This is such a controversial person to discuss. On one hand, loot boxes, the steam market for trading, and a lot of gambling and profiteering going on. At the same time, all of the OP comments are also true.
Out of all the billionaires, I dislike gaben the least. The net good he’s done for gaming may not balance the scales entirely, but at least there’s a discussion to be had whether what gaben has done is for the better, or for the worse. Which is more than I can say about most billionaires I know of.
The power vacuum this man will leave behind sucks.
As a fan of TF2, I’ll quote another greentext: “does nothing, competition keeps shooting themself in the foot.” It was about Overwatch vs TF2, but it’s mostly similar.
I’m sus on GabeN
They only began giving refunds when the European Union mandated it, back then only Origin (EA) gave refunds. Some times the EU is useful.
The EU definitely helped. I’ll add that this was actually kicked off by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in 2014. They took Valve to court over their insistence that they can ignore Australian Consumer Law rights - in particular that if a product is ‘not fit for purpose’ then the buyer is entitled to a full refund, with respect to games. Valve offered no possibility of refund at the time. The case dragged on, but Valve eventually lost and was told to pay several million in fines, they appealed it to the High Court of Australia in 2016 - and lost also on appeal.
The judge was pissed at Valve, and wrote in their ruling:
“Valve’s culture of compliance was, and is, very poor”. Valve’s evidence was ‘disturbing’ to the Court because Valve ‘formed a view …that it was not subject to Australian law…and with the view that even if [legal] advice had been obtained that Valve was required to comply with the Australian law the advice might have been ignored”. He also noted that Valve had ‘contested liability on almost every imaginable point’.
Valve are generally a very positive force in gaming, but they’re definitely not the saints that OP image text implies.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/australia-fines-valve-over-steam-refunds
I have a pro-Valve bias because I do like them. But I still do want to make a fair argument and would like to be corrected if I fail to do so.
So, yes, Valve’s refund policy in the past was bad, and yes, they were forced to change. But since then they have fixed their mistakes, and have arguably the most generous refund policy out there. Last time I bought digital content from Nintendo store I had to waive my refund rights.
They could have limited refunds to Australia but they didn’t. This has to count for something, right? Valve is a for profit company in a capitalist system, and yes they have bad practices. But surely we can agree they are one of the better ones?
Thanks for the info and sources!
People saying that when Gabe dies so does Steam seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle.
From everything I’ve read and can tell they work using an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program). Meaning each employee working there today is becoming partial owners in Valve. If you think they will allow some new face to show up when Gabe dies and flip the table you are missing the piece where the owners of this company are extremely well compensated today and a core part of making Valve successful today.
A ton of companies have ESOP, but that doesn’t stop enshitification because the employees generally don’t own enough shares to exert control.
Those shares are also generally for sale for a high enough price. Given the immense current value of the brand, when Gabe dies vultures of every variety will start circling. If they offer employees 2x their share price to sell, enough of them will do it to lose control to investors that just want to enshittify everything and milk it’s brand for every last penny as they drive it into the ground.
Never thought I’d see the day when Lemmy has nice things to say about a billionaire who owns multiple yachts!
There’s a story recently about how a huge percentage of people’s steam libraries are never played. People just spending money on steam sales and amassing huge backlogs of games they’ll never get to. Valve has mastered the art of using sales to create FOMO and drive unnecessary spending!
So your position is a store should never have sales? Besides, pretty sure games need to willingly participate to be on sale. e.g. factorio has never been on sale.
Imagine arguing that creating a service so much better than the competition available in that industry that it drives people to spend the most money on that platform is a bad thing.
It isn’t better though? GOG is a better service. DRM-free, web based downloads (galaxy is completely optional). They even invest development resources to get old games working better.
Steam is mostly the dominant platform due to first-mover advantage. They aren’t the best and most of the games on Steam aren’t even exclusives.
Many games on Steam don’t have any DRM enabled and will boot without it. You just need to check
Here’s a blog post on GOG talking about how many developers abandon their games on there so they don’t get updates or DLC like they do on other platforms https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_do_games_recieving_updates_work_on_gog
I like GOG and love DRM free games however another point is that many, many games are never even available on GOG to begin with. So what do you do then?
Would you rather buy them on Xbox, PlayStation, Epic or Steam?
Most people choose steam because it is the best out of all those options.
I agree having a DRM free game that you own forever is the best option but 7 times out of 10 a new game won’t even be listed on GOG in the first place and if it is refer back to the link about how they often get abandoned with no updates or DLC and therefore less features than on other platforms.
Also, talking about getting old games to work better I would refer you to the Proton compatibility layer that Valve develops.
What exactly should be done about that?
Done about what? I stopped using steam. I buy games directly from developers or from GOG or humble bundle as well as just supporting open source games.
Nothing I can do about GabeN’s yachts though!
About people buying more games then they need. you are acting like that is gabe’s fault.
I mean you can blame gamblers for losing all their money to Las Vegas too but that’s not a common opinion on Lemmy!
How are those the same?
Gaben and steam are not perfect, but are monumentally better than what we would be stuck with on sony-soft
They’re succeeding by not actively running their platform into the ground, which is somehow inspiring and disappointing at the same time
That’s because they’re a privately owned company. They can decide when to prioritize long term profits over short term profits.
Most of their competition are publicity traded companies that have no such luxury. They have to make next quarter’s number higher no matter what.
The very core of pretty much every enshittification you can put a finger on
All that’s between you and success is a consistent and reasonable performance, but seemingly everyone else in the world is too greedy to pull this off.
That’s because they’re a privately owned company. They can decide when to prioritize long term profits over short term profits.
Most of their competition are publicity traded companies that have no such luxury. They have to make next quarter’s number higher no matter what.
STEAM- Give a reasonable good platform for gaming.
OTHER- Kill themselves with shitty optimization and spam policies.
STEAM - Sit enjoing the sunny day, drink a coffee. Improve a bit the navigator to find new game.
OTHER - Keep a their shitty platform and doble down on AI Slop.
STEAM - Doing some yoga. Walk the dog. Add an AI disclaimer for the games.
Step 1. Make a good product
Step 2. Corner the market
Step 3. Build up good will
Step 4. …?
Step 5. Keep building up good willStep 4 is “buy the company that builds the yachts you like”
Which is not great, but is a lot better than actively destroying the fabric of the society, like all other billionaires are doing.
Lol everyone always gets mad that dude has yachts.
Do you think that the CEOs of Microsoft and Sony don’t have yachts?
So that’s something they have in common. But consumer good will and overall happiness with the service isn’t. Only one of the companies have that distinction and you know which one it is.
Totally untrue that they will replace faulty hardware. Was one of the first people to buy the Index. After a year the headset just stopped displaying any video.
Tried everything to fix. Even reached out asking for hardware documentation so I could fix it myself. They don’t provide the documentation and they refused to fix or replace the headset.
Basically stole $1500 from me.
Everyone is excited to buy the new VR headset they are making but I’m steering clear.
You must have gotten a bad rep or something. I had a very similar situation, first with a lighthouse and then the headset itself. They replaced both free of charge, only asked that I send the broken ones back both times. Even sent me free shipping labels.
Guys I know he is not perfect but it’s understandable that people like him in a world where the average CEO drinks the blood of newborns daily.
Huh, so that’s why they’re all so prolife. Need to keep the source of fresh babies going…
“Don’t get an abortion! Have that baby and dispose of it at your nearest “Leave your baby here for our coalition of friendly CEOs to take care of” location for a 25$ amazon gift card!”
That fully sounds like a program a literal vampire would implement with wild success. Parents selling their kids for money happened in the past, so not even that much of a stretch. It does sound like a potential cobra problem though.
Would watch a full length film of this
GabeN is one of those guys who’ll likely die a hero. Whoever comes after him has a chance of selling out and enshittifying everything he built though.
BTW the way refunds work is that steam withholds the money for a month to pay refunds with it. The publisher has no say, they just get gross - 30% - VAT - refunds.
Is this supposed to be a negative?
Well the op said it was out of their own pockets, this is saying that op’s claim is fake.
The fact that you immediately got weirdly defensive about it tells me you think it’s a negative, and I agree since this policy applies equally to EA garbage as it does for your cute little indie game.
Also giving refunds is required by law in some countries, it’s not like valve invented it out of the goodness of their heart.
They did not need to extend that to countries like the US.
Australia sued them into their current refund policy
I know this novel strategy that Valve employs might be difficult to conceptualize for people whose thinking only extends as far as “company evil, success bad”, so let me summarize it in a format that is easier to understand:
I receive: half-decent product
You receive: my money
end of story
The sad thing is that them having a half decent product is something special in this world
How would you like to see it improved?
