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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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He used to make games. He stopped making games to sell other people's games. I get why people like Steam, but when people say you shouldn't play games that require other launchers, especially when all-in-one launchers like Playnite exist... I think people should get off his dick a bit. The problem I have is that Valve used to make GREAT games. And there's so much trash and shovelware out there, it would be nice to see a good developer come back. The hope is that they will at least make good gaming *hardware*.Valve have really opened the floor for others to make good games though, right? I remember hanging out in indie game dev spaces about... 15-20 years ago, and many people's best hope was to get accepted by a publisher and get 40% of sale revenue (publisher kept 60%). Getting onto Steam back then was very difficult (before greenlight). Now anyone can publish on Steam, for better or for worse, and there are heaps of really cool indie games that rise to the top. Indie games were instrumental in the early days of VR as well. Valve seem to have switched to a supporting role. They are developing hardware because it's a gap they see in broadening their audience, and they let developers fill in the software because today being a game developer is really accessible. To be fair, HL: Alyx was a pretty great game, that arguably gave you experience jumps like the original Half Life. I don't remember much about it but I remember enjoying playing it. The little moments when you discover things like how you can write on a whiteboard by picking up a pen, or that you can only carry two grenades on your belt, but you can pick up a bucket and carry it around full of grenades, things that weren't really possible in the same way until that new medium that they developed top of line hardware for.
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Gabe looks a lot like me. I think I see where they could cut some corners. 
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While all that is indeed good, we shouldn't *have to* rely on the benevolence of the wealthy to be able to have a better world. No offense, but that kind of stuff should be paid for by *taxation.* He is doing some good here, but it's also his pet project, his choice where the money goes, no one else, no input from society at large. It's still overall not a real great thing, because it means that we have to just *hope* that billionaires have pet projects that help society and the earth at large.
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He used to make games. He stopped making games to sell other people's games. I get why people like Steam, but when people say you shouldn't play games that require other launchers, especially when all-in-one launchers like Playnite exist... I think people should get off his dick a bit. The problem I have is that Valve used to make GREAT games. And there's so much trash and shovelware out there, it would be nice to see a good developer come back. The hope is that they will at least make good gaming *hardware*.
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There was an article about a year ago posted to Reddit about how Gabe owns 6 yachts worth $1B. I called him out in the comments and got flamed by every gamer on the platform. It's crazy the mental gymnastics these simps do to defend others living like Gods.G*mers are fucking troglodytes.
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even then, "he used to make games"… was he alone? did he not have a team with him? where are their yachts? valve is an alright company all things considered, but it’s baffling to me how many people act like they’re the second coming… people should know better. valve is a corporation operating under capitalism. [they’re not above doing shady stuff for profit.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g)Also, I'm pretty sure Portal 1 was in development by a studio that was bought by valve when they saw the game prototype. Not exactly "Gabe Newell making Portal". Though I do think that was a savvy investment (Portal 2 being the better game also).
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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).I agree mostly, but Valve employees are reportedly paid an incredible amount of money compared to the market average, so underpaying would probably only refer to the hefty (but industry standard) 30% cut of game sales they take from game publishers.
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There was an article about a year ago posted to Reddit about how Gabe owns 6 yachts worth $1B. I called him out in the comments and got flamed by every gamer on the platform. It's crazy the mental gymnastics these simps do to defend others living like Gods.once you hit $100M, you have enough to never work again. you could spend the rest of your living days spending time in a community making sure everyone there is fed, housed, and safe. even just maintaining your personal status quo of working the way you did to get into 9 figures is inherently supportive of the global system of torture all of us are forced to live in. while i agree gabe newell, jay-z, and taylor swift shouldn't be the main focus of our ire, i find the degree of worship they receive confusing.
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once you hit $100M, you have enough to never work again. you could spend the rest of your living days spending time in a community making sure everyone there is fed, housed, and safe. even just maintaining your personal status quo of working the way you did to get into 9 figures is inherently supportive of the global system of torture all of us are forced to live in. while i agree gabe newell, jay-z, and taylor swift shouldn't be the main focus of our ire, i find the degree of worship they receive confusing.
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I agree mostly, but Valve employees are reportedly paid an incredible amount of money compared to the market average, so underpaying would probably only refer to the hefty (but industry standard) 30% cut of game sales they take from game publishers.I think the underpaying would be not having nearly as many employees as similar sized companies. They could have several divisions producing games while also developing their hardware and software. He has been happy to make changes at a slower pace while their store keeps taking large cuts of each sale.
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Ok the on board hospital does make sense if he spends all his time living on the water
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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.
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Alternatively, it's a luxury yacht for small teams of passionate scientists to keep them happy and comfortable for long periods, and also a floating town for Gabe to live in Also, if you want to criticize it there's one implication that worries me... Part of the concept is that this yacht will be a floating lab that can pick up and move to avoid regulationsInternational Waters: No Laws. No Ethics.
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He’s just another billionaire. Probably just not the typical sociopathic ones or a narcissist. Once he had enough money for everything he could ever need he could have devoted himself to building a self sufficient non-capitalist future for valve/steam with irrevocable covenants in its governance that are not manipulated by the next sociopath to take leadership of the company, like Altman is doing with OpenAI. Point being, he might not be a sociopath like the majority of them, and he doesn’t seem to be evil, but he’s not a saint either. There’s also the platforms moderation issues with shitloads of bigotry. Feels like a blind eye but maybe it’s just me. They could take a spare billion in profits, throw it into low risks stocks with dividends or bonds, and pay a team to moderate it out of that in perpetuity without affecting his business or his life like how college endowments work. That is unless the goal for him is still more billions.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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Also, I'm pretty sure Portal 1 was in development by a studio that was bought by valve when they saw the game prototype. Not exactly "Gabe Newell making Portal". Though I do think that was a savvy investment (Portal 2 being the better game also).Erik Wolpaw, who wrote Portal, was absolutely a Valve employee by that time already though, and *very arguably* the writing is what made the game so special. The team developing it wouldn't have had Wolpaw as a pull for a writer without being acquired by Valve.
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Then why praise one for having a pet project just because it *might* help the environment? If it's not a good thing that they exist, why does there *need* to be a caveat of "but he's doing good things with his money."
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While all that is indeed good, we shouldn't *have to* rely on the benevolence of the wealthy to be able to have a better world. No offense, but that kind of stuff should be paid for by *taxation.* He is doing some good here, but it's also his pet project, his choice where the money goes, no one else, no input from society at large. It's still overall not a real great thing, because it means that we have to just *hope* that billionaires have pet projects that help society and the earth at large.Whether the concept of billionaires is bad is irrelevant when deciding whether one specific billionaire is bad.
