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yum13241 ,

MSFT is full of misfits.

xT1TANx ,

What if you got Half Life 3?

localhost443 ,

They’d probably contract Bethesda to develop it and make another soulless open world grindfest on an engine that’s about as overdue for retirement as Mitch McConnell

MeanEYE ,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

I would buy Valve as well, but that doesn’t change the fact they are not for sale.

archy ,

Is xBox not enough?

DAMunzy ,

I love Steam (have 2000 or so games on it) but I realize it is only a matter of time before it gets enshittified.

betsysoul ,

Maybe, but it’s still a private company.

TwilightVulpine , (edited )

Yeah, there is some hope for as long as Valve isn’t publicly traded. It’s investors that push companies to care only for short term gains.

Valve is not saintly, they have their own sketchy aspects like how they profit over that cosmetics trading market, but releasing the Steam Deck shows they are still thinking of the long term future of PC gaming.

turbowafflz ,

I think valve will be okay as long as they have Gabe Newell, since it seems like he really does care about things like linux support. I’m worried what will happen if he ever leaves though

BlemboTheThird ,

the man is 60 and morbidly obese. even if he never leaves there’s every chance he’ll have sudden health problems. at least he’d have the money for good medical treatment

mammut ,

That doesn’t guarantee much of anything, though, and private companies still have investors that can influence the direction of the company. E.g., a lot of people are wary of Tencent’s influence over Epic or Reddit even though both are private.

variaatio , (edited )

Well the thing is … yes Valve has shareholding investors… Only one that matter as far as anyone knows is Gabe Newell. Given it’s private corp, they don’t have to publicly tell what his exact ownership is and I think it is known it isn’t anymore 100% unlike at some point. However all “as far as we know” indications are, Gabe Newell maintains 50%+ controlling shareholding. Rest of the shareholders as people understand are employees and ex employees, who got private shares as part of compensation packages.

We don’t have actual look at the books, but Valve people have on multiple occasion said “Valve doesn’t have external investors”. Given it was public official comments by official people, I would think they wouldn’t lie about it. So there is no external VCs or share external investor investors.

Gabe pretty much has probably pretty universal control only limited by business regulation and maybe whatever clauses the corporate charter has. However since he was at one point sole owner, I doubt it contains anything too much curtailing him. Since the way any other people have gotten shares is by Gabe agreeing to give them or sell them to people in the first place.

As far as I understand at no point has Valve been cash strapped such as to need to ask for external investors. Since it is company founded by two early ex-Microsoft people who had made decently money at Microsoft already before Founding Valve. Gabe ended as sole owner as the other founding owner decided to leave the business and Gabe bought him out.

mammut ,

One person being the majority shareholder doesn’t stop people from worrying, though. Epic is majority owned by its founder like Valve is, but everybody still points to the minority investors and says, “What about their influence?”

In any case, my point is more that just being private isn’t some kinda of magic bullet to forever avoiding outside influence. It’s possible that, eventually, the other 49% not controlled by Gabe have sold out to Tencent and they’re in the same position as a lot of other companies with outside investors holding just under the majority.

betsysoul ,

That’s true, but Gabe still owns over half the stock, and I doubt he’s looking to sell.

Honestly I just assume Valve is Gabe’s hobby workdesk at this point.

rip_art_bell ,
@rip_art_bell@lemmy.world avatar

People would riot. GOG would have a massive influx of traffic.

boo OP ,
@boo@lemmy.one avatar

Not likely, GOG barely has any reach

mammut ,

I agree. I’m surprised people are convinced that everyone would just leave a service they’ve been using for years once it starts to suck.

First of all, all your purchased games will only work on Steam, so you’re probably not going to just abandon it and give up access to all your previous purchases. And then you’re going to think to yourself, “Well, since I have to keep using Steam anyway, and since all my friends are here, I guess I’ll just keep buying games here anyway.”

Second of all, people, historically, just continue to use large services even when they go to shit / evidence that they’ve gone to shit comes to light. Hell, even when substantially better services show up, people don’t just suddenly switch.

bgtlover ,

@mammut @boo agreed, and that's what they rely on, though valve isn't by far the worst offender here

auraness ,

The irony of saying that on Lemmy.

BlemboTheThird ,

reddit is still wildly popular. lemmy’s user numbers have been dropping over the last 2 months. it’s way more active than it was before june but if anything the lemmy/reddit masto/twitter dynamic is emblematic of how things would go

Draedron ,

Which isnt nearly as popular as reddit and has decrrasing user numbers. I don’t see the irony, more that lemmy is proving the point

mammut ,

Lol. I left Reddit for Lemmy, and I continue to use Lemmy. I am very much the exception and not the norm, though.

I will be very, very surprised if Lemmy ends up growing more popular than Reddit at any time in the near future. As others have pointed out, Lemmy’s popularity has been decreasing and Reddit’s popularity has not substantially decreased. There’s still way more people and content on Reddit than there is on Lemmy, and I don’t think there’s any evidence there was any real mass exodus. Some people left, but it was basically a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. I would expect the same even if Microsoft, Tencent, Activision, or pretty much anyone else were to buy Steam. People may get irritated, and some people may even leave and never come back, but most people generally want to just continue using the services they’re used to.

ImFresh3x ,

Xbox fans will say this is good.

Buffalox ,

But they would be wrong. More monopoly is never good.

Powerpoint ,

I’m an Xbox fan but I’m first a Linux fan and PC gaming fan. This is bad. Valve needs to stay private.

FrostbyteIX ,
@FrostbyteIX@lemmy.world avatar

Anyone else foresee a “Microsoft VS Disney Power Games” style thing coming soon? Since MS is practically buying game companies like no tomorrow…

MenacingPerson ,

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish moment

Emerald ,

Triple E gaming

TWeaK ,

I like to think Gabe knows all too well the importance of remaining a private business. Publicly traded businesses are the root cause of a lot of problems in the world.

azulavoir ,

I work for a company that has specifically stated it will never do that and has stuck to those guns for 50+ years

RagingRobot ,

I work for one who said the same thing then 2 years ago sold for $12 billion dollars to a public company. The employees didn’t get very much of that either.

Buffalox ,

A public traded company has way more transparency, I have no idea why you believe privately held companies would be in any way better.

The problem is often when the original founder of a private company leaves, the company loses its roots and by that its reason to exist. And those two often go together.

just_another_person ,

Only more transparency in the fiduciary sense, which only really helps shareholders. All companies are still required to follow any regulatory disclosures, which generally benefits the public and users.

Valve has only gotten to where they are being on the pulse of the gaming community, and being agile to adapt to those needs. Publicly traded companies only care about profits and shareholders by contract. That’s kind of their job once they go public. Very few buck that trend.

Buffalox ,

Yes you are somewhat right. But IMO Valve is what it is because of Gabe Newell, private or public is not the determining factor.

When Gabe Newell at some point leaves Valve, the company will change, no matter if it stays private or goes public.

31337 ,

Large “activist” shareholders (usually fund managers, I believe) often step-in and make demands when the stock isn’t performing as they would like. Gabe could be CEO, but shareholders could threaten to dump stock to get the company to act in a certain way. I believe that was behind all the tech layoffs. My conspiracy-biased mind believes these shareholders sometimes push for things that aren’t exactly in the company’s best interest, but are in the investor’s best interest. E.g. if the fund management company is also heavily in commercial real-estate, they may try to get other companies they are invested in to institute return-to-office mandates. My guess is these big players do all kinds of shady shit (use their influence to control media narratives, politicians, etc).

Buffalox ,

Just because a company is public, doesn’t mean control suddenly is with some Capital company.

Microsoft as an example was absolutely controlled by the founders for decades, before they left the company and handed control over. There is NOTHING different about that, compared to a private company, that can also be traded.

TWeaK ,

My point was that Valve could only be what it is without being a publicly traded company. Yes, it also requires Gabe or the business owner to direct the company properly, but there are a range of things that publicly traded companies are legally prohibited from doing.

Just because a company is public, doesn’t mean control suddenly is with some Capital company.

Control still primarily lies with the CEO, but the CEO of a publicly traded company is legally obligated to pursue profits above all else.

Buffalox ,

Control still primarily lies with the CEO

No control lies with the owners, a public company can easily have a single or a small group of owners that control the company. Your entire premise is simply false.

TWeaK ,

Yes you’re right, the control lies with the owner. The owner is quite often also the CEO with a private company, but the distinction is worth clarifying.

Strictly speaking, the same is true of publicly traded companies. However with publicly traded companies there is also law that obligates the CEO to act on behalf of the shareholders. The shareholders are the owner, just like with private companies. However a private CEO would just be in breach of their employment contract, a public CEO would be in breach of the law.

Ultimately the reality of publicly traded companies means that “the CEO works for the owner” in all practical purposes is “the CEO pursues profit above all else”. While it would technically be possible for all the shareholders to vote that the company do something else, in reality that almost never happens - there are too many ways for shareholders to buy into the company and say “no I want money”. Thus, privately owned businesses have the opportunity, under direction from the owner/CEO of behaving differently to publicly traded companies. That doesn’t mean they will, because many private business owners want to make money just the same as public shareholders, but the possibility is much higher.

Your entire premise is simply false.

No it isn’t, and the things I’m explaining to you are widely understood.

meeeeetch ,

That the shareholders push for things in their interest over that of the company doesn’t exactly strike me as conspiratorial thinking. Nearly everyone in an organization will push for what’s best for them.

Maintaining a healthy organization is in nearly everyone’s best interest, but if you have a small group of decision makers who are not invested in the health of the organization, they’ll be willing to make decisions at the expense of the organization.

variaatio ,

When Gabe Newell at some point leaves Valve, the company will change, no matter if it stays private or goes public.

Depends how that happens. Since frankly I think people think “the way Gabe Newell leaves ownership of Valve is by him eventually dying”. Since he has never shown any indication to sell. He has offered shares to employees as part of compensation packages, but as I understand even then he has controlling share.

So ofcourse the most simplest way is “Gabe dies and has done no special arrangement”… shares go to inheritance to his family. So his wife and children. Which might mean nothing changes or everything changes. Maybe he has given private last wishes, maybe not. However they get to decide. They might decide to keep the company as is. Since given they are inheritors of Gabes fortune, not like they would be immediately hurting for cash.

Second option is… Gabe does actual official arrangements. This isn’t unheard of in case of big private family or personal companies or holdings. For example he might put his shares in a foundation or trust with legally binding last wishes unlike non legally binding personal last wishes. Then what happens is whatever the trust charter is. Given example of say some European industrialist foundadtions like Bosch, instructions are left to run the company as commercial business by board of managers to best benefit of the company finances. However the one option the holders don’t have is “sell the company”, since the shares are hold up in the foundation/trust with instructions “never sell”. Company is to be run profitable enterprise as his and best ability of managers and then… the trust gets the profits and uses them for it’s purposes. It might be a private family trust, where upon the money is then shared to Gabes descendants, but don’t really have say in “we want to cash out, just lump sell our shares”. It could also be as in case of Bosch, that it is charitable foundation. After which all of the business profits of the Bosch conglomerate end up financing various charities, foundations, clinics and so on run by the Bosch stifftung.

It will change no doubt, since well Gabe isn’t there anymore with his personal personality and well each person has their own personality and influence. However it might not change as much as people think, if say his heirs decide to keep running the company based on same base ethos and principles as Gabe did.

That or everything might change. Two days after he dies, his estate sells Valve to Electronic Arts.

Buffalox ,

Two days after he dies, his estate sells Valve to Electronic Arts.

As I’ve stated before, it’s 100% up to the owner, not what type of company it is.

headmetwall ,

Day 1 of suddenly having the urge to keep an offline and DRM free copy of all my steam games.

reonu ,

The article says Microsoft would like to buy Valve. Of course they do. Valve is actively working against Microsoft’s interests (and we have to thank them for that).

It does not say Gabe Newell has the slightest intention to sell. Because he doesn’t.

headmetwall ,

Yea, but Gabe is not going to be around forever, and any successor leadership might have a different philosophy. And it’s never a bad idea to have a backup.

AceFuzzLord ,

I hope to god he personally takes a someone he wants as his company successor under his wing and mentors them under his ways so that we may not worry as much. That’s if he doesn’t already have one or doesn’t have plans for it.

festus ,

Yeah for a while now I’m been buying games on GOG where possible and keeping an archive of them, because I know at some point every company will eventually let you down.

Privatepower42 ,

@festus @headmetwall how do you make sure that when you load up a gog game that it does not launch the gog launcher? What are the steps?

festus ,

The GOG launcher is optional (I don’t use it). On their website you can download offline installers for every game you own, and these installers don’t require the GOG launcher or any account authentication.

Privatepower42 ,

@festus where is this offline installer, exactly? Link? I just get hit with the gog new launcher option being advertised on the site.

festus ,

…gog.com/…/213148105-How-do-I-download-my-purchas… has as the second option how to download the offline installers.

Privatepower42 ,

@festus nice. So what’s the point of the gog launcher app after this? Anyways, I prefer to use heroic. Much lighter and easier.

festus ,

Honestly I’m not sure - as I said I don’t use it. I know of at least one game that’s “DRM-free” but requires the GOG launcher for multiplayer (No Man’s Sky). That’s fairly controversial and I think the only reason why it’s on GOG is because it came onto GOG back when it was a singleplayer only game.

Privatepower42 ,

@festus do you know why I get this error message using gog on heroic on the Steam Deck?

festus ,

Sorry, unfortunately I don’t use heroic.

XenoStare ,

Did everyone conveniently forget that Steam DRM is the reason why Steam came to prominence, and why it was ever used by any devs in the first place. Yes it’s easily cracked and barely an anti-piracy measure, even admitted by Valve, but it is still DRM.

Privatepower42 ,

@XenoStare @headmetwall that’s right. Steam is a business. They are not really for open source. Open source, is still a business model. It’s not public domain or libre software. Then can always make their stuff closed source at anytime. Just need to gather free work from the community and to elevate its private business. Still, there are articles detailing Valve as anti-consumer. It’s a search bar away.

clutch ,

When one company in an industry has nearly endless cash, as Microsoft and Apple do, it is natural that everyone else would be seen as acquisition targets

TWeaK ,

The difference is Valve is completely privately owned, Microsoft cannot force a sale.

With a publicly traded business, the business must be run in the interests of the shareholders, ie it must pursue profits above all else. Thus a buyer can effectively present “an offer you can’t refuse”, at least the business can’t refuse on behalf of shareholders (maybe the shareholders could vote and refuse). With a private business the owner generally has free reign to run the business as they see fit, they could run it into the ground if they so desired.

So it doesn’t matter how much cash Microsoft or whoever have, so long as Gabe doesn’t want to sell.

jjjalljs ,

So long as Gabe doesn’t like die or have a personality changing stroke. Not sure what Valve’s plans are for his retirement

ILikeBoobies ,

Selling to Microsoft would be a good retirement plan

AceFuzzLord ,

According to Forbes, as of today, his net worth is apparently $4.3 billion. That man could quit now and live a very comfortable life until he dies.

arefx ,

This would be a nightmare

phoneymouse , (edited )

Gaben used to work at Microsoft and left because he hated it.

frippa ,
@frippa@lemmy.ml avatar

Wow really? This may explain why valve likes Linux so much (at least in part, it’s an untapped market, 10 other reasons etc)

muhyb , (edited )

Fun fact, he left Microsoft before the release of Windows 3.

mammut , (edited )

I think that must not be right. In this interview, he says that he went around showing Doom to everyone at MS, and he hints that he didn’t leave Microsoft until about 1996.

muhyb ,

Also checked Wikipedia and it says “Newell spent 13 years at Microsoft as the producer of the first three releases of the Windows operating systems.” and he stayed at MS until found Valve which is indeed 1996. I guess that was some kind of a joke?

mammut ,

Is that why he left? In this interview he makes it sound like he just felt like making games. It seems like he wouldn’t have been at MS for 13 years if he hated it that much.

uberkalden ,

This is so stupid. Of course they would buy it. Valve won’t sell, but let’s do the click baits!

Chunk ,

Yeah 100% this. Why would you not buy Valve? The store is a cash cow and the userbase is huge. They have a lot of good faith with the community too. These must be rage bait articles.

DarkThoughts ,

They can buy the Steam forums.

hansl ,

They’d buy Sony and Nintendo if those were up to sell. For the right price (I dunno, in the hundreds of dollars according to my bank account), I’d buy them too.

sugartits ,

in the hundreds of dollars according to my bank accoun

You decadent bourgeois pig

OldQWERTYbastard ,

Look at Daddy Warbucks over here.

Kyrgizion ,

As long as Gabe lives, this won’t be a problem.

But he’s getting on in age so this will eventually be an issue, no doubt…

Zetta ,

Gabe will have a good successor. Valve has a lot of talented and passionate employees that have been with the company since near the start.

Anestoh ,

This nothing email has been making headlines for a week and it’s so frustrating. It’s literally just a guy from outside the gaming division saying “what if” and Phil saying “sure, that’d be neat”

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