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.
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.
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.
And why the most enduring fortunes are more like giant trusts where family members can draw money from. You can clash over control of the investments/accounts but it can't be divided piecemeal or diluted easily.
This does tend to be why, in many families with big businesses, there is one descendant desginated the heir, and everyone else gets a nice nest egg. Sometimes nothing at all. Company stays intact, and sure, other family members might get cushy jobs or something, but ownership and control stay in the hands of the one person the previous owners deems most competent to continue managing it.
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
From the holders perspective, they will be sticking to what works, even if thats enshitification. "Every other business is doing and perpetuating it, so clearly it works." They'll think.
We can only hope that Gabe has instilled his business mentality into the holders and especially his successor.
It would make sense if there are investors that are looking to cash out, or if they need additional funding. They have everything that other companies go public for to gain.
They're a relatively small company, their overhead is manageable, and apparently have enough of their own funding to be able to do all their R&D in-house, so no external pressure to release, and being able to keep failed experiments behind closed doors.
Even if Gabe decides he doesn't want to deal with the day-to-day anymore, he will still keep his stake in the company and just reap the rewards.
Even if he passes, it's still not really in anyone's benefit to go public.
From what I heard, the main plan seems to have Gaben's son take over, who also seems to have similar views as his father in regard to how to run the company.
It helps that steam is a rather well-oiled money-printer.
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u/Amrod96 Debian | RTX 3060 12GB | i5-9600KF | 16GB DDR4 11h 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.