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Amazon's previous VP of Prime Gaming said they "tried everything" to disrupt Steam
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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Steam will stay great so long as they stay a private company. It's the enshitification of going public and appeasing boardmembers and shareholders that ruin companies like Valve. I hope GabeN chooses a great successor when he decides to step down. Hoping for another 27 years of awesome.
You realize that the cut they're taking ends up being used to pay for a yacht collection, right? They don't need board members and shareholders to enrich the few at the expense of the many and to take anti diversity decisions...
There's nothing great about Valve at this point, they disrupted the status quo back in the day, came up on top and take advantage of their position, just like any other company, private or public, does in their position.
They disrupted the status quo back in 2003 (2001?), then in 2009 they were doing Linux ports, then in ~2015 they were doing HTPC stuff (and also funding Linux graphic driver dev the entire time, Linux gaming in its current state would not exist without Valve), there was their Steam Machine experiment somewhere in there (it flopped but that doesn't make it cost any less), then they were doing Steam Deck stuff. They're still paying Linux graphic devs BTW.
What position are they taking advantage of? If they ask for a smaller cut than 30 percent they get botched at for being anti competitive and being too cheap to try and compete against. They ask for more than 30% and they're price gouging. Sure, everyone who works there is happy and sleeps in piles of money, but they can't do anything about it without turning into more of a monopoly. As it stands they at least blow money on potentially cool things in R&D like the steam controller, steam box, and Steam Deck.
What do you actually want Gabe to do? He's already far and wide the industry leader in employee compensation, and he can't take a smaller cut without becoming a monopoly. Yeah, he could donate loads of money to charity, but his giant stack of cash also keeps his private company lush with funds to continue paying his employees if anything dire does happen, instead of doing like everyone else and laying off people.
You're defending the owner of a yacht collection and saying his money is used to keep his business lush... Get real.
And you didn't answer my question.
Because such a ridiculous take doesn't warrant a response.
Lol. Sure, buddy.
From the get go you start by saying that if they try to lower their cut people will accuse them of trying to become a monopoly, which is completely idiotic considering they're already in a monopolistic position. Then you act like rich people have no power over the fact that they're accumulating wealth while the majority of the world is struggling to live.
I have zero respect for people who defend those who take advantage of the majority.
Off to the block list with you.
Lol. Take advantage of who?
No no, you don't understand!
He's one of the good billionaires!
(/s for some of you, and for others perhaps you should reconsider why you feel the need to defend a billionaire, regardless of your opinion on video game platforms)