Reminder that companies and billionaires are not your friends, including Steam and 6-mega-yacht-owning Gaben.
People are underestimating how much money valve has put into proton, Mesa and Linux development over the years to make the steam deck work. they had 100+ developers on payroll for years to do that.
Yes. But let's be honest: every store that has arrived to pc to "kill steam" has done what to actually kill steam?
It's like every time someone thinks of creating a steam competitor the process goes like this:
"Hey, let's see what is Steam doing well, what do users love about the store... And do the complete opposite to it in hopes that users ditch steam for us!"
totally with you on that.
Sometimes a market you don't even know exists opens up when you do something, so I get the logic of trying to open a competitor... But what did Origin or UPlay even do? Epic has freebies and a better profit share for publishers, GoG has their commitment to support old games, itch.io has the best profit share, indie focus, and I believe free listing? You need to do something to stand out from the monster that is Steam, or you might as well just stop.
I totally give them credit for that, but Steam was also a behemoth before all of that. They've been massive for over a decade at this point, maybe two. Everyone that's tried to be a competitor has come in clearly not understanding the basics of Steam's business model.
The Linux development is about maintaining a viable option for a store if Windows went walled garden.
How much money did Valve put in? Where do those 100+ devs come from?
Improperly redacted documents from the initial Wolfire case — later hidden — indicated that Valve had only 336 staff in 2021, with just 79 of them working on Steam. We’ve remade it using data reported contemporaneously:
these were external developers. https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20221219-steam-valve-support-proton-mesa
You made it sound like they had 100+ full time employees specifically („payroll”) but it could also mean they paid €1 bounties to 101 people. I know they subcontracted Proton to CodeWeavers (~50 people) who have been working on Wine for ~20 years by then.
I do have some concerns about what Valve will be like when Gaben passes away. I hope there's a worthy successor waiting in the wings.
Unfortunately we don't need to wait. We have every reason to be skeptical and critical of the way Valve is run now, specifically how they promote underage gambling via Counterstrike.
Whether Gaben personally agrees with that assessment, or whether he's wiped his hands clean of the damage his company has done, the fact is that someone at Valve created this system, and they will still be there.
If you are vulnerable to gambling via lootboxes you are not old enough to play CS. Their parents should be more.invested in their hobby their children spent 70% of the day on
TIL only children develop gambling addictions.
"Your honor, I may have run over that family while I was driving very, very drunk. But as my gambling addiction shows, I am a child, and therefore can not be tried as an adult! I rest my case!"
That's exactly the kind of libertarian "personal responsibility" philosophy that Valve would use as an excuse to justify themselves. You don't need to be carrying water for a multi billion dollar company, they can take care of that themselves. Unless you work for Valve. I don't know, I'm sure it pays well.
True. That whole gambling thing is pretty appalling. It's not like they can't make enough money without it, either.
Edit: AND they could turn it off with the flick of a switch.
PC-2
Next? Keep pushing linux so it becomes the standard for gaming. And maybe try again with a steam machine, I think the market is ready after the success of Steam Deck.
Next challenge is trying to make Linux more popular outside of enthusiasts for desktop use.
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