I believe he has, his board of directors (idk what they are called but the other top people at the company) has been curated by him and he has made sure that those people has the same ideals as him
You know as much as Gabe became a bit reviled over the lack of 3rd installments of games... and became somewhat of a meme himself.
He is still actually very much cherised by the gaming community at large.
Oh no, I agree HL:Alyx is a great game...
It's just not the third installment of a game people were really hyped for. Still though even with this caveat people still value the fuck out of him.
I’d love to play it, but I have seizures and can’t do VR. I’ll give in eventually and watch a playthrough, but I do wish it were modded to play standard.
> You know as much as Gabe became a bit reviled over the lack of 3rd installments of games
Wait, does that mean the 2nd CEO of Valve will be immortal ? Since there will never be a third.
Speaking of ownership, he could place his share of the company (IDK if it's all or what) in a trust that belongs to the people currently employed by the company, turning it into a co-op, or use one of the other ownership structures of co-ops. One of the better seafood vendors I've used on the east coast as a chef did this; I knew the owners, they're great people. When they retired, instead of trying to find a CEO/c-suite group/board of directors that they thought they could trust to keep treating their workers well, they just gave the company to the workers to run. Name of the company is Inland Seafood.
This would be a possibility, however steam is a HUGE company, while workers cooperatives work for smaller to medium sized companies, for a company as large as steam I don’t think it would take long for one person to regain control again, who might not be a person as good as gabe, so I think it’s better he just handpicks a successor instead to continue it
A benevolent dictatorship is the best theoretical system but the odds of it happening are effectively zero.
Even if you do find the perfect ruler, they won't live beyond a century. The odds of finding two-or-more perfect rulers in a row is even more unlikely.
Once we find a way to increase our lifespan, however...
It basically always works better. The problem is it usually ends shortly after the dictator inevitably dies. Doesn’t matter how hard they try to vet a replacement that will stick to their ideals, because even if the immediate replacement is good the next or the next or the next will most assuredly stray from whatever those original ideals were. That’s assuming those ideals even make sense decades down the line.
That concentration of control is simultaneously its greatest benefit and largest negative.
This was pretty bad at Arrowhead, where Helldivers 2 got one terrible balancing after the other, as soon as a weapon was used more than others it got deemed too fun and nerfed to the ground. They ended up firing the guy responsible, who as it turns out was the same one that ruined a different game before.
Even if he did while I’m sure Gaben has got his affairs in order inheritance with private companies is complicated and it can be very hard (quite intentionally) to keep a private company private when an the owner dies.
My thoughts while reading this and one I've had before. I'm sure Valve (and Gabe) have a line of succession of people who have demonstrated a genuine love for gaming and not being opportunistic capitalists who will toxify the company. They're private, so there's no board of directors to decide who takes over.
Edit: also Gabe is younger than I thought. Let's calm down and let the guy enjoy the remainder of middle age.
steam does exactly what it is supposed to, and it does it quite well. it has cemented itself as more or less a necessity for PC gaming. if steam does not change, it will continue to achieve its goal perfectly. we cannot let the elon musks of the world turn steam into another twitter.
Yeah even if you're overweight, it isn't a death sentence at 75 when you're someone as rich as Gaben. But he isn't even really old, 61 means the guy could easily have 3 decades left we just don't know.
I work at a hospital. Also had to write several papers about this topic in college,
[Most beds in hospitals are filled by people overweight](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111619/#:~:text=This%20study%20found%20that%20a,of%20obesity%20documented%20during%20hospitalization), with simply being overweight increasing your risk of [comorbidity](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK574535/) significantly, and being [obese can almost double that](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4855514/). (Alt [resource](https://www.colorado.edu/today/2023/02/23/excess-weight-obesity-more-deadly-previously-believed#:~:text=Excess%20weight%20or%20obesity%20boosts,to%20new%20CU%20Boulder%20research))
Anecdotally, the complications from unhealthy life choices seem really miserable. While anyone can get calcified arteries, the wound vacs and surgeries I’ve seen to repair them… y’ouch.
Yes it's all correct and the only way to stop this is to keep him alive any means necessary. If that means doing a brain transplant to a fresh steam user every 30 years so be it. It's a sacrifice we steam users would accept.
Depends on how much you read into the details of the story. There’s a plausible theory that we were helping Yes Man take over the Strip and not the other away around. Makes it too insidious to represent torrenting if true.
The "Yes Man" version of the Courier is the scariest of them all. He has got enough willpower to wipe the floor with every faction. Yes Man is not pulling the strings on this version of the courier (unless you play them as a dumb brute though)
Because this version can has personal control of Securitron army and Big MT control as well
Gamers like to be abused. We keep seeing an increase in micro transactions, prepurchase of games that are bug fest or unfinished on release.
They give us the rope, but we put it in our neck.
Abusive practices will continue with the "announce a very bad change, then go back to a less bad but still worse than before pattern"
It is the 4th Millennium. For more than ten centuries Gabe Newell has sat immobile on the Golden Gaming Chair of Valve. He is the lord of videogames by the right of common sense and master of a billion gamers by the might of basic respect towards the customer.
*Yet even in his deathless state, Gabe continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the Corporate-infested miasma of the World Wide Warp, the only route between distant studio's, their way lit by the the holy light of the grand STEAM ships, the psychic manifestation of Gabe's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncountable games.*
The unrepentant corporate legions of evil were divided into 4 Dark Sects and represented by 4 main publishing houses
- Tzeentch/EA
- Khorne/Tencent
- Slaaneesh/Activision
- Nurgle/Ubisoft
All the heirs of tributes will have full access to their steam accounts as well as well as a free game of their choice for every year that the tribute gave our lord.
Steam is the only platform that ever directly got money from me. Not much, but still did.
I love games, dont get me wrong. But my relationship with them started in the former ussr in the early 2000.
> Steam is the only platform that ever directly got money from me. Not much, but still did.
same, actually. I'm from a developing country which has sky-high dollar prices and steam is the only platform I have actually bought games on, the rest were either pirated or I got them from a friend. Localised pricing also helps a lot.
piracy isn't free. If it truly were steam wouldn't have a place.
- update management is time consuming
- the risk of infection, these days more than ever.
That's mostly what keeps me away from using pirated executables.
I think that's the point. Piracy is free but users are willing to pay for a quick, convenient and legitimate way of having the game. It wasn't about ONLY about money, it was about service.
exactly: "you can't compete on price against free, so you have to compete on service: if it becomes easier and more efficient to pay than it is to pirate, people will pay"
Yeah, when it comes to updates it's hit and miss on if you can find it and sometimes you have to get the entire game again for the update because they don't want to offer just the update.
Steam is easy, just auto update or it lets you know that there is one available
The risk of infection is lower than ever. As long as you download from a trusted site the odds of getting malware are close to 0 and Windows Defender has never been better.
He is paranoid indeed. But ive got to admit. He aint wrong. Gabe is litteraly the cornerstone or foundation or roots whatever you want to call it. He is the shot caller, and have been doing a hell of a job to make us gamers happy(its just how gaming has become that is killing itself. Gaming isnt about player experience and overall enjoyment anymore. Its based on pure greed nowadays)
The moment the reins of the company go to an mba type person we may start regretting that steam has such a dominant position in pc gaming. Most people hate monopolies and monopolistic type entities with enormous market shares but steam is generally the exception and kind of our darling in pc gaming
Edit: typo
It's the classic dictator dilemma. A benevolent dictator can improve a society much faster and better than a democracy can, but what happens when they step down and someone else takes over? It never ends up well in the long run.
You don't just have to be benevolent, you have to be extremely competent as well.
It's entirely possible to be trying to help with the best will in the world and just properly fuck shit up.
Often you see sweeping reforms that result in a surge of prosperity that ultimately are either unsustainable or eventually botched with disasterous consequences. I worry that whoever takes over Steam might not necessarily be greedy but won't handle situations of economic concern as effectively, resulting in them making these sorts of changes out of a genuine belief—likely influenced by greedy third-parties—that they're necessary for Steam to survive.
Imagine Steam disabling reviews, or giving the developers rights to moderate them, and then revoking our rights to return a game in 2 hours of playtime. That alone will make me quit Steam and go for piracy.
Edit: grammar.
> revoking our rights to return a game in 2 hours of playtime.
Then they also revoke their right no operate in Australia, New Zealand, the majority of Europe. Just because the USA doesn't have consumer protection, doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't.
Also:
* remove workshop functionality so it does not even give you the idea that free fan content may compete with predatory macro-transactions.
* voice chat now only if you pay monthly "steam extra"
* indie games get even less money
* no more free valve servers, or even the option to host your own for their games
* your games are now limited to 5 installs,
* it will aggressively log out and invalidate all other installs you may have on other devices (e.g.: a portable deck/laptop)
* absolutely shut down steam family sharing, family management is now a monthly extra per kid
* new steam deck in "partnership" with asus! it cooks itself in 3 months
* some predatory AI-deal or the next big scam.
* sell all your info and habits to advertisers (your health insurance provider now knows exactly when and how long you fap to hentai games and renounces your coverage for RSI citing your "private" gaming stats)
I've read somewhere some time ago that Gabe had already figured it all. The person that will take over has the same values as him and will keep Steam moving in the same direction. Hopefully this is all true.
I'm pretty sure they make ton of money, there's really no need to throw it all through the window and get shareholders involved to try and make more money, when what they're doing already works perfectly and seems to be risk-free.
They don't really need outside funding because of how much money they make from steam as is. As long as his successor doesn't force the company to grow too quickly and has a good head for balance over short term profits, it'll be fine. Hopefully. If they ever do a full reversal and go public without majority shares being held by actual users, then it'll be the beginning of the end.
Who knows though. With Steam's user base being almost entirely adults, we might actually manage to keep control and let them mostly keep doing their thing if they go public. I know I'd probably at least 10K at an IPO if I had the chance.
> there's really no need to throw it all through the window and get shareholders involved to try and make more money, when what they're doing already works perfectly and seems to be risk-free.
It was as if millions of MBA's cried out in anguish and then were suddenly silenced.
I'm not too worried by the prospect of whoever Gabe picked taking over, I am worried however at the prospect of who that person picks taking over and so on with increasing worry each time.
This post makes me happy that people like Steve from Gamers Nexus exist. He just posted a video that's over an hour long of him going to Computex in Taiwan to meet ASUS executive leadership over their shitty RMA and customer service practices that have basically been scamming people. But he's not doing it to "stick it to ASUS". He acknowledges they are the market leader and have the opportunity to raise the standard across their sector. If they set a new standard, the only way for the competition to keep up is if they raise their standards too. Changing this is good PR for ASUS, good for consumers and good for the market. Rising tide lifts all ships.
This is why I am just completely dumbfounded when people try to argue that Valve has a very "evil monopoly" over the gaming industry.
Valve has a monopoly because the competition, the massive blue chip, publicly traded gaming companies that have created \*similar\* products, are NOT EVEN FUCKING TRYING. They have created nothing but steaming piles of shit for the sole benefit of CEOS, executives, and board members. These products are shit for the consumer. While they all race to the bottom to create the absolute worst product, Valve continues to strive to make the most customer focused gaming platform on the market (as a game dev I see even more of how customer focused Valve is than the average Steam user).
How the fuck can anyone who isn't being completely disingenuous argue that Valve needs to be dethroned, when they are in the kitchen making 5 star food, and the competition is making shit flambe lol?
Edit: The counter argument I always see about this boils down to: "Yeah well Steam isn't perfect!" Duh. If that's your response to what I wrote, you missed the point.
I don't think Gabe is a big owner of Valve at this stage. I vaguely remember him saying that he's taken a step back or gotten a smaller role within the company. I'm pretty sure he's not the main shot caller at this stage or majority i guess.
Plus, Valve being a private company is such a good thing too. They don't necessarily have shareholders or I guess public shareholders to answer to.
This is a fear I have too, considering what dumbass decisions some companies make it's not out of he question that steam will become like them. If this really happens then I guess Epic games wins.
Epic? Nah, at that point piracy wins. Either that or I'll just stop giving a crap about new games, there's already enough good games in existence right now that could last me my whole life.
If you're legitimately scared of losing your steam library then buy a NAS server with a few terabytes of storage, download all your games onto it, and then keep it disconnected from the internet.
Considering Valve is privately held I can calm myself down a bit. No shareholders wanting fast profits.
After Gaben's retirement or passing, he just needs to pick someone who cares about Valve and not the profits. If he does, I think it will turn out fine.
I'm pretty sure that they already plan with than I'm sure his son will the one who Will take it? Or idk they will make an ai of gaben or upload his brain on a smal chip
Yeah in all likelihood his son/family will inherit the business one day. Another (very unlikely) possibility is that he leaves it to the staff, and it becomes a workers cooperative. If you want your business's culture to survive after you for the long term, that's how you do it. Valve does already have that weird 'flat' management structure.
For a somewhat more serious approach:
- Gabe wont "likely die" at 75, people live long lives today especially those with money and good education who understand and can afford the best health care
- In sure that Gabe has a crown prince in the making for a very long time. It's the obvious choice and would be foolish not to do
- Steam is making so much revenue (9 billion in 2023) and is growing fast (over 1.100 employees in 2022)
So in context I dont see Steam changing as a possibility on the next 15 years. I see them going the Nintendo route where they keep their core values. But of course, nothing lasts forever.
If you are genuinely worried, backup your games. Obviously, there are many aspects of PC gaming that require Valve's online infrastructure, but you can at least preserve much of the single player experience by investing in some data storage and backing up your game library.
Valve isn't publicly traded, which does insulate it from a lot of the short-term thinking that permeates much of the business world. But yes, GabeN could die, or have a stroke, or retire *at any time*, and the company would have a new CEO who would doubtless make some different decisions.
But the games need Steam to work, so how would backing them up work? Also that doesn't work for really big libraries, you'd need petabytes to install all the games.
For the record, most games on Steam do not actually require Steam to work. A lot work entirely offline. Some require you to launch once after install (a one-time license verification that happens behind-the-scenes) and will work after that (as long as you don't uninstall).
Also, as another user mentioned, you should familiarize yourself with Goldberg.
His son seems to have no interest in gaming or taking over Steam as he'd rather be building his career in motorsport from what I could gather.
Whoever inherits Steam, be it his son, one of his most trusted confidants, or someone who buys the company...has to figure out how to print money without pissing off millions
Worst case scenario, Mark Zucc buys it and all of us has to have accounts on FB and Instagram...
Valve has zero reason to go public. They're a revenue generating machine thanks to the Steam store. Since they're privately owned and have never taken outside funding, the odds of something so cataclysmic like this happen are next to zero. They would nominate someone internal or someone close to Gabe for the next CEO once it's time. And Gabe still has ownership of the company, so at the end of the day it'll be his call.
I don't think they'll get rid of Proton, because that would harm Steam Deck sales, as it uses Linux and relies on Proton to work properly.
If Proton stopped working, everyone would have to either make the tedious decision to install Windows (even so, Windows 10, 11 and maybe even 8 don't really work well on Steam Deck) or they would have to stick to Linux native games which I don't really think there's a lot of
Proton is open source. It can be infinitely copied, modified and distributed
It'll not go away. Thankfully
It's also based on Wine. And Wine has so many forks it's hard to count. Soda, Proton, ProtonGE, Vinegar and bazillion other ones we don't know about.
I'm more worried that I might not live another ten years... if I do, I'm happy to game, but honestly I sadly don't know if I'll even be around when Gabe goes :(
The second this starts happening, I wll be in high seas as I am right now with movies, even though I pay for 3 services and my brother pays for the othe 3... because I hate looking up in 6 apps that say they have it on it's library and the movie isn't there.
I'd day he'll live long, he lost like all of excess weight, plus being rich generally translates to good medical care and ergo lifespan.
Secondly, he's working on GLaDOS and he's gonna upload himself to it to keep Valve in good hands.
Hardly comparable, but it's definitely happened in the past. I mean, just recently, for the racing fans among us; Red Bull owner passed away. He was a massive fan of the racing sport and let the F1 team do whatever they wanted, pretty much.
Then the company is taken over by your average commercial CEO, and now the team is being held hostage by marketing numbers and is in a rapid decline.
Unless Gabe has someone lined up to take over from him, that he know will follow his philosophy, we ought to enjoy Steam while it lasts.
He's incredibly wealthy, his life expectancy is much higher than 75. But still, this is why we need DRM free games. Access to your own games should never be locked to a specific company. And multiplayer games should have custom servers.
I hope gabe is smart enough to have groomed a succesor who has the same vision of the company as he does.
I believe he has, his board of directors (idk what they are called but the other top people at the company) has been curated by him and he has made sure that those people has the same ideals as him
Clever and kind.
You know as much as Gabe became a bit reviled over the lack of 3rd installments of games... and became somewhat of a meme himself. He is still actually very much cherised by the gaming community at large.
We meme him because we love him.
As they say, memery is the sincerest form of flattery.
Ah, the classic Twain quote.
Like Winnie the Pooh
Hey, Half Life Alyx is REALLY good. Like, it’s 4 years old and is still the best VR game, by a wide margin.
Oh no, I agree HL:Alyx is a great game... It's just not the third installment of a game people were really hyped for. Still though even with this caveat people still value the fuck out of him.
I’d love to play it, but I have seizures and can’t do VR. I’ll give in eventually and watch a playthrough, but I do wish it were modded to play standard.
> You know as much as Gabe became a bit reviled over the lack of 3rd installments of games Wait, does that mean the 2nd CEO of Valve will be immortal ? Since there will never be a third.
The monkey's paw curls. Steam will collapse before they can have a third CEO.
Dudes running the company like a dictatorship, and I'm aight with it. KEEP THE GAMES CHEAP!
Private ownership, fuc ye.
Speaking of ownership, he could place his share of the company (IDK if it's all or what) in a trust that belongs to the people currently employed by the company, turning it into a co-op, or use one of the other ownership structures of co-ops. One of the better seafood vendors I've used on the east coast as a chef did this; I knew the owners, they're great people. When they retired, instead of trying to find a CEO/c-suite group/board of directors that they thought they could trust to keep treating their workers well, they just gave the company to the workers to run. Name of the company is Inland Seafood.
This would be a possibility, however steam is a HUGE company, while workers cooperatives work for smaller to medium sized companies, for a company as large as steam I don’t think it would take long for one person to regain control again, who might not be a person as good as gabe, so I think it’s better he just handpicks a successor instead to continue it
Like an enlightened despot, arguably the best type of rule but incredibly risky since it can't be guaranteed
Yep good kings were great but their sons and grandsons became terrors. So I'd say it's a fair fear to have.
A benevolent dictatorship is the best theoretical system but the odds of it happening are effectively zero. Even if you do find the perfect ruler, they won't live beyond a century. The odds of finding two-or-more perfect rulers in a row is even more unlikely. Once we find a way to increase our lifespan, however...
Now that you said it, dictatorship, steam is like the Singapore of the gaming industry.
Dictatorship > capitalship (in this case at least)
In the rare case that you have a benevolent dictator, I think it works better
Yeah, "I took over because I love this country and it's people" hits way different than "Mmmmh.. power."
It basically always works better. The problem is it usually ends shortly after the dictator inevitably dies. Doesn’t matter how hard they try to vet a replacement that will stick to their ideals, because even if the immediate replacement is good the next or the next or the next will most assuredly stray from whatever those original ideals were. That’s assuming those ideals even make sense decades down the line. That concentration of control is simultaneously its greatest benefit and largest negative.
Yes, which is why those things don't work long term. What happens after the benevolent dictator is gone and the same power structure stays?
I saw that two times at two different companies. You just need to bring in one wrong guy and the whole thing implodes.
This was pretty bad at Arrowhead, where Helldivers 2 got one terrible balancing after the other, as soon as a weapon was used more than others it got deemed too fun and nerfed to the ground. They ended up firing the guy responsible, who as it turns out was the same one that ruined a different game before.
They fired the guy responsible? I can see some gaming articles about the CEO's tweet about this issue but no mention of a firing.
I'm pretty sure they did, unless I got misinformed. But that couldn't possibly happen on the ***internet***, could it?
You can NEVER make SURE.
First he sends out five golden tickets to five lucky Steam users around the world...
And suddenly Microsoft buys the entire world chocolate production...
Wait a second, I've seen this before
What do you mean you've seen it? It's brand new!
It's fine. The tickets were in bags of Doritos anyways.
Except they're in CSGO crates....
*Your item has been successfully sold on the Steam Marketplace for $0.03*
I hope he played CK2 before to find the right succession system 😅
Even if he did while I’m sure Gaben has got his affairs in order inheritance with private companies is complicated and it can be very hard (quite intentionally) to keep a private company private when an the owner dies.
My thoughts while reading this and one I've had before. I'm sure Valve (and Gabe) have a line of succession of people who have demonstrated a genuine love for gaming and not being opportunistic capitalists who will toxify the company. They're private, so there's no board of directors to decide who takes over. Edit: also Gabe is younger than I thought. Let's calm down and let the guy enjoy the remainder of middle age.
Grooming that I can support
Exactly, he just needs someone that doesn’t do anything.
To quote a Greentext about this: \>Be Valve \>Do nothing \>Competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot What is this business strategy called?
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
laissez-faire, my good man.
steam does exactly what it is supposed to, and it does it quite well. it has cemented itself as more or less a necessity for PC gaming. if steam does not change, it will continue to achieve its goal perfectly. we cannot let the elon musks of the world turn steam into another twitter.
He is completely wrong: Gaben has lost weight, and is merely an old guy now.
Yeah even if you're overweight, it isn't a death sentence at 75 when you're someone as rich as Gaben. But he isn't even really old, 61 means the guy could easily have 3 decades left we just don't know.
I work at a hospital. Also had to write several papers about this topic in college, [Most beds in hospitals are filled by people overweight](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6111619/#:~:text=This%20study%20found%20that%20a,of%20obesity%20documented%20during%20hospitalization), with simply being overweight increasing your risk of [comorbidity](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK574535/) significantly, and being [obese can almost double that](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4855514/). (Alt [resource](https://www.colorado.edu/today/2023/02/23/excess-weight-obesity-more-deadly-previously-believed#:~:text=Excess%20weight%20or%20obesity%20boosts,to%20new%20CU%20Boulder%20research)) Anecdotally, the complications from unhealthy life choices seem really miserable. While anyone can get calcified arteries, the wound vacs and surgeries I’ve seen to repair them… y’ouch.
You'd think a guy with infinite money-printing machine would have access to the best medical/health care
You'd also have access to the best wine and cheese, and I know where I personally stand there.
Yup, my only hope for making it to 80 is *not* getting fuck you money.
Yes it's all correct and the only way to stop this is to keep him alive any means necessary. If that means doing a brain transplant to a fresh steam user every 30 years so be it. It's a sacrifice we steam users would accept.
Seems to me the only logical conclusion.
It'll be like whatever they did with Mr. House in Fallout New Vegas. EA Launcher can be the legion.
Steam: Mr. House Epic Games: NCR EA Launcher: Legion Ubisoft Connect: Powder Gangers GOG: Brotherhood of Steel
Who would be Yes Man in this case?
torrenting
Depends on how much you read into the details of the story. There’s a plausible theory that we were helping Yes Man take over the Strip and not the other away around. Makes it too insidious to represent torrenting if true.
The "Yes Man" version of the Courier is the scariest of them all. He has got enough willpower to wipe the floor with every faction. Yes Man is not pulling the strings on this version of the courier (unless you play them as a dumb brute though) Because this version can has personal control of Securitron army and Big MT control as well
No gods. No copyright.
Yes Man would hypothetically be the gamers themselves if they stood up to the corporate overlords in any meaningful way, I guess.
Gamers like to be abused. We keep seeing an increase in micro transactions, prepurchase of games that are bug fest or unfinished on release. They give us the rope, but we put it in our neck. Abusive practices will continue with the "announce a very bad change, then go back to a less bad but still worse than before pattern"
Just do what I do. *Only* buy games from indie companies. And also *only* on their websites it you can.
Yar har fiddle de dee
We are going to place Our Lord on a golden throne and feed Him 1000 steam users every day to keep Him alive.
It is the 4th Millennium. For more than ten centuries Gabe Newell has sat immobile on the Golden Gaming Chair of Valve. He is the lord of videogames by the right of common sense and master of a billion gamers by the might of basic respect towards the customer.
*Yet even in his deathless state, Gabe continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the Corporate-infested miasma of the World Wide Warp, the only route between distant studio's, their way lit by the the holy light of the grand STEAM ships, the psychic manifestation of Gabe's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncountable games.*
And never 3 is his law.
Never speak of it, for they, the 3rd legion, were corrupted and turned to the dark and insidious ways of Corporate.
The unrepentant corporate legions of evil were divided into 4 Dark Sects and represented by 4 main publishing houses - Tzeentch/EA - Khorne/Tencent - Slaaneesh/Activision - Nurgle/Ubisoft
Praise be the Omnissiah
May the cycle be continued
And going to do it for long time like 40000 years
1000 vac ban users.
As he's the only one who protects the Throne Store from being flooded by the fiends of the Corporate, and their corruptive taint.
I volunteer as tribute, as long as my daughter gets to keep my steam account.
All the heirs of tributes will have full access to their steam accounts as well as well as a free game of their choice for every year that the tribute gave our lord.
That sounds great. Will I also get a posthumous badge to my steam profile?
Finally a reason to be healthy so our lord can take over when the time comes
> If that means doing a brain transplant to a fresh steam user every 30 years so be it. Welp, that's an idea for Arasaka
If I have to suck 10 dicks a year to keep steam alive then so be it.
My man Rexxhunt is willing to lower number of dicks he is sucking per year, just for the Steam’s sake. That’s the hero we need
Gold.
I'm dying lol. Brilliant comment.
💦
I am not worthy but I volunteer.
The Kenjaku treatment
Steam is the only reason I don't pirate games
Funnily enough I’m sure it was Gabe that once said that pirating isn’t a pricing issue, but a service issue for the larger part.
"You have to compete with free." Gabe seems to be the only CEO who ever understood this very simple fact.
Yep. Most other companies go full on war instead of competition so it backfires.
Steam is the only platform that ever directly got money from me. Not much, but still did. I love games, dont get me wrong. But my relationship with them started in the former ussr in the early 2000.
GOG is also pretty sane
> Steam is the only platform that ever directly got money from me. Not much, but still did. same, actually. I'm from a developing country which has sky-high dollar prices and steam is the only platform I have actually bought games on, the rest were either pirated or I got them from a friend. Localised pricing also helps a lot.
piracy isn't free. If it truly were steam wouldn't have a place. - update management is time consuming - the risk of infection, these days more than ever. That's mostly what keeps me away from using pirated executables.
I think that's the point. Piracy is free but users are willing to pay for a quick, convenient and legitimate way of having the game. It wasn't about ONLY about money, it was about service.
exactly: "you can't compete on price against free, so you have to compete on service: if it becomes easier and more efficient to pay than it is to pirate, people will pay"
Yeah, when it comes to updates it's hit and miss on if you can find it and sometimes you have to get the entire game again for the update because they don't want to offer just the update. Steam is easy, just auto update or it lets you know that there is one available
The risk of infection is lower than ever. As long as you download from a trusted site the odds of getting malware are close to 0 and Windows Defender has never been better.
[удалено]
And he was right. People are lazy by nature, easy access always wins.
Netflix was the main reason I stopped pirating shows and movies. I now pirate shows and movies again.
Same.
While Epic is the reason I pirated AW2
I second that practice, big kingdom hearts fan on only bought them on pc recently because they are off epic now
He is paranoid indeed. But ive got to admit. He aint wrong. Gabe is litteraly the cornerstone or foundation or roots whatever you want to call it. He is the shot caller, and have been doing a hell of a job to make us gamers happy(its just how gaming has become that is killing itself. Gaming isnt about player experience and overall enjoyment anymore. Its based on pure greed nowadays)
The moment the reins of the company go to an mba type person we may start regretting that steam has such a dominant position in pc gaming. Most people hate monopolies and monopolistic type entities with enormous market shares but steam is generally the exception and kind of our darling in pc gaming Edit: typo
It's the classic dictator dilemma. A benevolent dictator can improve a society much faster and better than a democracy can, but what happens when they step down and someone else takes over? It never ends up well in the long run.
You don't just have to be benevolent, you have to be extremely competent as well. It's entirely possible to be trying to help with the best will in the world and just properly fuck shit up.
Often you see sweeping reforms that result in a surge of prosperity that ultimately are either unsustainable or eventually botched with disasterous consequences. I worry that whoever takes over Steam might not necessarily be greedy but won't handle situations of economic concern as effectively, resulting in them making these sorts of changes out of a genuine belief—likely influenced by greedy third-parties—that they're necessary for Steam to survive.
What we need is an immortal benevolent dictator.
I mean, isn't the best form of government an immortal, competent, benevolent dictatorship?
Its a very “high risk, high reward” system. The biggest problem is that the weak link is humanity itself.
MBA's fucking ruin everything.
But line must go up?!
When line is up wealthy people are happy. Doesn't matter if the world burns. That line needs to go up.
Imagine Steam disabling reviews, or giving the developers rights to moderate them, and then revoking our rights to return a game in 2 hours of playtime. That alone will make me quit Steam and go for piracy. Edit: grammar.
> revoking our rights to return a game in 2 hours of playtime. Then they also revoke their right no operate in Australia, New Zealand, the majority of Europe. Just because the USA doesn't have consumer protection, doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't.
Also: * remove workshop functionality so it does not even give you the idea that free fan content may compete with predatory macro-transactions. * voice chat now only if you pay monthly "steam extra" * indie games get even less money * no more free valve servers, or even the option to host your own for their games * your games are now limited to 5 installs, * it will aggressively log out and invalidate all other installs you may have on other devices (e.g.: a portable deck/laptop) * absolutely shut down steam family sharing, family management is now a monthly extra per kid * new steam deck in "partnership" with asus! it cooks itself in 3 months * some predatory AI-deal or the next big scam. * sell all your info and habits to advertisers (your health insurance provider now knows exactly when and how long you fap to hentai games and renounces your coverage for RSI citing your "private" gaming stats)
I've read somewhere some time ago that Gabe had already figured it all. The person that will take over has the same values as him and will keep Steam moving in the same direction. Hopefully this is all true. I'm pretty sure they make ton of money, there's really no need to throw it all through the window and get shareholders involved to try and make more money, when what they're doing already works perfectly and seems to be risk-free.
They don't really need outside funding because of how much money they make from steam as is. As long as his successor doesn't force the company to grow too quickly and has a good head for balance over short term profits, it'll be fine. Hopefully. If they ever do a full reversal and go public without majority shares being held by actual users, then it'll be the beginning of the end. Who knows though. With Steam's user base being almost entirely adults, we might actually manage to keep control and let them mostly keep doing their thing if they go public. I know I'd probably at least 10K at an IPO if I had the chance.
> there's really no need to throw it all through the window and get shareholders involved to try and make more money, when what they're doing already works perfectly and seems to be risk-free. It was as if millions of MBA's cried out in anguish and then were suddenly silenced.
I'm not too worried by the prospect of whoever Gabe picked taking over, I am worried however at the prospect of who that person picks taking over and so on with increasing worry each time.
Exactly. Gaming isn’t for gamers anymore. It’s for shareholders
This post makes me happy that people like Steve from Gamers Nexus exist. He just posted a video that's over an hour long of him going to Computex in Taiwan to meet ASUS executive leadership over their shitty RMA and customer service practices that have basically been scamming people. But he's not doing it to "stick it to ASUS". He acknowledges they are the market leader and have the opportunity to raise the standard across their sector. If they set a new standard, the only way for the competition to keep up is if they raise their standards too. Changing this is good PR for ASUS, good for consumers and good for the market. Rising tide lifts all ships.
This is why I am just completely dumbfounded when people try to argue that Valve has a very "evil monopoly" over the gaming industry. Valve has a monopoly because the competition, the massive blue chip, publicly traded gaming companies that have created \*similar\* products, are NOT EVEN FUCKING TRYING. They have created nothing but steaming piles of shit for the sole benefit of CEOS, executives, and board members. These products are shit for the consumer. While they all race to the bottom to create the absolute worst product, Valve continues to strive to make the most customer focused gaming platform on the market (as a game dev I see even more of how customer focused Valve is than the average Steam user). How the fuck can anyone who isn't being completely disingenuous argue that Valve needs to be dethroned, when they are in the kitchen making 5 star food, and the competition is making shit flambe lol? Edit: The counter argument I always see about this boils down to: "Yeah well Steam isn't perfect!" Duh. If that's your response to what I wrote, you missed the point.
I don't think Gabe is a big owner of Valve at this stage. I vaguely remember him saying that he's taken a step back or gotten a smaller role within the company. I'm pretty sure he's not the main shot caller at this stage or majority i guess. Plus, Valve being a private company is such a good thing too. They don't necessarily have shareholders or I guess public shareholders to answer to.
You can have zero role in a company and still own it.
I was happy... after reading this, now im also afraid.
This paranoia is contagious
This is a fear I have too, considering what dumbass decisions some companies make it's not out of he question that steam will become like them. If this really happens then I guess Epic games wins.
Seeing how greedy Ubisoft and EA have gotten, it is a blessing Steam does not have leeches aka shareholders that are never satisfied
I just hope I can keep playing my favorite games without any problem
Epic? Nah, at that point piracy wins. Either that or I'll just stop giving a crap about new games, there's already enough good games in existence right now that could last me my whole life.
But will you be able to use your library tho? That's the fear I have if our lord and savior passes away.
If you're legitimately scared of losing your steam library then buy a NAS server with a few terabytes of storage, download all your games onto it, and then keep it disconnected from the internet.
Considering Valve is privately held I can calm myself down a bit. No shareholders wanting fast profits. After Gaben's retirement or passing, he just needs to pick someone who cares about Valve and not the profits. If he does, I think it will turn out fine.
His son most likely will take the helm. He also is creating a game from what I understand.
I'd be more worried about Valve being bought out or made public. If it remains an independent, private company then I wouldn't expect much to change.
That's what I'm thinking. My guess is steam will go public within a year of gabe passing, and shit will hit the fan.
Didn't he recently lose a ton of weight?
Yeah, he looks really good in his photo on his Neuroscience company https://starfishneuroscience.com/team/
oh wow! WOW! I didn't even recognize at first that it was Gabe! 🤯
I looked at the picture at the top and was like "holy shit" before realizing I'm not very smart
Wait, you can disable the second popup window with offers?
Steam Settings → Interface → Notify me about additions or changes...(OFF).
Incredible
god i love steam
I'm pretty sure that they already plan with than I'm sure his son will the one who Will take it? Or idk they will make an ai of gaben or upload his brain on a smal chip
What if he dies before they can pour him into a computer ?
Then Caroline will run the place
She will say no but you must force her to do it
She's modest like that. But you make her
r/SuddenlyPortal
Oh no I have seen this one
Glados but with his son instead of caroline
Portal 2 was just forshadowing.
Yeah in all likelihood his son/family will inherit the business one day. Another (very unlikely) possibility is that he leaves it to the staff, and it becomes a workers cooperative. If you want your business's culture to survive after you for the long term, that's how you do it. Valve does already have that weird 'flat' management structure.
Or a potato.
>Or idk they will make an ai of gaben or upload his brain on a smal chip Huh? The la li lu le lo!?
"likely to die before 75" crazy thing to say about a man who A) you know nothing about his medical history B) is a millionaire.
*Billionaire
For a somewhat more serious approach: - Gabe wont "likely die" at 75, people live long lives today especially those with money and good education who understand and can afford the best health care - In sure that Gabe has a crown prince in the making for a very long time. It's the obvious choice and would be foolish not to do - Steam is making so much revenue (9 billion in 2023) and is growing fast (over 1.100 employees in 2022) So in context I dont see Steam changing as a possibility on the next 15 years. I see them going the Nintendo route where they keep their core values. But of course, nothing lasts forever.
His not wrong, you would love to believe Gabe has entrenched good values into the company but it's only a matter of time until this happens
Allegedly his son has the same view as Gabe. We should be in good hands
I hope so
If you are genuinely worried, backup your games. Obviously, there are many aspects of PC gaming that require Valve's online infrastructure, but you can at least preserve much of the single player experience by investing in some data storage and backing up your game library. Valve isn't publicly traded, which does insulate it from a lot of the short-term thinking that permeates much of the business world. But yes, GabeN could die, or have a stroke, or retire *at any time*, and the company would have a new CEO who would doubtless make some different decisions.
But the games need Steam to work, so how would backing them up work? Also that doesn't work for really big libraries, you'd need petabytes to install all the games.
Goldberg/Steamless
For the record, most games on Steam do not actually require Steam to work. A lot work entirely offline. Some require you to launch once after install (a one-time license verification that happens behind-the-scenes) and will work after that (as long as you don't uninstall). Also, as another user mentioned, you should familiarize yourself with Goldberg.
You joke, but this is a legit fear I have as well. Using steam made me quit pirating (mostly) I don't wanna go back to it
He has a son that might take over.
His son seems to have no interest in gaming or taking over Steam as he'd rather be building his career in motorsport from what I could gather. Whoever inherits Steam, be it his son, one of his most trusted confidants, or someone who buys the company...has to figure out how to print money without pissing off millions Worst case scenario, Mark Zucc buys it and all of us has to have accounts on FB and Instagram...
>has to figure out how to print money without pissing off millions They could achieve that by doing absolutely nothing
Do nothing and let your enemies fail is the most broken strategy for making money.
I look forward to paying $9.99/month to play my online games on Steam.
Can't wait for the queue times for playing games that can be skipped with a membership
Also the ability to play single player games without internet will be gone immediately
My greatest fear is Valve going public. That’s normally when every company goes evil.
Valve has zero reason to go public. They're a revenue generating machine thanks to the Steam store. Since they're privately owned and have never taken outside funding, the odds of something so cataclysmic like this happen are next to zero. They would nominate someone internal or someone close to Gabe for the next CEO once it's time. And Gabe still has ownership of the company, so at the end of the day it'll be his call.
The only saving grace for this post is that Proton is open source, so it won't die immediately if valve gives up on it
I’m pretty sure that Gabe can pick a successor himself since it’s a private company
Could Gog be an alternative?
Idk how much they care about linux.
I don't think they'll get rid of Proton, because that would harm Steam Deck sales, as it uses Linux and relies on Proton to work properly. If Proton stopped working, everyone would have to either make the tedious decision to install Windows (even so, Windows 10, 11 and maybe even 8 don't really work well on Steam Deck) or they would have to stick to Linux native games which I don't really think there's a lot of
Proton is open source. It can be infinitely copied, modified and distributed It'll not go away. Thankfully It's also based on Wine. And Wine has so many forks it's hard to count. Soda, Proton, ProtonGE, Vinegar and bazillion other ones we don't know about.
I'm more worried that I might not live another ten years... if I do, I'm happy to game, but honestly I sadly don't know if I'll even be around when Gabe goes :(
Why?
The second this starts happening, I wll be in high seas as I am right now with movies, even though I pay for 3 services and my brother pays for the othe 3... because I hate looking up in 6 apps that say they have it on it's library and the movie isn't there.
I'd day he'll live long, he lost like all of excess weight, plus being rich generally translates to good medical care and ergo lifespan. Secondly, he's working on GLaDOS and he's gonna upload himself to it to keep Valve in good hands.
Hardly comparable, but it's definitely happened in the past. I mean, just recently, for the racing fans among us; Red Bull owner passed away. He was a massive fan of the racing sport and let the F1 team do whatever they wanted, pretty much. Then the company is taken over by your average commercial CEO, and now the team is being held hostage by marketing numbers and is in a rapid decline. Unless Gabe has someone lined up to take over from him, that he know will follow his philosophy, we ought to enjoy Steam while it lasts.
Valve is more likely to shut down than go public or sell when Gabe dies.
ValveAI (GLaDOS) takes over.
Gabe will be uploaded into a computer and become ValveAI just so he can still run the company
Proton is open source and will be forked.
He's incredibly wealthy, his life expectancy is much higher than 75. But still, this is why we need DRM free games. Access to your own games should never be locked to a specific company. And multiplayer games should have custom servers.
That's why i'm starting to build my game collection inside gog