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).

>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.

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.

Nobody should have that much wealth, I don't care what they do. I have always respected Gabe's "fuck gamers I do what I think is cool" mindset though. Fuck gamers.

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.

Is that honestly the most comfortable sitting arrangement he could buy with $500M?

I don't think anyone is saying that billionaires existing is a good thing.

*scratches neck* we're getting HL3 any day now, i swear

G*mers are fucking troglodytes.

High chance if he decided to take home "just" $10 million per year, he could pay every single one of the Valve employees at least 100k more every year. That or they could take less than 30% from developer profits.

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).

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.

Well deserved. I just hope when he goes away, there will be someone of similar caliber to replace him

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.

I think the line to never have to work again is pretty far under $100mil

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.

Ok the on board hospital does make sense if he spends all his time living on the water

Thats getting away with raping children money.

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.

International Waters: No Laws. No Ethics.