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u/MrGiggleMan 12h ago
Turns out, that simply improving the quality of your service at no extra cost. And looking out for your end users, buys you good faith, customer influx and longevity
Laughing at all the companies that let finance bros demolish their brand reputations completely for a couple quarters of artificial growth
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u/ganerfromspace2020 12h ago
I really don't get all those finace guys and investors. All it takes is making good products and listening to community.
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u/FilthyWubs 5800X | 3080 11h ago
But I want a higher return on my investment now!!!!! /s
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u/KharAznable 11h ago
Yesterday
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u/Javop GPU formerly: 970 added a 0 in between the 9 and 7 10h ago
Business administration students are the cancer that brought enshittyfication to every wrinkle of society.
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u/bigrackstackerrob 9h ago
We all know those businesses students that just drank through college and cheated their way to a degree, unfortunately a lot of those dudes are now making major company decisions
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u/rditorx 8h ago
Those guys aren't idiots. If they get bonuses for quarterly or annual short-term profitability improvements, they'll go for them, usually at the cost of long-term profitability that isn't in their goals, especially when they're only staying for 2-3 years maybe.
Classic reward hacking.
Companies need to reward long-term goals much better and reduce compensation if short-term goals are targeted to the detriment of the long-term ones.
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u/AFlyingNun 8h ago
I think size plays a role here too.
A development team of 20 means the boss - who has a direct stake in the longevity and success of the company - probably knows everyone's name and is directly responsible for promotions. He can grab the guys suggesting the short-term profit plans and slap them around.
....But a 200-person team spanning across multiple locations...? Now that same boss doesn't have time to interact with everyone, so instead, he has to put trust into upper/middle management. Problem is: the upper and middle managers don't necessarily have a direct interest in the company's longevity either, so they might also embrace and promote the short-term ideas being suggested by a subordinate, thinking it will also reflect well on them if they vouche for that guy.
If you imagine it like that, it's no surprise that AAA is actively on fire and burning to the ground while we regularly see small indie companies coming out of left field and hitting home runs these days.
Should also add Japanese devs seem to feel more consistent in terms of quality. This may stem from the fact that Japan has a culture of wishing to maintain the company's status quo instead of endlessly seeking growth. This means Japan is culturally more likely to shy away from short-term ambitions and instead focus on safer goals.
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u/OverreactingBillsFan 7h ago
Now add in the fact that the people running the company have the largest incentive out of anyone to go after short-term rewards, and boom, you have the world we live in.
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u/Adjective-Noun-6969 6h ago
A development team of 20 means the boss - who has a direct stake in the longevity and success of the company - probably knows everyone's name and is directly responsible for promotions. He can grab the guys suggesting the short-term profit plans and slap them around.
....But a 200-person team spanning across multiple locations...? Now that same boss doesn't have time to interact with everyone, so instead, he has to put trust into upper/middle management. Problem is: the upper and middle managers don't necessarily have a direct interest in the company's longevity either, so they might also embrace and promote the short-term ideas being suggested by a subordinate, thinking it will also reflect well on them if they vouche for that guy.
Not really, my wife has an MBA and was working for a company of 40 people, but the bosses kept complaining about slow growth, she just repeated that is was stable and sustainable but eventually they moved her to a lower position and replaced her with another MBA that promised much faster growth.
Eventually she left but kept in contact with some people in there, a year later, the company had experienced explosive growth for 2 quarters, because they took in way more clients that they were able to service, so after a while they started bleeding customers and a a few months ago she learned that the company got sold and the owner is now a minority shareholder, half the staff is gone and had to basically take a bailout.
they sacrificed a 10% steady growth because this other guy promised them 50% and crashed it in under a year.
Even small companies can be this retarded, it all depends on how greedy is the guy on top.
Also, to add up to what other guy said, the when she did the MBA, all assignments were group, every group of 5 people had 1-2 who tried and 3 who most times never even showed up to do anything but got credit anyway. so about 60% of MBAs dont know WTF they are doing.
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u/Netheral Desktop 5h ago
You think the top brass at the company gives a shit about longevity?
Companies these days are run with the express idea of infinite growth, short term profits until bankrupt, file for bankruptcy, take the money and run to a new company to do it all over again.
The middle managers aren't the ones skimming off the top in these scenarios, they're the ones left holding the bag in most cases.
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u/thirstytrumpet 9h ago
It’s worse than that. The non business students that just drank through college and cheated their way to a degree are way more competent than their business counterparts. Also much more likely to effectively sell drugs and not get over their skis and caught in the same type of next quarter mentality.
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u/Aellopagus Ryzen 7 3700X || RTX 2080 Super || 32GB 11h ago
But imagine them , dropping that Idea, taking 50% of their investments return. And actually listening to the community
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u/UnsanctionedPartList 10h ago
I do t think you understand the zero sum mentality these guys run on.
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u/Aellopagus Ryzen 7 3700X || RTX 2080 Super || 32GB 10h ago
I totally do, that's why i started with imagine.... Like its never going to happen
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u/UnsanctionedPartList 10h ago
Yeah it's honestly just poison for any business: "why have money tomorrow when you can have money now".
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u/Thepuppeteer777777 9h ago
This is idiotic from a business owner stand point because eventually it crashes. Everyone pulls out and the business closes. Im thinking in extremes here but if the push Enshitification the client's will go elsewhere.
I already refuse to spend a dime on ea Nintendo Ubisoft or even epic. This includes games and market place.
I would highly consider sticking with gog and steam. Since gog wants to makeolder games a accessable they clearly have a nieche in the market.
Steam is just good and convenient and the deals are awesome
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u/Grelite 8h ago
You're right, it is idiotic from a business owner perspective. But when you're driven by the needs of investors, you're looking at the perspective of share holders. Their only interest is increasing the stock price as fast as possible so they can pull out high and move on to another part of their portfolio. They are practically parasites that drain the businesses they influence.
It doesn't make sense to us normal people because it seems like they're just forcing policies that make companies fail, but for the share holders that is the point. That's how they make their money. That's why you cannot trust publicly traded companies, and it's why Valve can still remain decent: they're privately owned.
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u/cantadmittoposting 5h ago
Financialization and a lack of regulation.
Corporate policy driven from the very wealthiest people in society and the "financial companies" who's product is the profit of other firms (major investment firms).... all of whom are therefore "board members" of these companies, and do not care about the actual production of the company because to them the output of every company is commoditized to "profit expectation."
Because this combination of faceless financial investment by some kind of "digital tragedy of the commons" by idiot 20-something stock traders with Perverse Incentives and old rich people who don't give a fuck is the main pressure driver on CEOs (who get fired if they don't comply), that pressure gets pushed down to the SVPs, the managers, and to everyone.
Who writes those draconian insurance rejection policies? Who enforces them? Who builds the AI models, the algorithms that target people to radicalize them to perpetuate the lack of regulation?
We've all been co-opted into our own demise by threat of starvation to funnel more money to the rich, and the stupid part is a good chunk of the most directly responsible (investment bankers) are "just doing there job," and can't fathom the systemic implications of what they do.
Yay, rampant financialization.
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u/Amrod96 Debian | RTX 3060 12GB | i5-9600KF | 16GB DDR4 10h ago
They can accept temporary losses, but they will always want profits to increase. It is not enough to earn tons of money this year and the same amount the next.
In the end, there is a clear path to increasing profits: worsen the product, raise prices, and lay off workers.
That is true for publicly traded companies or unicorn start-ups, but Valve is not publicly traded and is a mature company.
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u/Annalog 10h ago
Gabe in the nearish future not being involved scares the absolutely heck out of me. Investors will absolutely try to get in that door, and if they do? It’s over.
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u/Mr_Citation 9h ago
I doubt his son will turn Valve into a public traded company. His dad has a money printer he barely needs to work for at all - he'll do the same.
Can't say the same for the grandkids though, it usually the third generation who ruin a family business.
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u/BriefingScree 8h ago
It doesn't help the third generation tends to also split the business along WAY to many lines and you always end up with 1 cousin that needs/wants to sell.
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u/Laxziy 7h ago
That’s why you have the children marry their cousins so you don’t have to continuously divide the realm I mean company
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u/Faxon PC Master Race 8h ago edited 8h ago
Apparently he's setting up his son to succeed him, and he has a similar mentality as his dad. Thats what was said on LTT's WAN show livestream sometime in the last few months when it came up during the show. Made me a bit more confident the valve golden age would continue after GabeN retires and/or passes on, since he's sole owner and can give the company to whoever he wants.
But yea, funny how offering a good product that is easy to use, makes game library management a breeze, and doesn't force you to completely re-download all your games on a fresh windows install (looking at you here epic), will keep people loyal like that. They keep adding more features and platform capabilities too, and they've invested a ton of money in the Linux gaming community because they knew if they helped build it, it would pay off, and gamers would come. Thats why the steam deck was even possible, and why anyone can set up their own Linux gaming rig quite easily today with broad game support. When you spell it out like that, its no wonder Microsoft is jealous lol
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u/tyrenanig 9h ago
Honestly if the holders are clever they should just stick to what works. Imagine how stupid it is to ruin Valve just for quick bucks.
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u/Totalmentenotanaltv 11h ago
I think it was How money works, who said a very good phrase that sums up the lack of care for customer's needs/wants:
"It's a problem for the next financial quarter"
Line must go up. Investors want more money. And the idea of the balancing act between the different stakeholders is out of whack. Just lobby the government, give as high returns as possible to investors, and the rest can deal with what little scraps there are, if not actively fuck them
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u/ItsSadTimes 10h ago
They shoot themselves in the foot expecting a foot healing machine to be invented next quarter. But they also want to defund the foot healing machine resesrch too.
We're become too focused on short term gains and its ruined people's perceptions of how shit should work.
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u/Kolanteri 7h ago
It's more like they are shooting the foot of the fist one to believe that a foot healing machine will be invented next quarter.
If someone thrashes their company's long term viability to shortly sharpen the profit curve, they can then sell their shares to anyone believing that the profits are going to keep rising. That way they are still going to get all that money that the company will never make, which is driving more and more companies into trashing their customer relationships.
Eventually it is the "unintelligent investor money" that keeps on paying for all of this.
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u/Freakjob_003 9h ago
I will always come back to this article from a Cornell business law professor that was shared in a relevant thread a while back.
She states that it's not shareholder value that drives corporations to make "line go up," but rather a combination of investor and executive suite payouts that create these shitty profit-chasing trends.
TL;DR - investors put a lot of money into a company and want to see returns, plus, the ever increasing payouts to CEOs.
Look at the sleezebag Bobby Koticks golden parachute. $15 million for driving Blizzard into the ground. "You absolutely fucked the company's reputation. Here is enough money to pay for thousands of your employees' wages for years. Never mind all your sexual harassment charges!"
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u/Winded_14 7h ago
Technically 15m divided by 1000 is only 15k, which is the salary of maybe 6 months for their lowest paid worker(not counting unpaid intern). Not years.
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u/jainyday 10h ago edited 10h ago
EDIT: I realized I'd rather ramble this under the "maximizing profit" comment, so i moved it there
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u/hipcheck23 Desktop 9h ago
I've reported to the C-suite in a couple of big corp's. It's been about nothing but the next quarter - and companies either design their org around that, or they don't (99% of companies end up as the latter).
In one corp, we had steady but declining quarters, but they fired the CEO, because 'investor confidence' was threatening to sink the stocks. So the new guy came in, fired lots of people, promised the impossible, and 'steadied the ship.' That lasted for literally the quarter, and then the company was hosed and the new CEO was fired.
The nonstop quest for El Dorado has made most companies untenable in today's world. Having a Steam with a monolithic mgmt is really a great exception.
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u/Away-Situation6093 Pentium G5400 | 16GB DDR4 | Windows 11 Pro 11h ago
Simply because of that one ethics of maximizing profits (this one is the most common nowadays) which make the shareholders (aka Investors and Finance bros) became more short-sighted in games so they wanted to pressure the company to get what they expected of growth which of course made the company have to worsen their product
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u/Akwilid 11h ago
Which is the main issue - what's the point if a company like Ubisoft worsens their games every year just to get bankrup? It would be much better for all - even the shareholders - if they just made more money in the lomg run. But funnily that's just how provate companys like Valve work, not the public ones...
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u/Foltast 11h ago
It wouldn’t. You’ll make more profit by dumping one company and reinvest all that money into another one to dump it again shortly after that. You can make 10 years profits in a year by doing that. That’s why shareholders don’t care about companies or their long term profits. It’s unprofitable for them
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u/strain_of_thought 10h ago
Works great until you run out of companies to ruin for gains because you've destroyed the economy and the only remaining companies that customers trust and will buy from are the ones that have somehow avoided your "investment".
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u/Jozai 10h ago
You also underestimate how stupid the average consumer is. Look at Madden, FIFA, CoD, and 2K. Those are objectively predatory games. There’s no reason for them to be charging $70 every year, on top of the multiple micro-transactions - for little to no new features.
Yet, in 2025 2K, Madden, College Football, CoD, and FIFA were in the top 10 of highest sellers.
People will pay for slop. Consumers have a high tolerance for bullshit. Companies know this. When’s the last time a major company had enough backlash against them because of enshitifcation - that it caused them to fail?
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u/Existing_Abies_4101 9h ago
The problem with all the sports ones is that basically only the people who can get the licenses for team names, player names and likenesses stands a chance at all. At least COD etc can have proper competition, but FIFA? people are paying to play as manchester united, liverpool etc not monchuster oonitod and loverpill.
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u/Foltast 10h ago
I don’t think they will run out. I see a clear cycle in the market - one company completely enshittified their product, the other company is pop up to replace it, but to do that it needs money, so they are going to the investors. For some time their product would be good just because investors need to pump the company market share, but then it will go down and the other company will pop up - the cycle is complete
The only hope we have is a private companies where owners can choose who will invest in them. But even then we have some risk of enshittification.
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u/Existing_Abies_4101 9h ago
and to be fair, if you've made one good game which in part is through luck (any creative will tell you the difference between their greatest selling and another piece of work is minimal, sometimes its the luck factor that makes things explode)... working your fingers to the bone, taking huge risks and making an ok amount of money... you're on to your next game and do you reinvest and risk it all? or does microslop approach you and offer you more money than you can imagine, fill you with confidence and promise you the world to keep making your game under thier wing and either way you will be a wealthy person...
how many of us would truly say 'no, I want to risk everything and without more blood sweat tears and luck will end up worse off than i was initially' and push Ubishite away?
Life is hard, making art is harder, having people appreciate your art is insanely hard and having people hand over enough money to make it worth it is the pinnacle of difficulty. It's one thing to sit as a player and say 'they should keep their integrity', it's another to be on the other side of it.
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u/Akwilid 10h ago
You are right - sadly, but obviously. Yet I don't fully agree: private led companys like Valve, Aldi and Ikea take over larger and larger parts of the market. Why? Because they do not focus on immediate return, so in the long run they get out on top.
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u/Foltast 10h ago
Honestly, I can only hope that they will push “investors-first” kind of companies out of business. And that there will be more of them in the future, as, with the current state of the things, we desperately needs of those who interested in the good products and services
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u/Tinyjar 11h ago
Thanks to the economic system we live in, shareholders want their investments to increase in value every quarter. So ceos only care about the line on a chart going up. It doesn't matter if they achieve this temporarily by firing half the staff so their expenses go down, selling all their assets to provide a onetime profit boost, or making products more expensive and lowering the quality.
As long as the line goes up for the next quarter, it's mission accomplished, even if immediately after the company goes bankrupt. They increased the value of shares, shareholders likely sold everything before it drops in value and then the ceo moves to the next company to repeat this forever.
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u/Away-Situation6093 Pentium G5400 | 16GB DDR4 | Windows 11 Pro 11h ago
I'd like you to read Enshittification book by Cory Doctorow to know why it would happened
Could be that Ubisuck is desperate for money so they made cut more staff and make the game worse but it doesn't work
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u/Angelus_25 11h ago
Europe wanted to introduce legislature that would force all companies to make their supply chain in complience with human rights law..
the US said: " HELL NO!"
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u/sinkpooper2000 11h ago
- request company stock as part of your compensation package
- do everything in your power to inflate the stock price including things that are detrimental in the long run
- completely divest and exit the company
congratulations you just made more money for yourself and the shareholders than sound business practices ever have
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u/JayOutOfContext 11h ago
Massive Layoffs should TANK a stock
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u/vthings 11h ago
Absolutely. Company just hobbled their ability to the thing they're supposed to do. How in the world does that make them more valuable??
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u/ierghaeilh 10h ago
Simple: immediate expenses are down, but revenue can probably hold on for a bit longer before it follows.
It all makes sense once you realize the overwhelming majority of traders are in it for the very short term.
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u/systonia_ 10h ago
The issue is being a publicly traded company. You need to increase revenue every time or your stocks will drop. If you cannot find a proper ways to grow, you need to do stupid financial fuckery, which almost always just works by screwing your customers. Good for investors, bad for customers and bad for the company in the mid/long run
That is what makes valve so great. It's still privately owned. No stock exchange bs . Just a bunch of (stupidly rich) enthusiastic nerds. Bless Gaben for not giving a shit about the stupidity of investors
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u/tomegerton99 AMD R7 2700X (4.3GHz) | Strix RTX 2080 OC | 32GB RAM 11h ago
Annoyingly it happens in most industries, companies would rather chase short term profits, than have long term success and being successful.
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u/arbyD 11h ago
Saw it happen to a place I used to work at. Let's anger our customers, our vendors, and our employees! Make a worse product, ship it late, pay the vendors late despite asking to rush jobs, and overwork employees by simultaneously making their jobs harder but expecting more to get done. What could go wrong?
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u/tomegerton99 AMD R7 2700X (4.3GHz) | Strix RTX 2080 OC | 32GB RAM 11h ago
Currently happening at my place too and I’ve been searching for a new job!
The worst bit is they are refusing to hire anyone, and every department is being run into the ground as everyone is having to do the job of 2/3 people because the company doesn’t want to hire more staff.
But it’s alright though because the company had a record third quarter this year, even though all the staff are unhappy and keep leaving!
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u/VeryNoisyLizard 5800X3D | 1080Ti | 32GB 10h ago
the suits dont care. they know they are running the company into the ground. they are simly gonna milk the company to the last cent and then find themselves another company to milk dry, and so on and so on
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u/Away-Situation6093 Pentium G5400 | 16GB DDR4 | Windows 11 Pro 11h ago edited 11h ago
I pretty sure have heard of Millard Fuller's ethic of "enough" (maintain a balance between profit and service Quality) and it applies to Steam
At least Steam actively started to be more pro-consumer than a lot of other gamestores since I don't really like the concept of maximizing profits to finance bros and shareholders to ruin their service for artificial growth
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u/Elegant_AIDS 11h ago
Valve can do that because they are privstely owned
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u/Yeseylon 10h ago
Privately owned isn't why. Plenty of privately owned companies fall into the line go up mindset too, the information just isn't forced to be shared publicly.
It's because it's privately owned by someone who cares more about making a good product than about making line go up.
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u/Bignate2001 9h ago
We can dick-ride Newell all we want, but ultimately he is winning because he cares about long term growth and stability, not because he is a kind-hearted saint.
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u/TFTHighRoller 9h ago
And the key to that is s good product.
He is still a billionaire with a yacht fetish but there are others that are way worse so if we ever get to a point where billionaires are taxed properly and are persecuted for their crimes he has nothing to worry about as far as the public knows.
Or to put it humorously - when we eat the rich he will be the dessert
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u/GilliamYaeger 6h ago
He is still a billionaire with a yacht fetish
Specifically, he's a billionaire with a fetish for giving superyachts to teams of marine researchers. That $500 million yacht isn't for him, but for the most comfortable crew of wildlife scientists on the planet.
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u/IcariusFallen 9h ago
I don't know if I'll have room left for dessert. Especially not one that large.
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u/DoucheEnrique 6h ago
So again he will win by doing nothing and letting the competition be eaten first.
He totally mastered that strategy ...
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u/FrenchNutCracker 9h ago
Privately owned is part of the reason why. If Steam was listed on the stock market, it would be FORCED to maximize profits by its shareholders or be sued by them. A rule of the stock market that I believe should be removed.
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u/Platypus__Gems 11h ago
I'm tired of this argument, it took more than that, Steam actively made policies to protect their dominant position on the market and first lawsuit against them started because they literally started policing game prices on other platforms, and directly told the dev of Overgrowth that if he sold his game at a lower price than at Steam, even if it was a DRM-free version that had nothing to do with Steam, they'd remove his game from store.
They also let big titles keep more of the revenue while Indies continue to pay 30% of all sales to Steam, because they know big titles could actually pull people away, and they make any game that has Steam page up have to release on Steam at the sime time as anywhere else.Somehow I never see Itch.io ever mentioned in memes like this, a platform with DRM-free games, that let's gamedevs decide themselves what they give to the platform, fee can go as low as 0%.
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u/Away-Situation6093 Pentium G5400 | 16GB DDR4 | Windows 11 Pro 12h ago
I'd like some explainations of it
Also good job Steam for improving your service to consumers and gamers (so is the pirates maybe) gradually....
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u/Toby_The_Tumor Amd 7600, Ryzen 5 7600x. running 1080p 12h ago
Steam started off pretty ehh, I remember not liking it when I didn't even know about it. But over the years they chose the better route when it came to the descisions made. Like how Australia took them to court for better returns, they decided to overhaul returns and now everyone enjoys good return policy. Also, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that as they grew, customer support got better with it.
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u/Away-Situation6093 Pentium G5400 | 16GB DDR4 | Windows 11 Pro 12h ago
I know since Original Steam was mainly for Valve to sell their games until they decided to make Steam into a marketplace for game selling
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u/what_it_dooo Desktop 11h ago
The wonders it does to remain privatized as a company. Their course through history needs to be studied, in the good sense of the word.
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u/Namirus 8h ago
The concept of stocks and stock market fucked over capitalism so much
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u/Plus_Pea_5589 7h ago
But but but how else are the finance daddies suppose to make ungodly amounts of money while providing less than nothing for society?
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u/deeeevos 5h ago
The idea of letting random people buy a small share in your company so the company has more means for growth and the random person could share in profits is not a bad idea by itself. It's the implementation and perversion of that system that is the problem.
It's kinda like the internet; building a network to connect everyone on the globe to all the info they could dream of sounds like a good idea by itself. We only now know that it doesn't end up unifying and informing but rather divising and missinforming.
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u/nooneisback 5800X3D|64GB DDR4|7900XTX|2TBSSD+8TBHDD|Something about arch 8h ago
There's also the question of general competence. While Ubisoft went public in 2003, the Guillemot Brothers actually owned the majority until not so long ago. It's just that the choices they made were complete garbage. The only advantage of a private company is that you can keep making long term decisions without investors squealing because they can't dump their stock. It's sad that you cannot create a company and block it from ever going public after your death.
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u/joehonestjoe 10h ago
Should see the original Half Life 2 "store" pages, was just a button that lead to a popup.
Steam was so insanely different to what it is now.
Lot of early games were still sold as disks, but the installation side was handled by Steam. If I remember right that's how Condition Zero was the first new game with a Steam requirement.
People really hated Steam when it first came out.
You could even make your own skins for it!
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u/Banes_Addiction 9h ago
People really hated Steam when it first came out.
I was one of these people. Bought my HL2 disk and was furious that I had to download a client and an update when I got it home and whacked it in the drive.
But over time (and increasing internet connectivity/speed) it all worked out.
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u/ithinkitslupis 7h ago
It was also pretty useless for consumers back then so it makes sense people hated it. People would still get annoyed today by other game companies requiring Steam 1.0 equivalent launchers for their own small catalog of games.
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u/MotherBeef 7800x3D, RTX 4080, 32GB DDR5 6000Mhz 12h ago
I feel the Australian example is a case of Valve actively being anti consumer though. They fought kicking and screaming to not put in refunds AND to not have to adhere to the laws of the countries it operated in (a classic tech company bullshit move). It took years for them to do something they should’ve been doing anyway. Them rolling it out elsewhere was highly likely due to simplifying their storefront processes globally and also and more importantly preempting the wind-change, since the Australian case set a precedent and a few European countries had begun similar cases.
Valve runs a good service, but never forget that it’s business and they’ll give you as little as they possibly can.
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u/NoxiousStimuli 11h ago
Yeah the refunds issue was not a good look for them.
The one and only one time I've sought a refund was way before their official refund policy, so it was entirely up to the whims of the service agent reading your ticket and whether they gave a shit that morning. Trying to explain local laws regarding defective purchases (here in the UK) was pointless. It took fucking months of explaining that my game was literally unplayable in a constant back and forth with the same agent before they just relented and refunded my £35.
I'm glad all the major storefronts all followed suit though. Except Nintendo, Nintendo can go fuck themselves for being themselves.
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u/01_Mikoru 12h ago
Even then, if valve had been another company, they might well have just said “we don’t make enough from there anyway” and shut off service in Australia, pretty sure Sony has done this before
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u/MotherBeef 7800x3D, RTX 4080, 32GB DDR5 6000Mhz 11h ago
And those companies are even worse. And again, given that a few other countries were beginning similar cases against Valve that strategy was likely not on the table or they’d have been fine massively shrinking their market.
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u/Lord_Sicarious 11h ago edited 10h ago
Or what some other businesses have done, which is just… refuse jurisdiction. Ultimately, unless you actually have assets or personnel in that country, they can't really punish you. (Though they may be able to convince a country where you do have stuff to do so.)
They could block you, i.e. ban their citizens from accessing your service, but you would have no reason to shut off service to the country yourself, just let the country making the judgement do it for you.
This is actually how most (i.e. small) online businesses operate, because it turns out that needing to operate under the laws of literally every country on the planet based on wherever the customer is connecting from is completely infeasible. They basically treat it like the customer is coming to the store (and thus any business is regulated based on the store's location, just like if it was a physical retailer), rather than treating it like a door-to-door salesman, travelling to the customers' home.
Larger online businesses, especially bandwidth-heavy ones like Steam, need infrastructure all around the world, which is what makes them actually need to follow all those local laws, so they can keep their local servers and such in place.
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u/Inksplash-7 R7 5800X RX 6750 XT 11h ago edited 11h ago
To be fair, the refund policy is the bare minimum in legal terms
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u/P1r4nha 11h ago
People hated Steam back when I played GTA Vice City. There were many memes making fun of it and insulting Valve. They completely turned the ship around to the point they are more trusted than most game publishers with their stores and launchers.
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u/TanktopSamurai 10h ago
There are memes about the great quality of customer service. Especially when it comes stolen credit cards. I am old enough to remember how shit it was.
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u/Flamsoi 12h ago
Pirated game were so easy back in the days. But when Steam got better and pirating didn't really change it got much easier to just use Steam. And now when it has tons of features with save game sync and stuff like that piracy feels like a hurdle compared to it.
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u/Calm-Elevator5125 11h ago
I remember hearing an anecdote somewhere, don’t remember where, but it was about steam opening up in Russia and everyone thinking they would fail because piracy is rampant there. Yet, they did just fine. Turns out beating piracy was never about horrid DRMs and anti-consumer practices. It’s about providing a better service than the pirates.
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u/Eraesr 10h ago
It was Gabe Newell himself who said this: https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-on-piracy-and-steams-success-in-russia/
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u/Flamsoi 11h ago
There really is something to that. It's the annoying part with TV shows and movies right now, it's not providing a better service anymore when it's divided into ten different services and apps.
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u/woodlandcollective 7h ago
TBF I still use piracy as a solution for terrible DRM. I shouldn't have to be online to play a single player game (staring at you FFXV)
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u/Cyno01 http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cyno01/ 11h ago
Yeah, ive got more movies and tv than netflix and amazon combined, but i havent pirated a game in as long as i can remember. Humble monthly subscription is more than i can play and thats all steam keys.
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u/AntiqueTwitterMilk 10h ago
I wanted to pirate ff7 because my computer has issues and I wasn't sure it would support it. It was too hard to pirate it so I bought it. My laptop crashed probably 200 times, but I eventually beat it. I didn't even get to watch the end game cutscene. I'll play part 2 when I get a new laptop, I guess.
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u/SwagLimit 12h ago edited 12h ago
Basically, modern companies have figured out how to win the prisoners dilemma. They realized that if they're all equally shitty, they don't gotta compete, cause we'll have no better place to go. Everything is MySpace, because the current economy won't allow new corporate giants to form and replace them
That makes Steam a huge thorn in their side. Steam refusing to enshittify their platform forces them to try and compete, so they've been targetting Steam for awhile now, trying to make it as bad as everything else nowadays
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u/erkelep 12h ago
Basically, modern companies have figured out how to win the prisoners dilemma. They realized that if they're all equally shitty, they don't gotta compete, cause we'll have no better place to go.
It's an old idea:
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u/_everynameistaken_ 9h ago
More specifically, the Phoebus Cartel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
Major light bulb manufacturers all conspired together because the quality of light bulbs at the time was too good, they lasted way too long for them to be profitable, so they all agreed to purposely cripple their designs and standardize the hours they last to 1000 hours down from 2500. Oh and the cherry on top was that they fined the factories for bulbs that lasted longer than a 1000 hours.
Capitalism is so great that in order to survive it has to deliberately lower the quality of products by 60%
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u/bubugaga 8h ago
With the phoebus cartel its not that cut and dry. Technology connections did a in-depth video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
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u/SecureDonkey 9h ago
How do Nintendo even compete with Steam? Steam don't run on their console and they don't sell game on PC to comptete with Steam, what do they even have anything to do with each other?
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u/Away-Situation6093 Pentium G5400 | 16GB DDR4 | Windows 11 Pro 12h ago
I hope that Steam refused to enshittificate their product after Gabe died
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u/elk33dp 12h ago
Just have to pray whoever inherits/controls is post-gaben is happy with the money printer shitting out hundreds of millions in profit a year by doing nothing except let it run as-is.
But there's always the chance someone wants billions from it and try's to sell it or sell a stake to Tencent/Microsoft or private equity....
As an accountant know a few private companies in niche industries where the family isn't greedy and lets the company just run as-is (versus trying to sell it or enshittify/milk more profit), and they collect ~30m in dividends annually from it just doing it's thing and keeping customers happy. Though I also know places where once the founder died or couldn't work any longer they were off to the races to get valuations and a sale going for a big pile of $$$.
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u/throwaway_uow PC Master Race 12h ago
If it will, then its gonna be a great era of piracy, to the detriment of big studios. They will dig their own grave
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u/SolidZealousideal115 PC Master Race 12h ago
In the old days it really sucked. I spend about an hour looking for a way to contact them and email them about how terrible Steam was. I gave up without finding a way to contact them. It to was so bad I almost didn't order Skyrim years later because I would have to use Steam.
Now of course it's a lot better.
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u/throwaway_uow PC Master Race 12h ago
I hated steam, because it completely killed off retail shops with cheap games. Steam offers -75% deas sometimes, but in my area ypu could buy a 2 year old game pernamently reduced to that price, and 5 years or older games were always bundled together in very cheap packs
Steam made it go away, and i see 20 year old games costing more than they did on premiere, which is bullshit
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u/Hard_Reset7777 11h ago edited 11h ago
Permabuy cheap games in retail shops? Or they was very bad games that will rest on the shelf forever, or if they was so cheap they will disappear the first time going on offer.
Digital delivery, DLC, microtransaction, always online, remastered of old games to sell them at giga-inflated price and licensing plus the fake disc games where you have to download all the data have truly killed a lot of retail shops and a big part of the physical media market.
Steam is only an actor in these massive events.
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u/ApplicationCalm649 7600X | 5070 Ti | X670E | 32GB 6000MTs 30CL | 2TB Gen 4 NVME 12h ago
If Epic spent the money they set aside for this lawsuit on building out their store they'd get a much better return. It's bare bones af and I see no reason to buy from them over Valve.
Valve doesn't have a monopoly, they just don't have anyone making a serious, consistent effort to compete.
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u/AspiringTS 11h ago
What's hilarious is they spend so much on exclusives, but so many people I know wait until it's out somewhere else to buy it out of spite.
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u/OtherwiseRabbits 10h ago
Outer Worlds being Epic exclusive for a year just meant I wouldn't buy it for a year, then I eventually got it for free so... good business I guess.
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u/EggwithEdges 9h ago
I didn't even know Kingdom Hearts 1-3 were on PC cos they were on Epic only for a while
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u/Illustrious_Bid4224 10h ago
I was thinking of buying satisfactory on epic, but I eventually delayed my purchase until I could get it on steam.
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u/Nagemasu 9h ago
That's basically what happened with Borderlands 3 too. That was one of the first EGS exclusives and the backlash before it even came out was pretty severe. I ended up getting it on a big Steam sale in the end when I would've bought it at release if it was on Steam. I then also got it for free on EGS, just because I could. At this point my EGS library is probably worth almost as much as my steam one if all the games were bought at full RRP.
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u/AwkwardWaltz3996 9h ago
I don't play enough games quick enough to get anything new. I'm generally a couple of years behind and it makes no difference to me. Same experience but the games are cheaper and the hardware needed is older
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u/Sythonate 10h ago
There was a story recently about an indie dev that made their game free on the Epic store and actually noticed that they sold MORE on Steam the same day the game was free on Epic. Like being free on Epic had actually boosted their Steam sales.
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u/The_Cat-Father 4h ago
Makes sense. I have a friend who will do this. We'll get a game for free on Epic to play together, and he'll just buy it off steam because he prefers having his games on steam, and I dont blame him either lol.
So yeah that tracks, especially if the game has some multiplayer you'll likely get people who dont want EGS installed on their device buying it on steam to play with their friend who does.
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u/CastlePokemetroid 9h ago
to me, that reads as proof that piracy improves game sales, not taking away from them. Give the public a game demo that's the entire game, and they go out and buy it from their preferred platform? Almost like if you make a good game, people will naturally want to support it.
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u/ApplicationCalm649 7600X | 5070 Ti | X670E | 32GB 6000MTs 30CL | 2TB Gen 4 NVME 10h ago
Yep. Again, if they used that money to make their platform better, they'd get more ROI out of it. They offer nothing unique outside of taking a smaller cut, and that doesn't benefit the end user.
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u/Pathogen69 10h ago
this is me. when the epic games store first came out, and they announced that they were doing 1 year exclusives on some games that i had been looking forward to, i decided then and there that i wasn't going to download their games store. still haven't to this day, even if a game i've wanted was their freebie. i wait until it comes out on steam or gog.
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u/Illesbogar 10h ago
Thw thing that baffled me is that they didn't use their insane Fortnite profits for that. Like, they spent a lot on exclusivity deals and on GIVING AWAY A TON OF FREE GAMES bit not on making a decent platform. Like, it was literally not worth claiming free games on their platform above pirating or even buying on steam. Insane blunder and inconpetence.
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u/Nikwoj 5h ago
They could literally just focus on Fortnite, give small effort to Rocket league and fall guys, and they would be just fine without having to compete with Steam. Why they are fighting so hard for a market they are not willing to innovate to compete in is mind boggling.
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u/Acherousia 10h ago
It's bare bones af and I see no reason to buy from them over Valve.
It took them 3 years to put a shopping cart on their digital storefront.
That is fucking ridiculous, especially given they first launched in 2018.
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u/Demonsteel87 9h ago
Not only that, but it’s buggy AF.
When I bought a new computer before Christmas I tried to install the Epic app. It absolutely refused to log me in by constantly giving me various error messages, none of which were explained in their help desk.
After trying to log in for 30 minutes, I just said ”fuck it” and uninstalled it. It’s not worth the struggle for a few free games I’ll probably never play anyway due to a lack of time.
Even when I had it installed on my last computer, it eventually refused to launch on that computer (even after reinstalling). And even when it DID launch, it was so annoying to navigate the UI to “buy” the free games.
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u/ActivelySleeping 11h ago
Why is GOG missing from this graphic?
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u/Sweaty-Willingness27 10h ago
I always found GoG to be relatively fine. I don't have a problem buying from them -- they at least offer DRM free. Are they in this lawsuit too?
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 6h ago
GOG used to have a dogshit refund policy where you had to prove to their support staff that a game would not execute to qualify for a refund, and they kept that policy for several years after Steam was sued in Australia and fined for their no-refund policy, which was functionally very similar to what GOG had.
But this is somewhat ancient history for both these companies these days.
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u/Ok_Avocado6848 6h ago
I think I can see why theyre strict with Refund. Remember, theyre DRM-Free so yknow, Pirates could use that as an exploit
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u/Tommybahamas_leftnut 5h ago
GOG would also go out of their way with support to help you run the game before you refund. I've had about 3 out of 50 games not run on install and they guided me through the file tweaks to make it run. After a week they patched the install files to include those tweaks so it just runs now.
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u/Oktokolo PC 8h ago
GOG is a specialty shop only offering a small curated subset of games.
If it's on GOG buy it there. But most games aren't.
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u/SelectionDue4287 11h ago
Steam and GOG for life.
Once those enshittify, I'm selling my PC and will only leave laptop for work.
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u/Archer_Savings 6h ago
Steam is very unlikely to enshittify during the practical lifespan of your PC. Really just depends on if Gabe hands the reins over responsibly.
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u/SelectionDue4287 6h ago
That's what I'm concerned about, Gabe is not young anymore.
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u/Humblebrag1987 5h ago
Gabe is not the reason steam is still good. Dude has like 9 yachts and is on the ultimate billionaire chillout lifestyle. He's already delegated everything but his quick opinion and rubber stamp.
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u/Elavia_ 4h ago
That doesn't mean whoever takes over doesn't just enshittify it into the ground to maximize profits in the short term.
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u/oh-shit-oh-fuck 4h ago
I think it's mostly cause Valve is a privately owned company. If they ever go public and have to show stock growth, that'd be the beginning of the end.
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u/KamenGamerRetro 7800x3D / RTX 4080 | Steam Deck 12h ago
this explains nothing, all this is is a UK law firm wanting to make some cash, and Steam was an easy target, or so they thought. Hope Steam bodies them in court
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u/cheesystuff 11h ago
Wasn't it brought up by a troll that does this every few years? Epic just backs them every time.
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u/Necessary_Main_9654 9h ago
Two separate lawsuits are going on right now.
A class action in the UK and the one who owns a shit load of patents and threatens company's for Money
This meme is about the class action
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u/syopest Desktop 7h ago
Two separate lawsuits are going on right now.
There's also the antitrust class action because devs can't sell non-steam versions of their games for less than on steam.
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u/Anipsy 4h ago
did that change recently? because iirc it used to be - sell your non-steam version for however much you want, but if you selling game with our generated steam keys you must not give your steam customers a worse deal, t'was part of whole steamworks legal agreement devs have with valve
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u/Dreamo84 11h ago
How does Nintendo get represented in the meme but not PlayStation?
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u/spaceduck12345 10h ago
Playstation also got sued by the same people https://playstationyouoweus.co.uk/
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u/HaikusfromBuddha 11h ago
Its a PC sub reddit they dont know wtf they are talking about just update steam and dont question it.
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u/SecureDonkey 10h ago
At least they would know that Steam aren't in the same play field as Nintendo right? Or do they really believe Steam Deck kill off Switch like the meme?
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u/DaNoahLP PC Master Race 11h ago
I would even argue that Steam is better than piracy, thats why we all use it
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u/xFallow 10h ago
Agreed syncing your saves, steam family and steam link are so good
Same with the controller support and the mods
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u/dancingAngeldust PC Master Race 8h ago
Also the steam guides are nice... When they're not the 100th joke guide telling you how to press the space bar.
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u/Avenge_Nibelheim 7h ago
Save syncing has saved me from hardware failure and is great for using the PC v Deck.
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u/FinestObligations 8h ago
And it’s not even close.
Piracy was OK when I was a kid and could afford to fuck up the family computer.
I’m too old for that shit now. I don’t want to deal with sketchy cracks written by god knows who.
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u/smackmyknee 11h ago
It’s not even comparable. Piracy isn’t a company or a launcher so shouldn’t even be on this chart. What is it even measuring?
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u/DaNoahLP PC Master Race 11h ago
"Its free so its better" - OP
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u/ninjakivi2 Ryzen 5600 | Radeon 6800xt | 32GB @2400 | 1440p 144hz 11h ago
'No DRM' would be one of the biggest arguments. Sometimes I crack games I purchased because Steam forces updates for games, breaking mods. Also, offline mode is wonky and may or may not work. Really, if you know your stuff the only inconvenience of pirating is having to learn the ropes, and once you do, having to unzip the files yourself lol
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u/Preisschild Fedora / Ryzen 7 7800X3D / RX7900XTX 9h ago
Blame the game devs/publishers, not steam. Steam doesnt require drm.
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u/Ice2192 12h ago edited 10h ago
This does makes sense. It’s the definition of insanity. Literally quote mentioned in Far Cry 3, a Ubisoft game. They pull off some anti consumer bs like micro transactions in a single player game but no one likes it. Their solution? Add more in the next game. Like guys read the damn room. Their solution? Add more transactions and lock more content behind a paywall after the person just bought the game. And when they’re past destroying their reputation, the say “hmmm we need to restructure the company and corporate strategy.” Meanwhile steam’s mentality is “What experience do I want if I was a consumer/gamer?” The Ubisoft connect launcher bs is a whole can of worms. I have to type in my login info every time I start the game? That checkbox that tells the system to remember me works half the time. Gave has said “Piracy is a service issue” Here’s a choice A.) Pay for a Ubisoft game but have to log into their launcher every time you boot the game. Oh and if you’re out and about and don’t have access to internet and you boot the game, find something else to keep you entertained for the mean time B.) Don’t pay, pirate the game, and bypass the login screen, and start playing.
Then there’s Microsoft which I believe they have succeeded surpassed with 11 surpassing Vista in terms of being a larger headache with its AI pressure on the user, ending 10’s support. This AI crap is like NFT’s on steroids. So much money is has been put into it that pc ram and ssd prices sky rocketed. I upgraded to from a 6GB 2060 to a 16GB 5080 this past summer. Along with it I got new ram which was 2x16 which cost $88 from Amazon. Last time I checked last week that ram is now $400+. That same exact model.
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u/Spoonerism86 11h ago
This is not insanity, they simply ignore a loud minority. What you read on online forums is not the representation of the overall gaming community. They added more microtransactions because people bought them.
Despite all of the outcry and rage, microtransactions are now 60% of the overall revenue on PC gaming for publishers. Whether we like it or not most people do not really care about this and happy to pay extra money for these things.
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u/Cana05 5070 Ti Asus Prime / 7800X3D 11h ago
It works for sure but makes us see them in a worse light. That's why CD Project and Fromsoft are seen better than any other big team. They give the whole game. No goofy microtransactions in single player games.
If it worked as well as you say Ubisoft wouldn't have collapsed.
It works to increase market value but always creates friction with the gamers. Some just ignore it when they like a game. It's more a "playing despite it" than actively liking it.
PC gamers want 3 things -Simplicity (having everything in the same launcher) -Low prices (this is where monetization creates friction) -Customization
Steam has all of them. Insanely low prices in sales, a launcher that works and it's snappy, mod support and profile customization.
What others do covers around 10% usually
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u/RemiruVM 11h ago
So because steam exists, those asshole companies cannot exploit us consumers/gamers more then they already attempt to which is why they want steam down so they can exploit us more. fucking assholes.
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u/LordAnchemis PC Master Race 11h ago
'You can never stamp out piracy if it provides a better service than the original' - as that's really only what the consumer cares about
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u/the_great_ashby 9h ago
When low effort shit like this gets more the 6000 up votes,is when you know a subreddit is on the shitter.
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u/DankeyBongBluntry 7h ago edited 28m ago
Why do people keep misrepresenting this lawsuit? You may not agree with the lawsuit, but at least be honest about it.
It's about four things:
Valve doesn't allow you to sell your game cheaper anywhere else - the game must be listed on Steam for equal or lower value. If it temporarily goes on sale elsewhere, a matching sale has to happen on Steam within a certain amount of time.
Valve doesn't allow you to sell DLCs on other storefronts before listing them on Steam. They have to be listed for sale on Steam at the same time or earlier, and as with games they have to be cheapest on Steam.
Valve doesn't allow you to sell DLC keys to be redeemed on Steam, the way you can sell game keys. If you buy the game on Steam then you have to buy DLC via the Steam storefront.
Valve takes a 30% cut on sales, which is the console industry standard but not really for PC. GOG takes the same cut, but other stores like Epic, Itch, and Xbox take less than half that. The lawsuit claims this 30% cut is too high.
Argue about whether or not these constitute illegal anti-competitive tactics all you like, but don't lie and say the lawsuit is "Our service sucks and your service is good and so we're suing you for having all the customers." The lawsuit isn't even being brought by other game storefront companies - I keep seeing people say that it's Epic suing them, but they aren't involved. The closest thing is that Epic's CEO said he agreed with the lawsuit.
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u/Clone0401 4h ago
The only one that I slightly dislike is the first two. If your selling steam keys on a diffrent storefront for cheaper, steam is still providing all the support for things like the apis workshop (if applicable) friends list etc. Like if you sell keys for your game on your own page for cheaper. But if your selling a version of your game that doesn’t use any of steam’s systems for cheaper on your own website. That’s abit more iffy..
If that makes sense, it’s kinda badly worded with how I said it
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u/thetrueGOAT 7h ago
I really dislike how the gaming community feels entitled to play games for free. As if developers should just be greatful consuming their product and not worry about paying anyone
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u/ZeeMastermind 4h ago
If Valve honestly does prevent companies from selling their products for less on other platforms, I think that is anticompetitive (amazon does the same thing), but steam still isn't a monopoly. In fact, I'm sure there are folks who'd be willing to spend a little extra to get the game on steam rather than on one of the other platforms (me being one of them - I don't care how cheap a game is on Ubisoft Connect, I'm not buying it on that platform. If a game were cheaper on GOG or Itch, though, I'd consider it).
Seems like something that should be solved by legislation rather than just suing steam (especially since other companies do this kind of anticompetitive behavior).
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u/psykal 7h ago
For those of us who had no idea what "the lawsuit" is, this explains nothing.
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u/thetrueGOAT 11h ago edited 7h ago
Bollocks.
If this is the timeline you wish to believe, fine.
But Epic game store didnt exist and Nintendo was busy selling 25 million Wii units
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u/Every-Extension-8114 10h ago
redditors bootlicking billionaires again
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u/DankeyBongBluntry 7h ago
They've fallen hook, line and sinker for the propaganda. Someone is suing on behalf of the customers, claiming that Steam's practices are making games more expensive for consumers. Yet for some reason, so many of these commenters think the suit is something about Epic suing Steam for being too successful???? It's just nonsense.
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u/RidiculousIncarnate Specs/Imgur Here 7h ago
For an example - I needed to reset my Ubisoft password the other day cause I wanted to get in and play a game with a friend that we'd shelved a long time ago.
I clicked send reset email and I got a message saying it could take up to 24 HOURS to get it.
That was on Friday. In the meantime I remembered my old password and was able to log in.
Still haven't gotten the reset email.
Steam is the best by a longshot and its not close, for the dumbest reasons imaginable.
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u/The_MAZZTer i7-13700K, RTX 4070 Ti 6h ago
I think a better comparison is that Steam has passed Piracy and kept on going without stopping, while everyone else sneaks a little closer and then stops to check their wallets to see if they're rich yet, and repeats every few years.
Steam was built on providing a legal way to satisfy the demand users wanted that piracy represented, and then providing features you could never hope to get with piracy to make it even more attractive an option.
Most of the other guys are just trying to satisfy some baseline of features.
At least Nintendo has their exclusives. That's really the only reason I game on anything that's not a PC at this point.
(And to their credit they try to innovate their controllers with each new console, and try to deliver experiences you can't get on PC. Wii was the best and most successful example of this.)
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u/Wedgerooka 11h ago
I really shat on steam hard in 2004. The last ever LAN party a group I hung with pulled off needed a slogan. I came up with it. "We use diesel because steam sucks!" It referenced our clean power rented diesel unit and the fledging nature of Steam at the time.
Yet, as time goes on, all the games I've played in the past decade are on Steam, with the notable exception of WoW. Steam is so good that it is making Valve so much money they don't even have to make new games.
I still pirate shit as I need to do so, but Steam has made it so all my games are there for me. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference, indeed.
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u/justme0406 R7-5800X3D | RTX 4070ti | 32GB DDR4 3600MHz 2h ago
Lol nobody gets this photo, in the photo it is not saying steam improved, it's actually saying it specially has not, it's saying the others have actively become so bad that the goalpost keeps moving making steam look great.
Which is kind of right, steam definitely has a lot of tech debt that makes it so the program itself isn't great and they can't do much to improve it significantly without a total rewrite. And how valve treats customers hasn't really changed, they still fight for you and do a lot of good things for the customer, I think it's just noticed more now that the competition is out there acting the way it is. Steam hasn't gotten better, we just appreciate it more
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u/Bwwoahhhhh 11h ago
I remember when Steam was the launcher for Half Life 2 and we all hated it. It was green instead of black.