[hoorayimhelping]

3. You are strong enough to provide a serious and credible threat to the king if he implements a policy that threatens you.

Example: Valve in the early 2000s before or as they were building Steam to challenge the video game publisher model. 20 years on and Valve is still printing money, while Sierra Online doesn't exist.

[oremolten]

Sierra Online was acquired through fraudulent accounting, and the company that acquired them went under shortly after as their fraud was revealed.

Unfortunately Sierra had to accept the offer.

[smcin]

Also Valve has always been a private company tightly controlled by insiders, whereas Sierra had already been a public company since 1989, subsequently acquired by CUC in 1996 for $1.5bn, and embarked on a non-stop acquisition spree in pursuit of short-term growth, which usually ends badly (think Gateway, AOL, Time-Warner, etc). Esp. pre-Sarbanes-Oxley.

Moreover, Gabe Newell always had a controlling stake in Valve ever since 1996, so that prevents any shenanigans. There are comparatively few shareholders (than a public company) and they were all long-term, since Valve will likely never go public, certainly no year soon, or even be privately acquired; while Newell controls it.

In this instance your complaint is about corporate governance rather than tech; (how far back did tech people stop being in control at Sierra?)