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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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This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole after skimming through the article... > I'm guilty of going on about the luxury side of this, but Leviathan has also been designed with scientific work in mind: Newell's interests now include Starfish Neuroscience, a company focused on neural interfaces (popularly known as "brain chips"), and Inkfish, a marine research operation Neural interfaces? Uh oh, that reminds me of another billionaire and a heart-breaking story about animal testing. https://www.gsmgotech.com/2025/05/gabe-newellbacked-starfish-bci-chip-to.html > Unlike bulky, invasive BCIs used in medical settings, the Starfish chip is designed to be minimally invasive, leveraging a proprietary array of microelectrodes that attach to the scalp. >The device’s compact design, roughly the size of a postage stamp, also addresses a common hurdle in consumer neurotech: wearability. Early prototypes suggest the chip could be discreetly integrated into headbands, VR headsets, or even augmented reality glasses. Oh ok... well that doesn't sound as bad. Wait, didn't Valve just announce a new VR headset that has a port which can be used for 3rd party accessories? >BCIs inevitably raise questions about privacy, data security, and ethical AI use. Starfish claims its device anonymizes neural data and processes most information locally, rather than cloud servers. Still, skeptics argue that neural data’s intimate nature demands stricter regulatory frameworks. >Dr. Rachel Kim, a bioethicist at Stanford University, cautions, “The benefits are immense, but we need clear guidelines on who owns brain data and how it’s monetized. This isn’t just another app—it’s a window into the human mind.” Hmmm...If I recall correctly Newell himself has made comments on how scary brain interfaces become when the interfaces can start influencing the mind as well as reading it. Giving it positive signals in association with certain ideas or products, essentially a shortcut to what traditional advertising tried to exploit about human cognition, except now it could be forced directly, where you can essentially "force" people's brains to be happy with a certain situation, idea, or product. He is at least cognizant of the dangers, but who knows how cognizant or how he plans to address those dangers.
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that moment when the One Good Billionaire
casually orders a boat that costs several times more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes 
i get that there's worse out there but i'm tired of people acting like newell is a saint... he's just another billionaire. -
It's still a luxury yacht decked out with nearly all the things you'd expect from a half a billion dollar superyacht. Only part of it is customised for research. If the main goal was to turn half a billion dollars into a research boat, this isn't the boat that would get made.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 regulations
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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.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).
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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.>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. Well you say that but Sony also has an online game marketplace that operates in Australia. I don’t know how it works in Australia, but in the U.S. their return policy is not nearly as generous as Steam’s. In fact it Sony’s return policy only really exists on paper. In reality they don’t really do returns at all.
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that moment when the One Good Billionaire casually orders a boat that costs several times more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes
i get that there's worse out there but i'm tired of people acting like newell is a saint... he's just another billionaire.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.
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that moment when the One Good Billionaire casually orders a boat that costs several times more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes
i get that there's worse out there but i'm tired of people acting like newell is a saint... he's just another billionaire.
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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.
