I've been on Steam since 2005, and the only thing that sucks about Valve is that their steam sales are shit now. Other than that I've had no issues with them. They seem like a decent company.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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There's also the gambling, and the 30% cut that allows them to make $3.5 million per head.
Steam is pushing the industry forward on Linux support though, so they have my support.
Other thing that is questionable is gambling, apparently lot of people get into online casino through CS.
I think the culture surrounding DoTa to a lesser extend is not good too
genre defining design, literal decades ahead of the rest of the industry
Half-Life? What's that? I'm talking about Team Fortress 2 hats
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Weird how if you pay the people activly invested in a product things work rather than having to awnser to why line no go up
Wonder how much of this comes from the gambling business. They don’t own the secondary market where you can sell skins, but they are the gateway into that world.
They do own a big part of the secondary market. For steam marketplace, they get a cut of those sales too.
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I suspect a fair chunk. Steam for gamers and devs is great and all but its underbelly of opening up the world of gambling to kids is real gross. Its insane how valve has been getting away with it for so long.
Valve is the living proof that you can have great service and still be profitable. Will capitalists learn? No
Why have great service and be profitable when you can have terrible service and be 1.6% more profitable?
Correction: Be just as profitable but cash out on that profit slightly sooner.
More like far less profitable over years, but far more this quarter. And when it inevitably goes south because you're squeezing too hard? Who cares, on to the next company!
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Showing the importance of sustainable business models over the throw your entire budget at everything then end up firing hundreds and thousands of employees while giving bonuses to executives because the quarterly earnings weren't as high approach that lot of publicly traded companies have moved towards.
Figuring out how to easily port Windows games to Linux was definitely a recipe for profit.
And it was a shitload of work that took a decade plus, even being built on top of pieces that were even older, with absolutely zero guarantee of any kind of a payout.
Very few companies make these kinds of risks anymore.
It's not only goodwill, it's a survival tactic for valve. The worst case scenario for them, is see microsoft expand their monopoly to have all apps and software available only through their Microsoft app store, competing directly with valve, with the unfair advantage of microsoft controlling both windows and the app store. They could (and probably have) tried to get to where apple is with its app store on macos/ios. Though of course this would be an anticompetitive move, but the intentions could still exist making valves life difficult.
The moment they can untie gaming from windows, they have a path forward to keeping themselves not only alive but relevant and probably safe.
Yet other store platforms like epic, gog, blizzard, origin, and uplay don't bother supporting Linux and are content with Microsoft.
So as much of a survival tactic it might be it would seem any other company wouldn't bother and still aren't.
Yet Valve has demonstrated it's smarter than any of them, we're literally commenting on an article saying they're making 3.5 million $ per employee
What are their respective market shares compared to steam? Is it comparable? If it's not, maybe they're missing the leverage to try what Valve is attempting. But also, and likely, this is a costly long term development process.
So it shows other companies are short term thinking focusing more on quarter profits, and also explains why they missed put on two console generations worth of time to make a dent in the PC space when the industry was claiming PC was dying.
It's always excuses and lack of willingness to take risks on plans that might not pan out immediately. Then when it becomes successful from another company excuse is what is the market share in the present.
They could (and probably have) tried to get to where apple is with its app store on macos/ios.
They did.
The Windows 10/11 "S Mode" only allows installing software through the Windows store. It was mostly relegated to OEM installs for cheap x86 and ARM laptops, thankfully.
Ew. I hate that. I see they offer an option in settings to permanently switch out of S mode, but that seems like it's a crappy excuse. I'm guessing most users are never going to go there, and will stay in S mode, using only Microsoft's awful products. That's their intention, at least.
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They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
They've been nothing but fair to me as a customer but the cynic in me thinks they've got an excessive amount of good will to squander since they dominate the PC gaming scene.
Please don't become shitty. And please release new non competitive games.
That's what you can do if you're not publicly traded. The supposedly "wise" market whenever anything goes wrong always seems to insist on burning down decades of good-will to extract a few bucks.
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They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
Provide a decent service then sit back and watch your would-be competition develop increasingly effective footguns?
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Gaben said it best when he said "piracy is a service issue, not a price issue." There is no other company that even comes close to matching Steam's services, both to consumers and developers. The industry could become a different place when he dies. I don't see any other CEO continuing to spend money to innovate and expand services rather than offer less and charge more to extract record profits.
Developers really trying to kill that by having buggy /launchers that run off steam launcher on top
This is absolutely mad cope, but I want to believe that, as forward thinking as Gabe is, he either will find a worthy successor, or already has one lined up to ensure the company isn't saced for all it's worth when he's gone.
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Price has become a big issue lately too.
I feel the same, I know that things will likely go downhill if he goes. That's why I also buy GoG games, I want to be able to download them if things go sour with Steam.
You can downlowad some of the steam games. DRM is possible, but not mandatory
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I can only hope he has made some form of training program to have someone like him in place to follow behind him. I do worry about it as well, though. It's been such a fun ride along the way.
When you said "training program" it made me think Portal style. Like the new exec gets hired or promoted and wakes up in an Aperture facility voiced by Gabe.
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