Gabes replacement will be the tell all. and as much as i want steam to exist over multiple generations…i dont think it can survive turnover, greed, opportunistic bastards.
I think it would be awesome if he turned it into a nonprofit with a healthy endowment. The charter could say that any profits above $X that can’t be invested into improving PC gaming must go to charities that promote indie dev. So the main goal would be to do things like the Steam Deck or build innovative games, and there would be little incentive to screw over customers. It could also be structured like a coop, so if employees didn’t like the CEO’s direction, they could vote to remove them.
That’s what I would do, but I’m obviously not GabeN.
I think this is the difference between private/public companies. They don’t have to deal with the “growth at all costs” mindset that plague public companies.
I really hope that he is planned out his successor meticulously,
Imagine if it was as Ban Happy as Reddit, Corporate as Youtube, or… owned by Elon Musk
…Granted you can turn this off, but by default every time you start Steam an ad for a game flies up in your face.
I would also call every single store page on Steam a “sold ad.” Again, granted that it doesn’t seem you can pay to promote your game above anyone else’s and the search seems to be fairly straightforward and functional.
While I do feel there is definitely advertising that happens on Steam, I’m okay with the level of it. I can find products I want, and products I do not want are not mercilessly crammed down my throat.
…for now.
Based
It’s not a principled stance, it’s simple economics.
They already take 30 percent of sales.
It is a benefit to them to put whatever will guarantee more sales, and a couple cents from an ad impression is just going to get in the way of that goal.
You’re not thinking like a capitalist. That 30% of sales they’re going to get anyway because the games that will pop up at the storefront are games that are, relatively speaking, successful. What they’re not getting is the money other companies would pay them to advertise games nobody wants to see. From a capitalist point of view Valve is leaving money on the table by not selling ad space.
That assumes that the money from targeted/curated ads is less than the money from paid advertising fees + follow up sales. That may not actually be true. Generic ads are notoriously bad at converting views to clicks to sales. What steam is doing is basically targeted advertising which boosts their sales, where they make a guaranteed 30% return at a rate that’s probably much higher than the conversion rate for paid advertising.
Other sales platforms do the same thing. It’s not really any different from all the recommendation sections on Amazon. The idea that they’re doing it just to be nice is pretty ridiculous. Valve is still out to make money at the end of the day.
That may not actually be true.
This is where your thinking doesn’t align with modern day Capitalists. You’re thinking about the scenario where it might not make a profit, but the capitalists think about the scenario where it could make a profit. It’s a question of potential. If there is potential to make even more money (and in this case there is) then that’s a business case that needs to be explored. It ultimately doesn’t matter if it actually makes them less money, the potential gains matter more.
If you wonder why public companies with billions in revenue can’t make a Steam competitor is because they can’t think long term, being a private company allows Valve to just work on what they want and grow If they need to
Even if Valve was public, Steam makes so much goddamn money that putting ads on the platform would only cheapen it.
Good joke. Investors will see wasted financial potential and make valve do it.
When you have external money you now also have away part of a platform. And the investors don’t care. Make number big fast. Nobody there is caring about long term
Thank you armchair analyst
See also: Reddit’s direction to eventually IPO
Has that happened yet? I thought it was supposed to have happened by now
It nearly happened, but then we protested and tanked the stock price to fuck Spez for fucking us. Now most of the subs are poorly moderated by mods that don’t care about their community. Content is suffering and revenue is dropping. Spez pissed on his golden goose and we decided to speed the process up so he couldn’t sell before it drowned.
It needs to be viable first, which obviously won’t happen when the management keeps stumbling into PR nightmares weekly.
Exactly this! I dread the day they go public :(
Reportedly Gaben has implemented safeguards to prevent Valve from getting public after his death. So at least we can hope Valve doesn’t go public in our lifetimes.
citation needed?
they can’t think long term
Well they can, but only in one way: Grow by selling at a loss to outcompete other and then make a profit.
Lol. This is a cute idea but we all know it will go through enshittification with time. You are naive if you believe otherwise.
I hope Gaben outlives me.
Ok, get in — ⚰️.
all hail Lord GabeN
Giga chads
Google started out the same way. Hopefully this sticks
The advantage atm is that valves privately owned. The moment they go public, be very wary.
I think it will be fine as long as Gaben is there. I am afraid that after he retires or ascends into Godhood somehow John Riccitiello will get his ass into that seat.
It will never go public - they are making money over fist and have no reason to participate in public capital markets. They also aren’t really interested in growing. The trade off is that not everyone will be able to get a job there.
The question is how long that mindset will survive once Gaben leaves. Or dies.
We need to upload him into a GabenOS of sorts. To preserve the Valve mindset, and also for science.
Some neurotoxin and mass murder would be a small price to pay.
To be a little more serious, I think there us a lot less risk that anything could happen. It is too profitable. I think of valve more like a company like Rolex, where they are crazy profitable and can do whatever they want.
No one can predict the future, and someone can always screw it all up with bad management. But I would predict that it is more likely that they would get bought out by Berkshire or something before going public or getting acquired by some VC firm.
Issue isn’t now but the future. Gabe is content on what he and the company earned, he didn’t feel the need to stuck an ever-growing tumor into his company. The story will be different when he’s no longer the head of the company, unless Gabe made an unbreakable rule for the company to never go public, the chance of some next-in-line getting greedy on setting themselves and their next few descendant for life is pretty high.
unless Gabe made an unbreakable rule for the company to never go public
Not exactly unprecedented, see e.g. Bosch, Zeiss, or, staying in the US, Mozilla.
But you can say that about anything. No one can predict the future.
Hopefully, if GabeN leaves, the next manager will be smart and manage steam well. Or they will be not smart and make bad decisions.
Emm yeah do you realise you’re the one saying “they will never went public”?
I think it is very unlikely. But you are going “what about in the future?” Well, I still think it is unlikely. And then you can go “What about after that?” Well okay, I still think it is unlikely, even then. “How about after that though?”
Damn, okay, they are going to go public, all their developers will go on strike, make everyone buy all their steam library all over again and start selling GLaDOS NFTs. Is that what you want to hear? It’s just a very funny comment. Yes, I don’t think they will ever go public, till the end of time. The world will be a burnt out husk before Valve goes public.
Going public would mean gaben has sold out. Which would make sense for him at some point. If he’s still working there he’ll be stuck with the worst of both worlds.
Whoever comes in under him will want to make their pie and ready it too.
Or died.
There’s no point in selling out when you make money hand over fist. All going public would do is make him lose total control of his company.
Not everyone is interested in total control. If Gaben decides he wants to retire on an even bigger pile of money or if his successor wants to cash in quick they could easily go public and reap a massive amount since Valve shares are sure to be high. I think the former is less likely than the latter, but Gabe is getting to retirement age, I expect to hear about a successor in the next 10-20 years
pretty sure he is already unimaginably rich
worth 4.3 Billion as of latest
A lot of people are unimaginably rich, but that doesn’t stop them from coveting more wealth. Gaben seems to be happy where he is, thus why I think it’s less likely he sells out than a successor takes over and sells out instead
That’s the biggest piece, smaller but worth mentioning is they make money off of our purchases directly unlike Google.
That’s why they do promote say sales, because they still get the same cut and might see more revenue out of it. Selling general ads doesn’t fit with what they’re going for, but they do aggressively push ads.
deleted by creator
Maybe they mean the ads that popup occasionally when starting steam
deleted by creator
I have nothing against them personally but they are undoubtedly advertising and are turned on by default.
LOL Valve is not “starting out”. They are about as old as Google.
Valve opened in the late 90s and is privately owned. Never say never where corporations and capitalism are concerned… But hopefully they wont take the evil google approach this late in the game. I think good will from their customers really sets them apart from competitors like Epic.
I feel like most of it is private ownership. The minute you enter the CEO/Board of Directors ecosystem with investors to pay and expectations of eternal growth, everything turns to shit.
Yup, can confirm. The company I work for is public, and we recently did layoffs despite being profitable, because we weren’t as profitable as we projected. That’s the kind of nonsense you get from public companies. I suppose it could happen with private companies as well, but my experience having worked for both doesn’t fit with that.
Valve didn’t suddenly get big, they’ve been dominating the PC space for many, many years.
And damn near every single Google effort into the games space has failed except for android games, which ride on the enormous platform install. Their latest effort was a joke - stadia was DOA.
I respect valve because they’ve provided indie game devs with the same distribution AAA studios get, they’ve never asked for exclusivity and did tons of uncompensated VR pioneering (remember Abrash and co were Valve before Oculus) and never once tried to ‘own’ vr. And they’re a private company, so that means the decisions - and investments - they’ve made worked out enough to free them of a board dicking shit up.
Keep going, Valve. I don’t like everything they do, but overall they’re a gem in value added.
Steam is a store.
Why would they try and sell you someone else’s goods?
LMAO.
Amazon is also a store, but they have sponsored listings that get preferential placement. Not technically ads, but very similar idea…
here’s the kicker: amazon sells their own product at the public market owned by amazon, undercutting any other seller on near-exact things.
imagine if valve made knockoffs of every famous game and just redirected every search to them.
I hate how easy it is to imagine a non-tangible variation of something they do in a tangible sense.
For anyone unfamiliar: They call this “enshittifcation”
Yeah, isn’t literally everything they have on steam and advertisement?
Only if companies are paying more for what you’re seeing.
The classic example would be loosely related games showing at the top of search results because some paid for them to be sponsored posts. Or something like that
It’s kind of odd, because it feels like they do sell promotion at the very least. For instance, Immortals of Aveum (the new EA game) is constantly shown on my store homepage, despite it being more or less a commercial flop. I know that page is customized, but I would have figured that game would be replaced by others now if the selection was fully organic. I had just assumed EA paid for some agreement that would promote the game on the main page for a set amount of time.
I’m sure it’s just coincidence, but their statement just surprised me since the store feels like it promotes specific games already.
It could be that part of their algorithm involves significantly weighting past sales by a publisher/development studio, especially early in the life cycle.
Yeah, I thought the homepage and pop up every time you open it were ads
If you watch the video in question, they detail which parts of the store are algorithmic and which parts are “curated” by Valve. My guess is that falls into the latter.
They definitely give curated preference to companies that have had successful games on steam. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have something worked out with EA.
Honestly, I wouldn’t try to gotcha Valve on anything. They are a games distributor, and they will do and say anything to promote games that are selling well, and the developers and publishers behind them. They don’t give a crap about games or devs that aren’t selling. Nor would/should they.
They also run huge banners at the top for new releases - currently it’s Diablo 4.
I assume that’s a paid spot.
They could be promoting it with the expectation that sales will benefit them through their share. A banner for Diablo 4 benefits Valve directly just by making people aware they can buy it through steam.
There was just an article about this. Its not paid - its curated. There is supposedly a soft revenue requirement for the studio/publisher to be considered.
Valve really has it made. They say, you can “buy” these spots by selling a lot of games, which they take 30% of. Idk why you would mess that up.
deleted by creator
Never seen that game in my homepage… You may have played similar games
Yeah, meanwhile the front page often shows me the forest, and have so for like the last few years lmao
Mostly because it’s similar to other games I’ve played and is good, I’m sure. I just never bothered to really interact with the game in either direction.
It’s actually quite good, IMO, and I am doing a melee/bash run at the moment at the higher difficulty. That’s from a player haven’t re-run a game in almost a decade.(Last game I did a rerun is Zelda:The Wind Waker HD.) And the devs said they are going to release NG+ later.
Why am I considering it good?
- no mtx at all
- very light to no grinding mechanism(unless you are like me doing specialty runs at high difficulty, you don’t have to grind at all)
- the control is pretty tight, reminds me Q3A era control. You can’t go crazy speed but you can do that initial strafe run jump thing to speed up quickly.
- some late game enemy/encounter design is actually not bad. It’s annoying/boring if you do the regular FPS peeking/kiting and beat them, but it’s actually satisfying if you use the provided mechanisms to do beat the same encounter but more involved.
- skill tree customization is actually quite interesting when combined with gear selection.
- enemies design are actually quite fair, there are no “this is BS” enemy types, and the enemy progression is actually pretty gradual no sudden difficulty spikes here and there.
Any cons?
- some mechanism aren’t explained properly in game.
- if anything I think they are tuned still a bit toward the easier end even on high difficulty. Might be too easy/boring for season FPS player.
- some spells aren’t really that useful to your play style, or have some design oddity that I don’t really know it’s “true” purpose. ie there is a spell that slows both you and enemy, I felt like wtf when I first acquired that and used it in a group fight.
- default KBM bind are pretty bad, it’s control is more focused for controller/console.
- back tracking to open chest locked behind ability seems a bit boring
- there could be maybe a couple more enemy types, I wish there are another 2 creature type enemy and maybe 3 more humanoid types to mix up the battle even more.
- edit: forgot to mention Denuvo and EA account required.
Now graphics and system requirement. I have a 6800XT and mid range CPU 3900X, I pretty much run the default at 1440p upscale to 2160p and average around 75~85 fps for most part of the game. There are reports and whatever says “this game doesn’t look that good compare to other non-UE5 games”, why the spec requirement? Well, I guess that’s very player specific judgement but unfortunately most people care about the fps number and be able to run all “ultra” with native pixels, instead of actually checking what’s the core difference between UE5 vs older gen DX11 game engine results. Games developed with UE5 or modern tech will suffer from initial high spec requirement, but will age much much better later down the road. Some of the in game asset details are really unmatched by whatever I’ve seen so far even up close.
And, at recent sale price I think it’s worth buying if you don’t have a side game to play with. edit: I just checked my steam store page, this game isn’t even showing.(I purchased on EGS) So probably your game selection matches their suggestion algorithms. I checked:
- landing page all the feature/recommended “slides”
- recommended for you
- top seller
I thought it was due to their poor grasp on mathematics and inability to count beyond two.
SideQuest VR went the exact opposite direction.
If Steam isn’t pay to win, how do I earn the points used to buy the profile doodads (avatars, avatar bezels, backgrounds, banners, etc) without purchasing games? 🤔
I purchased enough stuff in past sales that when that feature released, which I ignored until I saw one of my rocket league friend do something fancy on their profile icon, I had all the credits to buy all the top animated ones. But being stingy with the virtual coins, I still only pick the one I want to use and only buy those. one boarder and one background to match. What about my other credits? well they can rot or whatever I don’t care.
I bought my index the day they implemented that stuff.
I was so confused as to how I got so many… thing… points?
I’ve never done anything with them and that was many years ago. Maybe I should? I dunno.
Do you consider it a win, if you have all the doodads?
Of course. And if I’m winning at Steam, I’m winning in real life! 🥲
I hate that I laughed about this.
