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Gabe Newell caps off Steam Machine week by taking delivery of a new $500 million superyacht with a submarine garage, on-board hospital and 15 gaming PCs
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People need to remember a lot of the pro-consumer things that Valve has ever done were things they were forced to by regulation. Like being able to return games? That was to comply with an Australian law, and it was just *easier* to implement it for everyone than just do it for Australia specifically.While I won't defend that he could be much more altruistic with his money, but complying with different refund laws at a digital level is super easy to do. Even more so for Australia, since it isn't like anyone bouncing between country borders all the time there.
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Refreshing to hear this take. Valve and Gabe get glazed so hard when at the end of the day it's about the bottom dollar for them too. Honestly I think people love them so much because everyone else has been horrible by comparison.
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We are so used to billionaires being obnoxious assholes that one that isn't obnoxious about their billions feels like one of the good ones, I guess. He made his money (like any other billionaire) by overcharging and underpaying. He wastes his money on useless bullshit like any other billionaire. But he's not obnoxious about it, which causes people to just ignore the part about billionaires that's actually bad (the way they became billionaires).He charged less than others and pays better than others. Valve also can't take much of a lower cut on game sales because their current cut is the market average and valve would get in legal trouble for monopoly practices and unfair competition because they're already so much more popular than the few competitors they have. What Gabe could do is give money away and be like alteuistic.
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I don't think anyone thinks he's a saint, despite the memes. Except if you compare him to the fucking sleazeballs at companies like Epic, Rockstar, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard, etc. etc., not to mention every other publicly traded corporation, he kind of his. Again, **by comparison**. He single-handedly improves the entire industry. He could very well have developed a locked down Steam OS that won't do anything but play games but he instead invested in an open source platform that sorely needed it, and makes the world a better place. Steam doesn't have to put up big banners for Denuvo or AI or games that require a remote account but they do, purely for the benefit of the users."single-handedly" lmao, as if newell is the guy doing all the work and not the valve employees who work for him… or, yknow, the contributors to all the open-source projects steamos is built on proton and steamos would be nowhere today without the decades of work by the WINE/DXVK contributors, and the myriad of other open-source projects that make Linux into what it is. all valve did was add their proprietary client on top of that (as well as fund the development of proton, tbf, i'm thankful for them on that one)
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If you made people's nostalgia, they will defend you. Nintendo has defenders. Disney has defenders. Blizzard has defenders. And so on. People will defend a company for free because they did something cool ~20 years ago.
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Refreshing to hear this take. Valve and Gabe get glazed so hard when at the end of the day it's about the bottom dollar for them too. Honestly I think people love them so much because everyone else has been horrible by comparison.People love them because they still offer good products and services, some of them completely for free. I think it's perfectly valid to recognize and appreciate the good, even when there's also bad.
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Lol yep they're an extremely wealthy company with that 30%. But it seems like almost every other storefront operates under those margins for digital sales (not just in gaming). I do value the cloud saves, I think those would actually add up a bit for their storage requirements as well as hosting all of the game files in presumably many locations globally. 15%, they'd still be a multibillion dollar company
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Funny, I was just reading about this sort of thing in "How to blow up a pipeline". It's the sort of argument that seems obvious in retrospect. When someone in the global south uses a coal stove to cook their food, they're doing it by necessity. When a billionaire sails out on a mega yacht, it's pure excess. Yeah, banning them won't make the difference between 1.5C and 2.0C of global warming, but it's low hanging fruit. We can also ban private jets, and the only significant impact to the economy would be that some billionaires have to travel around in first class like some kind of lowly multimillionaire or upgraded plebian. It does not matter if you think Valve makes good products or not.It'd be cool if these mandated these things be solar/battery/sail powered.
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People love them because they still offer good products and services, some of them completely for free. I think it's perfectly valid to recognize and appreciate the good, even when there's also bad.
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> the barrier to entry for a Steam competitor is nearly non-existent My brother in christ have you heard of network effects?
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I don't think anyone thinks he's a saint, despite the memes. Except if you compare him to the fucking sleazeballs at companies like Epic, Rockstar, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard, etc. etc., not to mention every other publicly traded corporation, he kind of his. Again, **by comparison**. He single-handedly improves the entire industry. He could very well have developed a locked down Steam OS that won't do anything but play games but he instead invested in an open source platform that sorely needed it, and makes the world a better place. Steam doesn't have to put up big banners for Denuvo or AI or games that require a remote account but they do, purely for the benefit of the users.It's like he said decades ago, or near decades ago. Piracy is a quality of service problem. When you do the right thing the right way, people will come and you can make a shit load of money. Same thing like you said about SteamOS. They didn't have to make it open, and could have made money, but the ecosystem that can be built around an open platform, and the people you can draw to it are going to be miles better than a closed system where thats the mindset from the top.
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The governments of normal people could be doing it but the money is going to billionaires instead.There are a lot of things governments are not doing that people with money do that benefit everyone and that's a good thing imo. Governments want to be liked and be re-elected by the mass and that means doing the things a lot of people care about wich is a good thing too. A lot of good is also being done in the world not by billionaires or governments but by groups of people with goals that asks for funding from average people and rich people to reach their goals. I will always applaud people for doing good things. That doesn't mean i can't be very critical when they are doing bad things. As far as i know the boats gabe newell is buying are for research and not to chill and have parties.
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Why does he need society's input? Last I checked, charities didn't ask society at large, they just get funding from the people who care. Am I wrong to go to the park to pick up litter without asking society at large if that's the best use of my time? We don't need to have everything go through a committee. If he wants to do a good thing, that's awesome.That wooshing sound you hear is the point going over your head.
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If you made people's nostalgia, they will defend you. Nintendo has defenders. Disney has defenders. Blizzard has defenders. And so on. People will defend a company for free because they did something cool ~20 years ago.Valve is notably better (not good, but better) than the other companies you've listed. That is, of course, an anomaly. A good monarchy lasts only as long as the monarch. A good company that exists for longer than the average human lifespan will quickly become no different from its peers.
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>there's one implication that worries me Well, _two_ implications 
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Exactly. Valve might have a "flat" management structure, but Newell hasn't exactly re-organized Valve into a worker-owned co-op either.
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Yeah, I don't understand people who ascribe more to GabeN than running a decent business. Steam has done right by me, so I remain a customer. I didn't play many games before Steam came to Linux, then I played more and more as Linux support improved (Proton was game changing),. My opinion of him ends there. Steam is a great product, as is the Steam Deck. If Valve stops making great products, I'll stop buying. Whether Gabe Newell is a good person is irrelevant here.And I mean Gabe is overseeing the Valve team's success, allowing his employees to develop at their pace and following what appears to be their passion. They aren't shoehorning AI or whatever the latest buzzword to goose some imaginary number. Gabe was pissed at Windows enough, he used to work for Microsoft, so he's instrumental in helping break Microsoft's monopoly on gaming operating systems by supporting Linux compatibility and releasing first party hardware. He deserves credit for the culture he cultivates in his company and shares in its success. Likewise, shame should be where shame is due, like with the whole lootbox gambling economy thing. The main reason why it is viewed as refreshingly good is because they seem to be one of the few big companies that still believe that profit growth comes from valuing employees, suppliers (gamedevs) and consumers, rather than trying to squeeze every last drop of profit no matter how cruel. It should be the norm yet it seems to be the exception. It would be nice to have no billionaires, but right now we live in a world where government [tells states to clawback aid they gave to hungry families](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/11/10/federal-judge-snap-recipients-state-provided-benefits/87194473007/) so taxing the rich, or acting in any way that resembles normalcy, is a lot to expect right now. We can let Gabe make a silly luxury purchase. If Valve burns the trust it has earned, then I will move away from them too, I don't owe Gabe or Valve anything.
