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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’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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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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Brother, go back and read the OP. You cannot claim that 30% is fair while the man camps on an Armada of yachts worth over a billion dollars. This is not a distraction, *this is the problem*. There's just no way that makes any sense.You're putting words in my mouth. I never called the 30% "fair." I've been trying to steer the conversation toward what a discussion about its fairness should actually be based on: the value of the services Steam provides. You are fixated on Gabe Newell's personal wealth as the sole proof that the cut is unjust. That's an emotional argument about wealth disparity, not a logical analysis of the platform's costs and value. Let me be clear: whether a CEO's personal spending is excessive is a separate moral and political debate. It doesn't, on its own, determine if the price of a service is justified. The cost of servers, development, support, and the global infrastructure Steam maintains is what's relevant here. If you want to argue that the platform itself isn't worth the cut, make that case. But simply pointing to a yacht and saying "see, it's unfair" is a non-sequitur. It's a distraction from the actual economic discussion.
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Gambling disorder is recognized by the DSM, this comment comes across as victim blaming and ableist.
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I dunno about every other country, but age of consent legally applies to US citizens while abroad. I'm sure it's easier to get away with, but it doesn't make one immune to the law.
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Why is everyone acting surprised, this has been Gabe's thing for a long time? He's super into boats and submarines and owns a submarine company or something like that. i think I'm burned out from the news cycle, getting outraged by this just feels like a waste of my emotional energy that I could spend somewhere it will matter.
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You're putting words in my mouth. I never called the 30% "fair." I've been trying to steer the conversation toward what a discussion about its fairness should actually be based on: the value of the services Steam provides. You are fixated on Gabe Newell's personal wealth as the sole proof that the cut is unjust. That's an emotional argument about wealth disparity, not a logical analysis of the platform's costs and value. Let me be clear: whether a CEO's personal spending is excessive is a separate moral and political debate. It doesn't, on its own, determine if the price of a service is justified. The cost of servers, development, support, and the global infrastructure Steam maintains is what's relevant here. If you want to argue that the platform itself isn't worth the cut, make that case. But simply pointing to a yacht and saying "see, it's unfair" is a non-sequitur. It's a distraction from the actual economic discussion.
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> Let me be clear: whether a CEO's personal spending is excessive is a separate moral and political debate. It doesn't, on its own, determine if the price of a service is justified. LEt me be clear: It absolutely does. I can't think of a better indicator.Actually, it's a terrible indicator, because it's completely disconnected from the service you're evaluating. Your anger is about wealth inequality and the ethics of extreme capitalism, which is a totally valid topic. But you're using that anger to answer a different question: 'What is a fair price for this service?' But you are insisting on using that separate topic as the only metric for this one. Since we're fundamentally talking about two different issues and you're refusing to engage with the point about service value, I don't see this conversation being productive any longer.
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Would you buy zionist games? Are you willing to support genocide if the games are good? Do you give a shit about anything at all?
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> Likewise, shame should be where shame is due, like with the whole lootbox gambling economy thing. And while theirs is bad, it's also one of the less bad of the MTX nonsense since you can trade stuff on the market, no? So even when they're bad, they're on the less bad end of the spectrum. > It would be nice to have no billionaires, I agree, but the next best is to eliminate generational wealth. Maybe there should be caps on how much can be inherited, with the rest going to charities the heirs don't directly benefit from. I don't think billionaires are automatically bad people, but there is a strong correlation between huge wealth and bad people.
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I like the way they list those things in the title. Like which one is the most expensive: the hospital, the submarine garage, or **fifteen** gaming PCs?Do they have 5090s in them?