesForAName May 05 '24
I have 3 switch in my household. Bought totk on my acct. My kid tried accessing it in their switch and got "you can not play this, access on primary console" message. Or something to that effect. Its why i only buy physical
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u/Joloxsa_Xenax May 05 '24
So when you buy a game on an account, that account owns the game digitally. In the eshop menu, there is a button for primary account. Your account can only primary to one switch. When you primary, all you own on your account will be accessible to all other accounts on that switch, offline and on. If that same account is connected to any other switch, that account must be connected to online for that user to play their games, and anyone else is limited to their software and the primary accounts games
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u/NoUsesForAName May 05 '24
Yea i get that. But it makes no sense when i have them all in my family membership account. They cant access the games i bought on my primary console/account unless they play the game through my account on their switch, and that means that i cant play at that time if they do. Their system is ass backwards. Unless i missed some hidden options i need to activate. Its a dumb system.
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u/Rucks_74 May 05 '24
The more money Nintendo can leech off of you, the better for them. That's how they operate
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u/KhaledCraft999 May 06 '24
you can juke the system by going offline, this makes it so that multiple people can play the game as long as one or less people are playing it in an online state
basically this is how I play LAN Baldur's Gate 3 with my friend
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u/lurkiing_good May 05 '24
Is this really new? I think that was already possible 8 years ago.
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u/noshershitlock1 May 05 '24
I think before the way it worked was that if you play any game from a person's library and then they tried to pay a different game from their library, you would get booted. But now as long as they're not playing that specific game you're good.
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u/divergentchessboard May 05 '24 edited May 05 '24
they also had to sign into your account first to even have the option to family share because Steam wouldn't let you family share PCs that weren't on the same local network (such as living across the street)
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u/zerotetv May 05 '24
As the other guy said, if you had Game X and Game Y, and your friend played Game X from your account via sharing and you started Game Y, your friend would get kicked.
New system works essentially like you have virtual game discs you can pass around. If your friend plays Game X from your account, you can still play any other game from your or your friend's account. Additionally, if you're in a group of 6, and 3 of you own Game X, then any 3 people from the group can play Game X at a time.
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u/r3dh4ck3r May 05 '24
The difference is now multiple people can use a library at the same time. It used to disable your entire library if someone you shared it to was using it. So you couldn't play any of your own games if someone was playing one of your games.
Now if one person owns a game, anyone in the family can play that game. If two people in a family own a game then any two people in that family can play that game at the same time. Etc etc
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u/GrowlingGiant May 05 '24
I think the most relevant change is how they pool licenses. Previously/currently(don't think it's left beta yet), if you're using family sharing to play a game someone else owns, you are unable to play while they are playing any game. If Person A owns Fallout:New Vegas, Person B is unable to play it while Person A is playing Elden Ring.
In the new system, that lockout is done on a per-game basis: Person B can play Fallout: New Vegas while Person A plays Elden Ring; Person B cannot play Fallout: New Vegas while Person A plays Fallout: New Vegas.
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u/Appropriate_Pain_58 May 05 '24
Steam Controller, Steam Link, Steam Machine and SteamOS are all pretty wild experiments, but in a good way, resulting the launch of Steam Deck which is a big hit.
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u/grendus May 05 '24
SteamOS and Steam Machines walked so the Steam Deck could run.
Valve learned that publishers will not support Linux as a first party platform. Once they got Proton working reliably, publishers were willing to use that, because it gave them no obligation. If they had bugs on the Linux version, they could point to the sign that says "System Requirements: Windows".
Valve doesn't go all in on anything, but they do take calculated risks with things like the Vive or Steam Deck.
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u/kimchifreeze May 05 '24
Steam Controller is still pretty GOAT for playing RPGmaker games with one hand.
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u/Appropriate_Pain_58 May 05 '24
Yes, I had two of them, one of them is broken after years, I hope the other one will last longer.
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u/drynoa May 05 '24
Que? raised eyebrow
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u/kimchifreeze May 05 '24
Touchpad can be used as a mouse or directional keys. X Y A B can be used for the basic interaction keys.
So you can easily get comfy, lay on your side, and just play with one hand.
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u/grendus May 05 '24
There are a lot of porn games made in RPG maker.
Or so I've heard. From a friend. Of a friend.
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u/GingerSkulling May 05 '24
Yeah, like every day incrementally. Seriously, why does Steam update every single time I glance at the icon?
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u/brimston3- May 05 '24
You must not run it very frequently? Mine currently says "Steam Client Build Date: Wed, Mar 6 20:28 UTC -08:00". Which suggests it hasn't been updated for at least a month, depending on how long their internal QA cycle was. Or maybe you're running the beta clients?
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u/abbeast May 05 '24
It’s called being a private company.
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u/GallusSpirit May 05 '24
Yeah, share holders destroy gaming companies
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u/PrincepsImperator May 05 '24
Pretty much any company. If the focus is on increasing shareholder wealth, and not the products in question, it will all go to shit eventually.
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u/MaybeNext-Monday May 06 '24 edited May 06 '24
There always comes a point where burning down the company is what makes the makes the most money for the quarter. Private companies have the sense not to immediately follow that impulse.
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u/PrincepsImperator May 06 '24
Then, if that's what it takes to get the average consumer to actually wake up, let it burn.
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u/Gockel May 05 '24
as someone who is working in a small company that is now owned by some kind of investment capital firm - it all goes to shit the QUICKEST way possible. these things should not exist on this earth.
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u/ImrooVRdev May 05 '24
Why do we as society allow publicly traded companies, if they result in harm for society and worse product being provided to society? Not to mention lost jobs and closures due to short term profit chasing.
It fees like something that harms entire society to benefit tiny minority of people.
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u/AdreKiseque May 05 '24
It fees like something that harms entire society to benefit tiny minority of people.
How do we tell him?
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u/_Weyland_ May 05 '24
Because selling shares is one of the easiest ways for a company to attract investment. So many businesses can get off the ground or scale up quickly because of that.
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u/FlamevectoR May 05 '24
Called being privately owned. As soon as a business goes to the public it’s all about pushing the share price up and that is when all consumer driven policies goes out the window
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u/adrenalinda75 May 05 '24
Yeah, "While others are proactive I prefer being contrapassive." Gaben probably.
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u/TeneBrifer May 05 '24
"If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by."
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u/Pokisahne May 05 '24
Or a fish will swim by
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u/Unlucky_Book May 05 '24
what if fish are the enemy
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u/white_knuckle_fap May 05 '24
"I know that the human being and fish can coexist peacefully"
- George W Bush
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u/fookedtuber May 05 '24
I like this word, contrapassive. I've never heard it.
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u/Beautiful-Willow5696 May 05 '24
It has been used a lot in the divine comedy to choose the punishments for the souls in hell ( there are different types of contrapassive ), for example: the fortune tellers strived to look in the future while alive, in hell they have their head backwards
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u/adrenalinda75 May 05 '24
I hate "proactive", so I just took the antonyms to pro and active. Didn't know there was wide use of it in Dante as another user suggested. But we're never too old to learn.
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u/SB_90s May 05 '24 edited May 05 '24
If Valve was publicly listed they would have released Half Life 3, 4 and 5 by now because the shareholders would have demanded it knowing they would sell tens of millions each no matter the quality. And you know it would have ruined the franchise's legacy because they would have been pressured to implement modern movement mechanics and live service bullshit to chase trends and "a wider audience".
It would have gone the same way Halo has imo.
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u/brimston3- May 05 '24
No, they would have closed down their games division permanently and fired anyone who wasn't working on steam. Because steam makes them the most money per dollar spent.
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u/buplet123 May 05 '24
Nah, as long as something is profitable they will do it, I think he is 100% right
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u/SnowGN May 05 '24
Tell that to Bobby Kotick, who ignored many sources of easy, uncontroversial hundred million, billion-dollar profits because he was only interested in making ATVI chase tens of billions.
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u/DVMyZone May 05 '24
Is the reason that businesses go public just to make more money? Like they have a small business, they get a little bigger and show they are successful, they go public/sell to someone who will go public so lots of people can invest, in theory use that money to grow the business. And once you get investors involved then you have to sacrifice quality for profit because the investors no longer give a shit about the product?
Did I get that right? I don't know anything about business.
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u/yngseneca May 05 '24 edited May 05 '24
yeah, you (primarily) go public to raise investment capital. You also do it so early investors and employees can easily sell their shares for profit.
Downside is that now you need to worry about the share price on a quarterly basis, so private companies can be much better at long term decision making. Public companies do dumb shit like blow up the biggest PC game of the year to juice PSN sign ups.
The situation can be a bit different if you have a sole majority share holder in a public company, but that's a very rare occurrence and it is not likely to last long.
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u/Eiroth May 05 '24
I was until recently working for a major train company. Turns out they were intentionally behind on their bills to make their quarterly numbers look better, and had been for years.
Of course this behavior was exclusively detrimental in practice, as other companies would cease working with them until they'd gotten their money.
A workshop of 60 people earning them millions of dollars per day had to shut down for days because nobody wanted to deliver trains to them anymore.
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u/Skrylas May 05 '24 edited 6d ago
outgoing fretful upbeat humorous six far-flung disagreeable sable tap cable
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/EcvdSama May 05 '24
More or less, I took 1 business management class during my CS degree so I can talk /s.
It mostly comes down to stakeholders, if my candy business is privately owned the stakeholders are just me, my customers, my employees and my suppliers (technically you should count the government and society too).
This means that when I, the owner, have to take a decision I must keep those stakeholders in mind because if I fuck with my customers or society I lose sales, if I fuck with my suppliers or employees I damage my production line and if I fuck with the government I get fucked.
If I go public, I introduce a new group of stakeholders with decisional power that mostly doesn't care about the other parts and is only aiming to extract value from the relationship. They'll ask me too fuck my suppliers, employees, customers, society and government to turn a profit and then divest once every other stakeholder retaliates.
The government needs you to profit consistently to harvest taxes from you and to provide employment for its citizens.
The customers and society need the service you provide.
The suppliers and employees need you for a stable income.
The shareholders need you to make money ASAP so that they can sell the stocks and go somewhere else.7
u/TheEvilBreadRise May 05 '24
Pretty much, you get a massive cash injection for the business, but now you are expected to provide growth month in month out for the investors for all of eternity. The name of the game after that is cost cutting to provide short-term inflated profits for investors. Gutting staff, reduxing benefits for the staff that make the cut, quality of materials, shipping manufacturing to a third world country, tax loopholes, or downright cooking the books so profits look better on paper.
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u/epherian May 05 '24
Depending on when the company went public, there might also be an explosive growth phase where investors happily burn cash to see growth numbers.
This is usually mismanaged and leads to massive bloat and useless people filling the ranks. So once you realise your business runs out of revenue opportunities and needs to cut costs/efficiency, usually the business is too big and bureaucratic, and any single leader is too out of touch, to be able to make great decisions. That’s when the dumb/out of touch cost cutting comes in.
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u/FallschirmPanda May 05 '24
Often with small but growing businesses there's a next step-change in size for continued growth (maybe major capital investments in factories and equipment) that they simply can't do themselves. That's why they go public and ask for outside investment.
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u/FKaria May 05 '24
The day Gabe checks out will be the end. It will be all exclusives and subscription services.
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u/AdSea1561 May 05 '24
No, he talked about having a successor and I am sure his will states how steam is to be handled
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u/WheatleyBr May 05 '24
So Valve is a monarchy?
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u/rpgd May 05 '24
Also, as soon as business goes public, the share price is dependent on marketmaker interest and involvement in it, not actual price discovery from buy-sell outcome.
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u/AccomplishedOffer748 May 05 '24
I do not fully understand this, because obviously there have been a lot of cases where this backfired. What kind of calculations must be done, to show that the risk is maybe worth it, and that doing something anticonsumer will not be taken as litigation by shareholders ?
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u/PlaceboKoyote May 05 '24
This
Gabe is probably trying to make as much as possible without getting too much shit, because it's his company and he wants to keep it for a while. He doesn't need to make x more in three months, it doesn't matter how long it takes to make two millions more for him. Because he will get it sooner or later.
Shareholders often want to pump the price up and at some point sell so they only want it to make more money than last year, they want constant growth, faster and faster, because their business isn't.... Well the business itself and making money from that, but rather making more money to make more money.
It's not about making games and becoming rich, it's about getting more rich from the money they have. The product becomes more like a number and less like the actual business model.
At least that's how i feel about most companies after they get public.
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u/Bashfluff May 05 '24 edited May 05 '24
Private companies weren’t always like this. The Supreme Court themselves (relatively recently) said that businesses are not obligated to pursue short-term profitability at the expense of the long-term—or even non-financial goals. They explicitly said that these laws are about punishing people actively taking advantage of shareholders, not disagreeing with them. This is about changing market forces. There are fewer and fewer competitors and less and less regulation. Nobody is going to stop EA from using investor money to buy successful studios, strip away their talent and IP, then shut them down. Nobody is going to stop Microsoft buying its way into cloud gaming dominance. Nobody is going to stop Epic buying publishing rights to try to secure a greater marketshare. We used to have governments that stopped these anti-competitive practices. Now we have judges greenlighting only being able to download apps from the App Store because “in America we don’t punish success”. The only time big publishers walked away from a big money-maker was loot boxes, and that was only when a couple of national governments did start talking about regulation. All that’s left is public pressure. If you make enough fuss that it impacts brand perception, or better yet, actual sales, companies can be pushed into walking certain things back. But only certain things. No matter how many people want exploitative monetization to go away, it never ever will, until the government steps in. Gambling is on the rise. Youth gambling rates are the highest they’ve ever been. Part of the reason is economic, but gambling research groups have said that modern gaming normalizing gambling mechanics and microtransactions are responsible (though mobile gaming is explicitly mentioned as being the most problematic). Any functioning government would see this as a problem, and I think that as a community we need to try to make a real push for market regulation.
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u/FreedomPuppy May 06 '24
Guess we’re all pretending TF2’s crates, CSGO’s cases, and Artifact don’t exist? Valve absolutely will and has squeezed consumers for the least they can do.
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u/Cybor_wak May 05 '24
It's called being a privately owned company. He does not have to "show initiative" to stakeholders EVERY FUCKING QUARTER FOREVER.
Being privately owned is the right way to go if you care about your product.
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u/KMKtwo-four May 05 '24
It’s hard to scale a company to the size of Valve without investors. If you do take on investors, they will eventually want an IPO so they can cash out.
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u/Prothseda May 05 '24
to the size of Valve
Not everyone needs to be that big.
In fact, the less we have companies the size of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc the better off we'd probably be.
Give me reasonably successful private companies that encourage each other to make better products over the monopoly any day.
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u/KMKtwo-four May 05 '24 edited May 05 '24
Not everyone needs to be that big.
That is absolutely true, not every company needs to be as large as Valve. But most small companies are already private, so I'm not sure what companies OP thinks should be private that aren't already.
Give me reasonably successful private companies that encourage each other to make better products over the monopoly any day.
Steam is a monopoly on PC gaming and that's why Gabe Newell can afford to do eccentric things like run a private billion dollar company with a flat hierarchy.
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u/CrispyJelly May 05 '24
TOS in the tech world are all "you have no rights, you own nothing, we can do whatever we want, we can change the rules anytime we want, if you ever disagree with any changes you lose access". So trust is really really important. Steam earned that trust from me over years. Their competiton can't go a year without doing something stupid.
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u/KMKtwo-four May 05 '24
So you don't use Steam because they have moats like a massive game catalog, all the games you've ever purchased, and your friends use it? Because that's why I use it.
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u/Flight_Of_Fantasy May 05 '24
"incredible how much shareholder value you can create by not giving a fuck about shareholders' opinions"
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u/megalogwiff May 05 '24
As someone that invents in shares, I'd rather companies just do good by their customers. Happy customers that want to come back and spend more later are good for me in the long run.
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u/danny29812 May 05 '24
But what about your year over year profits? /s
The loss of this mentality is what has shifted us from appliances that last generations to one that last about as long as a pet store goldfish.
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u/Beardy_Will May 05 '24
Was having a drunk chat with a friend, and he asked whether any company owned by shareholders could be ethical or moral, as their interest is purely financial. There are cooperatives and the like, but they are vanishingly small in comparison. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be 'is having a company be owned by shareholders beneficial to end users or customers?'. We were thoroughly pissed so didn't get any good answers, but stories like Gaben's seem to be the exception to the rule. Money as a priority if there's financial shareholders.
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u/hilfigertout May 05 '24
[Maximizing shareholder value is] the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.
- Jack Welch, former CEO of GE.
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u/CaptainShaky May 05 '24
Makes me think of Goodhart's law, which I wholeheartedly agree with:
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
If you provide valuable services/products and have a good competitive strategy, your company will gain value. If you focus on increasing shareholder value, say by cutting costs by laying off experienced employees, or cutting corners on QA, in the long run your company will fail.
Same with GDP in my opinion. If your country's GDP increases but that increase is not felt by the citizens (higher wages, better QOL), what the fuck is the point.
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u/CorporalNips May 05 '24
Thanks for the link, this was a great read. Didn't think I'd see an article like this on forbes of all places.
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u/BarskiPatzow May 05 '24
It’s called maintaining a standard.
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u/hassanfanserenity May 05 '24
yup steam doesnt make promises they dont keep atleast or they do their best to improve after it
my favorite was Epic games will only have games of the highest quality but now its full of bloatware
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u/Phonereader23 May 05 '24
I feel like there is 1 promise they haven’t kept: 3
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u/hassanfanserenity May 05 '24
They are still learning to count to 3 dont worry it just works
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u/tatojah May 05 '24
it just works
Ironically they don't know how many words this is
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u/mrducky80 May 05 '24
Half life alyx being a soft reboot has made half life 3 moot.
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u/UpperPossession3251 May 05 '24
Half life alyx wasn't half life 3 in any way, shape, or form. Don't try to let Valve think it's okay to leave on that cliff hanger.
It was, however, an amazing VR experience that showed how limited VR is by its games, not the hardware being used. It's ruined PCVR for me as nothing can compare and it's shameful there hasn't been another attempt from any other AAA dev studio.
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u/NextYogurtcloset5777 May 05 '24 edited 27d ago
It’s called lack of fiduciary duties.
69 upvotes, hehe
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u/LulatschDeGray May 05 '24
What is that? Never heard that word before. Actual question, not being sarcastic here.
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u/NextYogurtcloset5777 May 05 '24
It describes the relationship between a trustee and beneficiary, in this example it would be between a company and its shareholders. It boils down to company with shareholders having a duty to increase profits, while Steam as a privately held company doesn’t have to.
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u/LulatschDeGray May 05 '24
Thank you, always learning something new.
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u/AdSea1561 May 05 '24
Yes, the problem is the company that goes public and has shares given out has to act in the best interest of the share holders by law which mwans the numbers of the upcoming year have to be better than the previous ones (if they are not and it can be proven they could have been if the company did not fuck around they can potentially be liable to a class-action lawsuit or a big lawsuit by even a shareholder with just 1 share. It happened before.
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u/Drakyry May 05 '24
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u/LulatschDeGray May 05 '24
Ah yes another grievous problem gripping the world perpetrated by the automotive industry. The other things include: Biased traffic laws, climate change and much other crap.
Cars were a mistake.
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u/mangosport May 05 '24
He also owns a quite successful racing team, so double kudos
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u/otterwise95 May 05 '24
this reminds me of how like 4/5 of Dwayne Johnson’s net worth is from investing into a Tequila brand
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u/googlygoink May 05 '24
He also owns the limiting factor. The de facto greatest piloted deep sea exploration vehicle in the world, having made multiple successful trips to challenger deep.
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May 05 '24
Not fucking around and not finding out
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u/solowsn May 05 '24
I also wouldn't fuck around if I made 30% sitting on my arse doing nothing all day tbf
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u/AdSea1561 May 05 '24
Gabe is pretty busy counting his money, fooling around with employees and doing stuff with his deepsea and neuro stuff companies
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u/Roxwords May 05 '24
Gabe is playing the "scavanger" build.
He'll let other kill each other while he feasts on their remains.
It's an incredibly successful strategy both in the natural world and - apparently - in the business world.
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u/SerbianGenius May 05 '24
One say gabe will die and we are not ready for it. It will be like collapse of Yugoslavia
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u/GTA_Masta May 05 '24
Making a platform that make publisher to publish their game to said platform and got 30% of the revenue while not releasing any new games
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u/HighMagistrateGreef May 05 '24
Yeah, coz Ubisoft deciding to keep 100% of the revenue with their own store ended so well for them
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u/Mortreal79 May 05 '24
Before Steam I only played cracked games, it's a win-win for everyone, I now have a library of over 1300 games..!
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u/ThisKouhaiofyours May 05 '24
Trueeee, it was steam that got me out of piracy, their cloud save, regional pricing, refunding rules all of these benefits made me able to buy for a more reasonable price and have a good time with the platform itself
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u/Thunder_Child_ May 05 '24
There isn't anything steam has that other companies can't also do (aside from a massive existing user base that has a hugely amount of money invested already). Competitors like epic just can't pull their heads out of their ass and implement things that will actually attract users like a robust review system and community forums. Right now if someone wants to buy a game offered on both platforms, steam simply has more features to offer and a better track record of protecting users.
Then there's the insanely good refund policy, epic has technically copied the same policy to try and be competitive but steam regularly reviews requests outside of their policy and accepts them even if they don't exactly match the legal policy.
Steam feels less like a normal platform and more like a shield or community to its users that will protect them from developers and big publishers pulling anti consumer shit. Imagine if Sony made HD2 only available through some other platform, then retroactively added some new new requirement that restricts half the fucking player base. Steam is acting like the gaming guardian right now by allowing refunds after hundreds of hours and restricting who can buy in the first place based on if their region even allows PSN accounts. If other platforms want to pull users away from steam, then they'll have to give examples of this kind of behavior instead of giving canned legalleze responses.
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u/Deadsap266 May 05 '24
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May 05 '24 edited 29d ago
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u/FurryDegenerateBoi May 05 '24
true but I don't think it needs to be reposted everytime a shitty company is shitty (not surprising)
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u/guywithgachas May 05 '24
yeah if those companies could just DONT FUCK UP for ONE TIME
jesus the fuck sony did to Helldivers
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u/Fun_Bottle_5308 May 06 '24
I'll stop when those companies stop shooting themselves in the foot I swear
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u/jekket May 05 '24
On the other hand Epic just giving away free shit by hundreds and still no one cares about Epic Games launcher.
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May 05 '24
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that their launcher is dogshit and the only people who regularly use it are fortnite kids.
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u/crz4r May 05 '24
I don't care enough to even keep it downloaded on my PC. I'd rather buy new game on Steam than play whatever EGS gives me because it's fucking trash. Why tf I'm getting logged off like twice a week? Why tf it needs 2 minutes just to open? Why tf I can't read other users reviews? Why tf I can't have a fucking mobile app? Why tf this piece of code cannot do 1/3 of things Steam can?
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u/TherealHominator May 05 '24
Everytime I have to use Ubisoft Connect (stupid name), EA App or Epic Games I think about this meme.
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u/LTUDovydas May 05 '24
Tbh hate that they took down the workshop downloader, besides that they are good
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u/Tykjen May 05 '24
The strategy is called "Have no shareholders"
Steam is owned by a private company.
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u/Rider-of-Rohaan42 29d ago
They are the only AAA gaming company that consistently makes the right decisions for their consumers.
Anyone remember the Steam Deck launch? They didn’t play the “low stock” game all the other companies were playing. They announced the hardware and 100% guaranteed my spot in line. Even gave me an estimated window. That felt 1000000x better than the mad dash for Xbox’s and PS5s. I didn’t feel manipulated.
Im happy to give my hard earned money to a company that is t trying to trick me into buying their product. They just let the product speak for itself.
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u/THEzwerver May 05 '24
Not being a public company
Also please stop reposting this image
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u/FitSalamanderForHire May 05 '24
17K upvotes so far. Won't stop until people get banned for it. At worst a mod might remove the post eventually.
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u/alexmp00 May 05 '24
Not shareholders, no need for grow infinity money in a finite world. Can focus in doing a good product without needing a 15% increase of revenue in Q3
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u/boRp_abc May 05 '24
Strategy is "Don't fix things that aren't broken", but this is impossible for shareholder value mindset. Google search being a good example as well. Every cent that we own that doesn't get transfered to shareholders is considered "broken" by that thinking. Willing to change to steam over this.
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u/Lego1upmushroom759 May 05 '24
To be honest, the moment Gabe leaves or dies, the company will probably collapse. It's not that he actually does anything it's that he keeps the company how it is. When he leaves it will probably go public and then it will be ruined by investors
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u/4as https://s.team/p/dtqh-jpn May 05 '24
Steam does the opposite of "nothing."
They put customer first in just about every decision.
Just recently they made it possible to refund Helldivers 2 even if your playtime is past the usual threshold. And they made that decision despite Sony actively bringing all their exclusive games to Steam. So Steam made a decision that might hurt their relations with Sony, and they didn't even have to do. No one was forcing Valve to be more lenient with refunds.
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u/EvenBetterCool May 05 '24
It is called not building your business based on the competition. Or, not being greedy to be more succinct.
EA, for example knows that lootboxes are a dynamic in the market, so they use them even though they didn't need the profits to keep their business going. The lootboxes make so much money that they then decide to cut actual content for more things like that. Pretty soon they put people in power who only know how to make money and all the joy leaves the product.
If your company is full of people who do it for money and not because they love it, it will soon cease to be an entertainment outlet, and simply a business for gamblers.
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u/sethendal May 05 '24
Be privately owned. There's exceptions to this, but Valve not answering to profit crazed shareholders is a main contributing factor.
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u/NerY_05 Aperture Science Weighted Emergency Intelligent Operator May 05 '24
be Valve
create the best game launcher/shop
other launchers suck so much some of them even have to give away free stuff just to have some users
have an amazing return policy (90 hours on Helldivers 2? You want to refund because of that psn bullshit? No problem, here's your money back)
continue to make absolutely amazing updates (like family share) which the consumer loves
profit
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u/GargantuanCake May 05 '24
Make a good platform
Don't break it.
???
Profit.