What do you think of this prediction?

Kinda sounds like how worker cooperatives work tbh, but with Gabe still technically being the owner.

I remember reading a news piece a while back about how the founder of a food company made sure to transfer ownership to the employees before leaving. While we're talking about worst-case scenarios, let's also hope for the best and hope that Gabe has a similar plan.

PeopleMakeGames has a two part series on Valve that's pretty interesting. The second part (here) dives into the structure of the company. It does have a bit of an angle, fwiw, so if you'd prefer something more objective, it might not be a great watch. Personally I think the issues they bring up are valid, but figured I'd mention it.

A little unsure about the "peer based performance review", sounds like bullying might somehow have to be kept in check. Otherwise this sounds awesome.

Stack ranking is toxic and removes individuality from a given employees expectations in my opinion.

People should be qualified to give proper unbiased reviews. Just because someone is an excellent engineer does not mean they are good at understanding other people's expectations and work outputs.

I worked at a company that had no 'managers' just the owner, and everyone else. I hated that I had no real way to settle disputes and every single disagreement has to ultimately be resolved by the literal one person who was in charge.

I think there is merit to flat structures, but I don't think the extreme is always the way to go.

How does more boring tasks like accounting, legal or facilities work?

This, and as long as the company is legally structured to prevent restructuring things will be fine.

Apparently 50%+ of the company belongs to Gabe himself, presumably he would pass it on to some very trusted. That makes a hostile takeover pretty unlikely.

This doesn't make any sense. The reason Valve hasn't been acquired is because it's privately owned and not up for sale, not because it doesn't have "enough profit". In fact it's extremely profitable, for all we know.

Sure, another company could come along and build a competitor. It's happened already multiple times, and Steam is doing just fine despite some major titles these days being exclusive to other platforms. Unless Steam drops the ball on something big time, it's unlikely that people will move to another platform en masse, especially one that is less focussed on consumer interests. No-one can just come in and "take capital away" from Steam, whatever that means, by building a competitor that sells advertising space and "monetizes user data" — they need users first.

... And then there's the fact that Steam is already "selling advertiser space" today. Games don't just get featured on their storefront because Gabe likes them. They make deals with publishers for this.

I'd drop Steam if that happened. There are other ways to get games and managers like Lutris make organizing them easy. I'm sure Valve knows this and with how long they've been successful, fucking with gamers would not make sense. Look how it's working or for some of the bigger gaming companies recently.

They do provide Linux support in other ways though. They even troubleshoot me once with a game I tried to play on Linux and offered a refund.

Gog Galaxy not on Linux is a shame, yes, but its DRM-Free and Linux installers are enough for me to continue to buy from them.

Edit: Heroic Launcher makes a great replacement of Gog Galaxy, maybe even better than the Windows client, from what I'd tried. No multiplayer though.

So you're saying if Valve enshittified, they wouldn't fork and try to capitilise on that market?

They probably do not see the point right now as Valve have it sewn up. Lemmy grew when Reddit scored own goals. When Valve do, opportunities are there and would be taken.

Maybe, but DRM free content isn't exactly shareholder value...

It's better shepherded than Epic. They probably don't fill the space because Steam do it better, but you invest more if the return is higher.

The case I'm referring to is in the future if Steam badly enshittified.

Isint Steam a form of DRM? You effectively cant play your games if you dont have an account I thought

Even if they want to open-source it, an issue is the amount of work of organizing the repository, making sure it's properly organized and doesn't have any files they don't want to distribute, and then maintaining that with future versions.

Or talk to a girl!

Lutris > gog as source > set proton as a runner (or wine, or whatever else if specific games require it, like FFXIV)

The ship has sailed about 4 times now, gog galaxy on Linux has constantly been at the top of requests but we made a stinky about the Witcher 2 so gog and epic will forever hold the community as not worth it. Now the community has done the leg work they have no reason to mess about with translating all those .net calls

They barely "support" Windows, they aren't rally a software dev company, they are just sell you the actual game (unlike Valve etc).

And that is precious, the world needs companies that help restore some equality on the market.

And also what Nothing said.

Could you expand on that pls?

Im wondering how does the excess amount of games offered by a store affect your experience. How would you even notice that?

And - that they were a more closed store was what made them special?

Then I think of GOG I think about licencing, how I actually own a game purchased, how I have a key for it, how I'll still own that game even of GOG stops existing. Thats not true for any of the other stores (outside of physical copies if some sell them, idk).

Probably not a popular view here but I've found my hobbies more fulfilling since I started doing stuff other than gaming. Native plant/food gardening, reading books, working out... all of this stuff can be affected by capitalism too of course but I'm less beholden to it. I still game a bit now and then but much less than I used to.

Yes. GOG. itch.io. Direct from some other website. That's right.

Steam is very good; but the hidden cost is that you depend on them maintaining their service. If they turn evil, you're screwed. You either have to bend to their will, or you lose your library of games.

On the other hand, GOG and itch.io are arguably not as good as Steam right now, but they don't have any kind of lock-in. So if they start to backslide, you can still walk away with your full library of games. I do think it's a good idea to 'not put all your eggs in one basket.'

You can take away peoples home, food, and rights... Just don't you dare touch their entertainment for the plebs might get antsy...

Steam doesn't control the quality of remasters. That's up to publishers. I'm not the most active gamer and might have missed something, but didn't valve release a major revamp to the way the Library and Store were layed out in the past year or two? They also recently expanded family sharing and remote co-op. The only L I can remember in recent memory is the whole "You can't leave your games to another person when you die"

In the US, there are multiple Supreme Court precedent cases that force profit-maximizing. Shareholders can sue the CEO and board to maximize profit seeking.

So yes, increasing shareholder value is enshrined in US law. Only private corporations can get around that rule. Also, a corporation cannot be forced to break the law to maximize profits, that's just something most CEO's are willing to do for fun.

It’s not that they can’t still be profit driven, it’s that they can’t be sued by investors for not being ruthlessly profit driven. Private just means that they have the choice at all

Publicly traded companies are, by law, driven to make as much money as possible for shareholders. Privately held companies are not held to this same limitation. So while a company like Valve could be highly profit-driven (let’s be honest, all for-profit companies in a capitalist system are driven by this motivation), it doesn’t seem to be driven to maximize profits in the short term. This means that they can focus on things other than profit if they so choose.

I had briefly searched to see if it was known how much ownership Gaben had. Did you find it somewhere, or are you just assuming he's majority?

I do know the employees are compensated in shares of the company, but you're right that I don't know what proportion is owned by employees.

I don't think that misunderstanding is limited to the libs.

You are most definitely right that the major shareholders aren't the workers. The major shareholders are Gabe Newell, and some bankers in Japan.

Still, it is known that Valve employees are partially compensated with stock for working in the company, so most of the employees are still shareholders. They just aren't the major ones.

Sorry, the way i phrased that does sound causal. It should say "and".

Any real lib knows, public or private, there's no way out of our capitalist downfall.

How are you differentiating stakeholder and shareholder? The employees are certainly shareholders.

Valve doesn't really hire "grunts". The people who are actually considered employees of valve are very few and highly skilled. The number of Wikipedia from 2016 is very out of date and estimates 360. But valve's LinkedIn still says "over 300".

Valve isn't pulling any anticompetitive moves though. They just try to secure profits by being the best instead of destroying everyone else that dares to compete with them.

They're not a defacto monopoly? There's many different ways to buy games online and valve does not have anti-consumer practices like exclusivity deals. I have not heard anything about them not banning for hate speech? Every time I've ever reported something its been taken down within 48hrs

That window is the only ad I purposely allow in my life. I know I can disable it but it sometimes informs me of games I want

I actually don’t mind the advertising. Good way to know what games are popping off or are just released. I’m not great about keeping up with everything coming out every month, so it’s honestly one of my number one ways of knowing what’s being talked about/releasing besides specific reccs from friends and forums.

I also find it’s a great way to know that a game I used to play a lot dropped some beefy DLC. It’s not like we all keep tabs on every game we’ve put down thinking that we might return to it.

I have tried and failed to find the option to disable this. Does anyone know what it's called?

Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, We’ve got a perfect riddle for you, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, If you are wise, you’ll listen to me.

Three precious knives, in Counter-Strike they hide, Find them all to claim your prize worldwide, The first to collect, in triumph shall stand, To unlock Half-Life 3, the game so grand.

Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, Follow the clues and you’ll be through, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, Just one more knife, and then you’ll see.

A crown awaits, a throne so high, Steam’s vast empire, you'll rule the sky, With Half-Life 3, your reign begins, All hail the gamer who truly wins.

Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, The ultimate prize belongs to you, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, Gaben 2, you shall always be.

Making the company employee owned would be ideal.

i feel like there have to be at least three, from his (family? Does he have one? I believe he does, but can't be bothered to check)

to someone in the company, perhaps there are numerous positions that exist solely to prevent this kind of hostile takeover from happening? Who knows!

stalin lasted quite a bit, he was also insane, but it was really post stalin that shit kinda went fucky.

Bad competition is still better than no competition, because of the aforementioned issue.

EGS can't compete on features for sure (it really is quite a shit platform), but they would be very competitive if their 12% fee (vs. Steams 30% fee) could be passed to buyers as lower prices. As it stands, Valve's policies essentially strongarms the market to prohibit this (publishers selling on Steam may not have a lower price on a different platform, or the game can be de-listed from Steam). The Wolfire v. Valve case is highly relevent here.

My plea is for you not to get mad at Epic for being shit. We should be accepting of crappy platforms if their fees reflect that (Epic charges 40% what Steam does). Focus your frustration at Valve for preventing the market from fairly allowing you select the quality of the platform you'd like to pay for.

Humble bundle also has a store now fwiw

Their own host of anti-competitive practices.

When people talks about life expectancy 99.99% of the time they mean life expectancy at birth, at every year the life expectancy change. Using this life table someone with 61 years, have a life expectancy of 19.7 years, that means he's expected to live until he's 80.

Yep, and that was true even going all the way back through history. People weren't routinely dying in their 30s or whatever before modern medicine; it's just that a lot more of them were dying in infancy/early childhood and that brought down the average. (That's the situation anti-vaxxers are trying to go back to, BTW.)

I would say it’s appropriate to loop cancer deaths into the “old age” bucket – DNA getting old and making mistakes replicating seems relevant.

The latest pictures of him look good, though. The man has definitely lost some weight.

dracarys 🔥🔥🔥

I used to go on 4chan, on a variety of boards, every day for 10 years (06-16) some boards are better than others, and /b/ is definitely the worst by a lot, but they're all terrible.

This so much. The thing for me is, pirated I get everything from my library back FOR FREE. So there is no loss money wise for changing things up for me. Without the convenience and fairness there is nothing holding me there. at all.

And of course the ones they (i.e. CD Projekt Red) make themselves. The Witcher series, including Gwent spinoffs, and Cyberpunk 2077

I'm waiting for BG3 to make a Linux thingy. Until then, it''s on the "maybe" list.

If it's not native on Linux, it needs to be exceptionally good for me to buy it, considering GoG doesn't have regional pricing.