This is entirely silly. Specially when you consider they removed the flat structure at Valve recently. Also even when it was flat it was still structured as more important people's opinions carried more weight. It made it feel like high school according to one developer where there was cliques and entourageous. That's not anarchy.

Additionally Valve is not overall for Foss projects. Steam itself is still very closed and very restrictive. Proton was created to keep costs down and because Windows at one point threatened to enforce the windows store for outside apps. Potentially destroying steam.

Steam and Valve only contribute to open source as far as it benefits them. They are ex Microsoft employees that understand the embrace and extend side and are embracing Linux and it's community. Extending wine. And potentially one day extinguishing the broad availability of Linux to replace it with steam os. You see this on their storefront already. Years ago when a game supported Linux on steam you'd see an icon of tux. Now you see an icon of steam os. A subtle reminder that Valve does not care about Linux but instead of being a thriving business.

Gabe is a capitalist. You don't become a billionaire without abusing workers.

That's not anarchy, that's libertarianism. And to answer your question, at least going on People Make Games's investigation of Valve's culture, he does seem to be very libertarian.

He's a billionaire who owns a company that has pulled some shady (and illegal) anti-consumer bullshit in the past, I'd say it's pretty unlikely that he's a anarchist - more likely, the flat management structure and use of FOSS software is simply profitable.

not the good kind

he literally bought one of those new zealand prepper bunkers

I'm gonna say probably not, if he were Valve would be full-on employee owned. I will say he seems a little less uh... warped than most prominent billionaires, but that's not exactly a high bar to clear. Overall he seems like an okay guy but I don't know him and have no way of telling whether he's secretly a dick or something.

Nope.

He's a hardcore capitalist, albeit one who happens to support free software (probably because he believes in it, but also because it means a bigger user base for his platform and $$$)

He's significantly more likeable than most of the other CEO billionaires but when you look at his peers that isnt too hard.

He may be a libertarian but he's definitely a capitalist. Anarchism is inherently anti-capitalist.

No.

I do think Valve not being publicly traded allows them to be different in some ways such as the flat structure ("enshittification" as defined by Doctrow doesn't apply to Valve because there are no shareholders to please) but there's nothing "left" politically about Valve. Some of it I think is just not having to look good to shareholders allowing Valve to make actual good business decisions.

Valve's support of free software is because during the Windows 8 era Newell gained the fear that Microsoft would phase out Win32 in favor of UWP, cutting into Steam's business big-time. Microsoft definitely isn't going to pull that now that Windows Phone and the Start Screen concept both died and they've stated they no longer see UWP alone as the future, but I do think Valve administration still thinks it's best for their business to not rely on Microsoft's whims.

No.

He's a capitalist and a billionaire.

You cannot be a capitalist and an anarchist.