[aperture147]

I think Valve is not some kind of God who free the human from the hand of Microsoft, they are a private company, they are just protecting their business and protecting their business "accidentally" also protecting the customer's benefits. The movement towards Linux benefits Valve the most since they have invested on Linux Gaming for 10 years now and that movement "conveniently" benefits the gamers too. That's a win-win situation, users can escape themself from a bloated Windows and Valve has the pioneering advantage.

[bayindirh]

I believe the same but,

> they are just protecting their business and protecting their business "accidentally" also protecting the customer's benefits.

part is wrong. From my observation, they are protecting their business through protecting their customers' benefits.

Plus, they're building a moat collectively and from an open source stack. So, given the stack gets enough momentum, having Valve or not as a company won't matter anymore.

It's trying to get the elephant out of the bag, and once it's out, then there's really no way to put it back, because it's being out is better for everybody. Game companies and gamers alike.

[aperture147]

> From my observation, they are protecting their business through protecting their customers' benefits.

Yeah that's what I mean too, that's why I put the "accidentally" in a double-quote.

This sounds like what Red Hat is doing, they created an open-source software, prove the importance of it in the community then sells the support package to enterprise who interested in using it.

Hope that they will not close the door when Microsoft, AWS or Oracle making their own GabeCube and call it SatyaCube, BozosCube or LarryCube

[HighGoldstein]

Microsoft already has the XBox and despite being backed by one of the biggest tech companies in the world it's a rather weak product. To add to this, with every major studio acquisition they have done there has been a noticeable increase in game monetization and decrease in quality.

AWS has tried to get into the gaming market and only succeeded in creating giant money sinks even if some of their products were technically appealing.

Oracle making anything consumer-facing, much less something that isn't a total nightmare, seems inconceivable.

Valve is able to completely outmatch competitors in a chosen field because of what they are like as a company. No shareholders that expect quarterly growth. No massive bureaucratic corporate structure, just highly skilled engineers for the most part.

[danaris]

Microsoft is also moving more and more away from hardware exclusivity. Even their Xbox Game Pass service is now not tied to the console.

More broadly, AAA gaming as a whole is also moving away from hardware exclusivity. Third-party developers (like Square-Enix) have been making recent releases for all major platforms, and even some first-party console titles are now coming to PC (eg, the Horizon games from Sony).

I'm optimistic about the future of non-locked-down gaming.

[h14h]

I think this calls out a subtle, but significant difference between private and public companies.

Public companies as an asset class have to compete with an open market of other investments, so the incentives drive a min-maxing approach to revenue and value. The shareholder mandate dictates the company pursue maximal return in order to stay competitive amongst a sea of other potential investments.

A private company doesn't have this same concern. They still need to pursue profit, but not necessarily MAXIMUM profit. This means that in a sea of hypothetical directions, they are free to choose one that is slightly less profitable but has an abundance of positive externalities, vs. one that is maximally profitable but carries many negative externalities.

[sushibowl]

You are absolutely correct. Valve's linux push was driven by developments in the windows platform, specifically around the release of windows 8. Microsoft was pushing a windows store similar to Apple's app store, and Valve was unequivocally stating that they were worried Microsoft would basically lock down the platform and only allow software sales through their own store, destroying their steam business. Gabe said it plainly himself (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377):

> Mr Newell, who worked for Microsoft for 13 years on Windows, said his company had embraced the open-source software Linux as a "hedging strategy" designed to offset some of the damage Windows 8 was likely to do.

> "There's a strong temptation to close the platform," he said, "because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors' access to the platform, and they say, 'That's really exciting.'"

> This is seen by commentators, external to be a reference to the inclusion of a Windows Store in the Microsoft operating system.

Having an open platform is good for consumers, but Valve is primarily looking out for themselves here. Gabe realized that windows could take Apple's IOS route (i.e. https://blog.codinghorror.com/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the...) and lock down their OS, and everything he's done since has been an effort to protect his company against that existential threat.

[BirAdam]

He didn't just "work on Windows."

GabeN was the lead developer on Windows 1, Windows 2, and Windows 3. When Windows 95 launched, he was a bit upset that no one was making games for Windows. He did a rough port of Doom to prove the viability. Around the same time Alex St. John, Craig Eisler, and Eric Engstrom were building DirectX, GabeN saw the potential, left to create Valve, and proceeded to try and making Windows gaming a great thing.

I can only imagine that he was heartbroken to see Windows go the way it did with Windows 8, 8.1, 10, and now 11.

[aperture147]

Well actually they tried with Windows Phone, Windows RT and Windows 10 S but failed miserably. Even Apple didn't even try to lock their macOS from installing 3rd party app.

[randunel]

Valve's Steam platform is well liked and actually wanted by gamers. Gamers move their games to the steam launcher and often wait for games to come to steam (e.g. with Anno games from Ubisoft).

This is in contrast with EA's Origin, Microsoft's Xbox PC and Ubisoft's Connect, which everyone hates.

[nialv7]

I always think Valve as the "ideal" capitalist company, because what they do fits the idea of "invisible hand" perfectly, that each individual acting in their own self-interest end up benefiting everyone.

And you'd be right, that Valve is nothing special, if that idea is correct, because in that case most companies will be like Valve. But just look around, do you see many companies like Valve? No, that's because capitalism is bullshit and that makes Valve stand out.

[oersted]

I have been a big fan of Valve since the Orange Box days and I always dreamed of working there, but let’s not kid ourselves. This is all enabled by the massive monopolistic cash-cow that is Steam that requires a tiny team to maintain. Similarly their top games have minuscule teams and still rake-in millions in microtransactions, fueled by a shadow economy of gambling and speculative trading aimed at kids.

Yes to a large extent they got those monopolies by building truly outstanding products in good faith and by being pioneers in quite a few areas. And certainly they are an exemplary case of investing that wealth into legitimately innovative and widely appreciated long-term endeavors.

My point is that Valve is not all that special for being nice, many organizations do crave to be like that but they don’t have the luxury to have hit that jackpot. For people with mountains of money, they are among the best, but it’s not exactly a high standard, and they are remarkably inefficient in leveraging that advantage.

They’ve long lost the organizational know-how to make good games, and they have delivered remarkably few public facing successes in the last decade: mainly Valve Index and Steam Deck, both still relatively niche and wide apart, both primarily attempts at expanding Steam’s dominance to fairly uncharted markets, with mixed success. The first iteration of Steam Machines was dead on arrival, as was their long-anticipated game Artifact. CS 2 was not a significant enough upgrade to Go to really count. Half-Life Alyx was popularish I suppose. Anything else of note?

[TiredOfLife]

Many of steams consumer benefits were a direct result of Valve getting sued and losing court cases. For example refunds and forced arbitration clause.

[_jzlw]

> acting in their own self-interest end up benefiting everyone

I'm so sick of people acting like Valve is some saint that does no wrong. Their market dominance means game developers wanting to reach the PC gamer market must comply with Valve's terms. Why do you think every Japanese visual novel released on the platform is a cut down, all-ages version that requires an off-site patch to restore the full game (and often even then it's censored in weird ways)? They got sick of being delisted while Valve turns a blind eye to all the trash porn games.

Ask yourself, does a marketplace that exerts creative control over specific studios' works while threatening financial repercussions if they don't comply benefit everyone? That sounds more like the mob to me.

Stop deifying companies.

[aperture147]

Valve cuts 30% of your revenue no matter how much you earn. They also cut 15% of the transaction by being the middleman on the market.

They also ignored the gambling/trading plague for too long, until a lot of countries threatened them to stop indirectly promoting gambling (which definitely hit them financially).

They are sitting on a money printing machine and their job is making it print no less to buy GabeN another yatch. They are like the cigarette company who donates shit load of money to the charity and cancer prevention lab while making more cigarrate then ever because people love smoking it.

I don't think they wanted or planned to be monopolized, but they are definitely taking the advantage of being it.

[literallywho]

It’s funny, because Zach Barth (of SpaceChem and many other wonderful games fame) worked at Valve and then described them as the ideal anarcho-communist type of organization.

[nialv7]

oh that's funny. do you have a link to where he had said that?

i guess Yanis Varoufakis did work at Valve, so there's some basis. but then again, what an organization is internally and how the organization behave as a whole can be different.

[literallywho]

He said it in this recent interview. I'm not sure of the timestamp, somewhere in the middle, I think. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ho0F_jdfSs&t)

[atoav]

The trick is to get your egoistic interests to align with what is good for the world.

Environmentalists also only do what they perceive as doing good (and may as well be objectively good) because not doing so won't jive with their self-image. But that in itself doesn't devalue the thing they did.

If Valve shows anything it is that not being a pushover and trying to align your business interest with your values (and not vice-versa!) can also pay of economically.

[egil]

They are a significant actor in the market, and as a non-pc-gamer I am glad that their business goals align with Linux users. I don't believe that they do it out of kindness, but that's actually a good thing for a long term investment.

[aperture147]

> They are a significant actor in the market, and as a non-pc-gamer I am glad that their business goals align with Linux users.

Until MS (or worse, Oracle) shows up with their half-baked clone (like Xbox Machine or Larry Cube) and ruins everyone's party