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Valve veteran slams Tim Sweeney and Epic Games for laying off 1000 people while making 'as much money as possible… and hey Tim, Gabe's better at that than you' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[+] -9 points 7 months ago (61 children)

If valve laid off 1000 people, there wouldn't be anyone left. The company has like 200 employees and gaben and maybe 3 other people make almost all the money. Gabens yatch fleet is worth a cool billion, or was before he added an other one a few months ago.

People simping for billionaires disgust me.

Gabens is worst than Tim. At least Epic developed Unreal Studio. Gaben gave us DRM and games you don't actually own. Steam being nice to use doesn't magic away the highway robbery, all games stores are shit (gog and itch not included).

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  • [–] 36 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    FYI you have never owned a game. It's always been a license. Even when it was physical. It's the same for GoG too sep you get an installer for later. It's still only a license.

    Also Steam did not give us DRM. DRM has existed for decades before steam was made.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Yes, if we want to get technical, we don't legally own those games, obviously. However, so long as they are DRM free, we can always install them on whatever hardware we choose, as long as its supported. Thats why people say DRM takes away a player's ability to "own" their games.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago

    if steam prohibited DRMs in the first place, we'd have a reality, where steam is either pretty small, or entirely dead, and its niche is separated between small anti-consumer marketplaces such as UPlay and battle.net, where the publishers can stuff anything up your ass, not only DRMs, to their greedy hearts' content.

    Piracy and independent game preservation initiatives still exist despite DRMs tho

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Xbox with online needed is just the same as DRM; Since you can't play unless you have a connection to their server.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    Ya, that's why I said all stores. Xbox and Valve are the same coin, just a different face. Valve did popularize DRM though, before Xbox and the rest got in on it. Xbox is overall worst though.

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  • [–] 35 points 7 months ago (20 children)

    People simp for gaben because unlike any modern game studio CEO, he isn't a mindless cashgrab off for all the money in the world.

    Valve actively invests into FOSS, which also helps with their public image. It's thanks to Valve that gaming on linux thrives nowadays, after all.

    At least Epic developed Unreal Studio.

    And Valve had developed Source and Steam audio, as well as sponsored the development of proton, Fex (which they financially supported since its inception, according to the FEX maintainer).

    Let's also ignore the fact that Valve had pioneered the very concept of a modern game storefront such as Steam, pioneered indie publishing with its Steam Greenlight.

    To this day Steam remains to be the most feature-complete service of that sort, while both not imposing on publishers, and retaining its pro-consumer stance. Basically, the perfect middle-ground.

    Gaben gave us DRM and games you don't actually own.

    Valve has nothing to do with DRM inception or development, as well as they don't enforce drm onto anyone publishing their game on steam. If you want to blame someone for drm in your game, blame the publishing studio.

    Artificial prohibition of DRMs on a game storefront only leads to its avoidance by the majority of gamedevs and publishers, as well as promotes the development of pocket storefronts such as Battle.net, UPlay and Origin where publishers allow themselves to be as anti-consumer as they want. EGS is a great example of what would've been if Steam wasn't sitting in its niche.

    Steam being nice to use doesn't magic away the highway robbery, all games stores are shit (gog and itch not included).

    You sound full of shallow teenage maximalism, striving for a utopian version of reality without trying to understand how and why everything works as it currently does.

    Let the old man have his yachts, he, unlike many, deserved them.

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  • [–] 21 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    I can play that game too.

    How much did Tim pay you for asking people how much Gaben payed to simp him?

    Having an opposing opinion is off course impossible and people. People who have a different opinion are only paid actors.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    Whut

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Funny how Epic does the exact thing the other people did and somehow they’re derided for it, though.

    Valve did not lay off 1000 people. Other companies doing this get the same shit as Epic does. So what exactly do you mean with this statement?

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Oh, I should've clarified. My bad. By the same shit I meant their launchers are pretty similar in their origin stories, purpose, and how they get there.

    I condemn all mass layoffs no matter who does it. Admittedly I haven't heard about any mass layoffs at Valve in recent history, so I'll give them they're better on that front (unless proven otherwise).

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Valve paid a bunch of publishers to sell their game exclusively on steam and refused to implement basic features (like a shopping cart) in their UI? Then bitched about how everyone more successful than them was evil and wrong?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

    Valve paid a bunch of publishers to sell their game exclusively on steam

    Fuck yes. Here's Darwinia going steam exclusive back in the day. Pretty scummy Epic behavior isn't it?

    https://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40203

    and refused to implement basic features (like a shopping cart) in their UI?

    Fun fact: itch.io doesn't have a shopping cart, Google Play doesn't have a shopping cart either, and they're both established (itch is even beloved despite that shortcoming, I personally like them). Only scummy Epic gets this complaint constantly lodged against them. Curious.

    Then bitched about how everyone more successful than them was evil and wrong?

    I don't care about their word battles, sorry.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    One is a bunch? It also seems as though that particular game wasn't even on any other storefront, just their own website. Hardly seems comparable.

    Itch is also a much different beast, it's less a storefront and more a platform for developers to promote and sell their games independently. The pages seem designed and run by the devs and not Itch. It would make sense to not have a cart with that kind of decentralized design. You're not buying from Itch, youre buying from developers themselves.

    Im glad to see you only care about your own word battles instead of epics. Weird that they seem so parallel, though...

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    >gets given a case of valve signing an exclusivity deal with an indie game, Epic-style

    >"Hardly seems comparable."

    >gets given examples of stores that thrived without a shopping cart

    >comes up with excuses anyway

    By now I'd be feeling sorry for the double standards applied only against Epic, if you know, it wasn't just a carbon copy of the exact thing I'm criticizing by yet another sleazeball billionaire.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    let's just say my yacht park is drastically larger than it was yesterday:)

    Jokes aside, Valve did allow lots of talented people to find and express themselves, be it via steam greenlight or steam workshop. And Valve still are the pioneers on linux gaming among other corpos. Gaben surely isn't Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds, but he certainly did some respect-worthy things, especially when you compare him to practically any other CEO.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    calling proton a "wine fork" is akin to calling a linux distro a "kernel fork". Proton does a lot of things that are simply out of scope for wine. Referring to it as yet another unnecessary standard is quite unfair, considering the impact it made.

    Especially when said """hero""" has fucked over game ownership

    First, I never called Valve, or Gaben in particular, heroes.

    Second, Valve never "fucked over game ownership", because it was fucked over long before them. Lawmakers struggled with such concepts as "intellectual property" since the inception of the term. It's hard to sell something that can be infinitely copied, because the value of a good that is present in infinite abundance is zero. Licensing is an attempt to force IP behave same as material goods do.

    introduced the wider world to the original lootbox, the Mann Co. Crate that can only be opened with $4.99 keys.

    Yeah, not only that, they invented battle passes too. Does that mean that without Valve there'd be no crates? I highly doubt that.

    Also, unlike literally any other loot boxes in any other game, items for Valve games Always were primarily community-made. Each crate opened, each skin traded is a profit that is guaranteed to reach the original creator. The horse armor analogy is inadequate due to that, and the fact that oblivion is a single-player game.

    Also, trading is still a thing, unlike in any other games. Back in the day i myself managed to get the cosmetics i liked without investing any money, purely by exchanging items with other players.

    no wonder we got The Crew's shutdown and tons of in-game economies.

    Now that's absurd. Both somehow accusing Valve in The Crew shutdown incident, and calling omnipreset in-game purchases "an economy". The only games with economy systems i can think of are those of Valve, EVE online, and some MMORPGs. You can't sell your Overwatch skins without selling the whole account, for instance. In other words, in most games, an in-game purchase is money forever lost.

    You want to blame someone for the shit we're in right now? Blame mindless consumers that to this day mindlessly pre-order games based on how shiny they look in the trailer. Blame our modern culture for endorsing the anti-piracy agenda. Blame yourself for not lecturing your fellow neighbor why consumerism should be conscious. As long as people won't learn, there always will be bad actors exploiting all of the above. Valve is one of the few rare exceptions that don't try to exploit their consumers, that make pro-consumer decisions not based off peer pressure, but rather because it makes the world a slightly better place.

    Stop simping for a fucking billionaire. Treat them all equally.

    I do. I judge people based off their actions. If the man managed to become a billionaire while making or supporting the development of some legendary games, developing a platform that becomes a de-facto monopolist purely by the virtue of being that good, using all of that power to instill pro-consumer policies; then by allowing artists to profit off something they made for the games they love; by providing a huge platform for indie devs; by supporting fan-made works based off Valve's IPs; by soloing the whole spectrum of problems regarding gaming on linux; by sponsoring and promoting FOSS... i'd rather let him keep the money, because my issue with most of the billionaires is not that they have more money than me, it's that they stripped off their humanity, ripping other people off to become billionaires in the first place. Gabe, on the other hand, doesn't fit the stereotype. If every corporate CEO was more like him, i think the world would be a better place.

    Now try to turn on your head and oppose me without trying to demean anything i say in your head by calling me a simp, because newsflash, reality isn't black and white, trying to treat it like it is — is the definition of bigotry.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Dude, get over it. Your precious company has enabled all the industry illnesses I mentioned and more, and all the pushback that the company gets for it is the owner being rewarded with seven yachts

    Because obviously, modern corporate dehumanizing cash-grabbing culture is not a systemic issue present in any modern corporation, if Valve hasn't invented the monetization strategies, they wouldn't have appeared anywhere else, smh

    calling proton a "wine fork" is akin to calling a linux distro a "kernel fork"

    It is a wine fork, and wouldn't exist without the initial contributions that made wine, the actual hero of this story, in the first place. Next.

    I see that you're utterly unable to comprehend nuance, that, or you struggle with analogies. Let me bird-feed you what you just cited then:

    Yes, proton, at the very basic level, is a wine fork. But, unlike wine, it does miriads of things that wine doesn't. Namely, it translates directx calls into vulkan ones. Proton was the first to integrate esync and fsync. Mind i tell you, that fsync support came to the vanilla wine only recently? On top of that, proton offers everything in a single bundled, working out of the box package, Unlike with wine, where you always had to tinker, install with winetricks or similar kind of bs. Just like it is with Linux kernel — "the actual hero", and "evil" distribution maintainers.

    Second, Valve never "fucked over game ownership",

    Explain Steam to me then...

    You won't read the whole paragraph? Yk, that tells about how intellectual property always was problematic, and all that stuff? Dunno, seems like an important context to understand what i'm trying to say...

    Valve hasn't invented DRM in games, especially since we're talking about simple copy prevention by binding a game copy to a specific user account. CD keys and other copy-prevention methods existed long before that. Case in point, right about the time Half-Life 2 was released, little russian company known as Starforce technologies started to license their infamous DRM to studios such as Ubisoft and CodeMasters. Trust me when i say that it was marginally worse than what Valve did.

    Mind you, what they did back there wasn't the most pro-consumer action on their behalf. It just wasn't as big of a deal as you think. Either you haven't read past the cited sentence, or your reading and nuance comprehension is so bad that you failed to see my point in the first place.

    I'm sure you'll find some way to blame literally any other party but Valve for things that Valve has done.

    nah, you just failed to see my point.

    Yeah, same Valve that sells in-game diamond rings for $100 and lootbox keys for $5.

    Yes, once again, entirely optional, purely cosmetic diamond rings, original authors of which are other players, that receive returns from every purchase.

    Propaganda. It is monopolist because it is.

    Yeah? What did they do to not only become a monopoly, but also stay one through all the years? It's not like something is actively preventing users from using any other store. Case in point, Itch.io is pretty popular amongst indie devs. At this point you're just spouting loud words.

    Also, your reasoning couldn't be more lazy.

    Microsoft contributes to FOSS too. Tell me about how Bill Gates or Satya Nadella are cool people then.

    Uh huh, by forcing windows developers VisualStudio down their throats, having its own standard of c++, developing their own java to instill more control, then by buying Github and slopifying it. Tell me about it.

    The only thing they actually do about FOSS is paying few developers to maintain the Linux kernel.

    Oh I'd be terrified of this world alright. The world where CEOs do all sorts of bad stuff and they get praised for it even as we lose ownership rights or more.

    Except what you described is the world we're living in right now. For instance, someone like Bobby Kotick is reverd among corpos, and was compensated handsomely for his leave. Time to start getting anxious ig.

    You don't become a billionaire by """offering good services"""...

    Sorry, didn't realize i was talking to a billionaire. You must be speaking from the mountains of experience you certainly have behind your back?

    All billionaires should not have this wealth while other people don't even have a roof above them. End of.

    And i shouldn't have had keratoconus on both eyes by the ripe age of 22, hunger shouldn't exist, Santa should be real, and people should be smart and wise...

    ...enough to at least understand that life is full of crap and that some ideas never meant to be, regardless of how good they sound on paper... Yet here we are.

    Sorry to disappoint, but billionaires exist, and they will remain existing unless we make something about that fact. Go on, make a career in politics and tax 'em all!

    What i'm trying to say, unfortunately it's always easier said than done. Especially when it's something as shallow and trivial as "Wealth inequality is unjust and shouldn't exist".

    I've been accused of simping for Gabe. Nd while it can certainly seem to be the case, especially when you're actively avoiding any sort of nuance in your judgement, I'm not a fan of his. He made bad decisions, the aforementioned HL2 launch situation is one of those. Another example would be the absolutely laughable launch and then shut down of Artifact. And i still don't understand who tf came up with the idea of CS2. Also, I won't ever get what's so thrilling about something as hedonistic as collecting the fucking yachts.

    That said, when i compare Valve to other corpos, i can't but notice the positive influence. How many artists and modelers started out from submitting their works for tf2/dota2/cs:go? How many animators started from SFM? How many people became indie devs thanks to the existence of the Steam greenlight? How many people switched over to linux thanks to proton?

    Now name me a single other corpo that had similar positive effects on so many people in so many aspects.

    I'm simply placing credit where credit is due, plus, ngl, i kinda hate people like you — people with the clinical case of tribalism, always dividing people and their actions into binary categories, because doing that is always just that much more easy than turning on your brain for a good minute to study and analyze the reality around yourself. You're a prisoner of your utterly childish worldview, which you have not the slightest idea on how to implement into reality, yet you sure as hell is very loud about. "All billionaires should not have this wealth while other people don't even have a roof above them."? Well, duh, congrats on grasping the basics of morality, genius. What a profound take, how didn't i come up with it myself?

    While saying something like that makes you feel good by creating the illusion of the moral high ground, the "profound" words you spouted carry no substance. Tell me, do people like you ever have the slightest bit controversial thoughts, or are you 1:1 human equivalent of a highly-censored corporate llm?

    Billionaires bad? Boo, get new better material!

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

    Billionaires bad? Boo, get new better material!

    Whatever. Go get your shilling paycheck from billionaire Gabe. Again, I hope it is more than $0, cause nobody deserves to defend a rich asshole for free, everyone deserves a paycheck for doing things well. <3

    That said there's one point I noticed that's making me feel very icky.

    How many artists and modelers started out from submitting their works for tf2/dota2/cs:go? How many animators started from SFM? How many people became indie devs thanks to the existence of the Steam greenlight? How many people switched over to linux thanks to proton?

    Wow. You're saying this as if level designers haven't started their careers by making custom levels for Doom, literally one of the earlier indie games by creator id. Hell, you're giving the discontinued popularity gate called greenlight more credit than it deserves. The truth is Valve wouldn't be here today without the Quake engine that id themselves made - they've driven more innovation than valve's regression and capitalism sold as innovation. Yes, indie games existed before Valve has, shocker I know.

    And as for Linux, once again, *wine. Even then, I switched to Linux and stayed because the basic experience has been elevated, and all of that without using any Valve software. If the experience isn't better than it was before, I'd just go back to Windows. Besides, what is the point of Linux if I end up changing my unaccountable corporate master for another unaccountable corporate master, Valve?

    I know all of this will fly over your head. This is for everyone else in the room who thinks a little bit of "good things" absolve one of responsibility. I can totally say Microsoft Windows was a positive influence because it made computing easy to access and develop for, but understandably nobody's going to forgive them for the billion bad things they've done in turn.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    How many artists and modelers started out from submitting their works for tf2/dota2/cs:go? How many animators started from SFM? How many people became indie devs thanks to the existence of the Steam greenlight? How many people switched over to linux thanks to proton?

    Wow. You're saying this as if level designers haven't started their careers by making custom levels for Doom,

    How do my words deny the provided statement in any way? How your words disprove the cited statement?

    The truth is Valve wouldn't be here today without the Quake engine that id themselves made...

    And Quake engine wouldn't exist without C++, C++ wouldn't exist without C, C wouldn't exist without assembler, and so on and so forth. That's how progress works. Inventing a wheel from scratch every time is hella stupid, and so is your take, captain obvious. Like everyone who licenced the ID Tech engine at the time, Valve built a huge amount of technology on top of it.

    Come on, you're no longer even trying.

    valve's regression

    regression in what, dare i ask?

    And as for Linux, once again, *wine. Even then, I switched to Linux and stayed because the basic experience has been elevated, and all of that without using any Valve software.

    cool, but that's your personal experience, which is far from being universal.

    Besides, what is the point of Linux if I end up changing my unaccountable corporate master for another unaccountable corporate master, Valve?

    define "unaccountable corporate master", and explain to me how did you manage to put a game publisher under a term like this.

    I can totally say Microsoft Windows was a positive influence because it made computing easy to access and develop for, but understandably nobody's going to forgive them

    You could... In an alternate reality where Windows is the only OS ever existed.

    So now you're just babbling for the sake of babbling, coming up with the most braindead takes possible, while ignoring practically everything i say because i don't fall under the criteria of your tribe, thus inherently being a corpo billionaire shill. With this behaviour you're only proving my words about your inability to see nuance. I hope you're a kid, because that would at least mean some potential for intellectual development in the future.

    Let's stop before you embarrass yourself further.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (12 children)

    Yeah he's a billionaire. But he's the least bad one . we can appreciate that. Valve is (basically) single handedly keeping all pc gaming from becoming instant shit. Imagine if ea bought valve. Scary thought. Instantly you'd have a 20 dollar a month subscription and a limit of 2 game installs/downloads a month. And your drivers license/id would be scanned.

    Yes its a closed Eco system which isnt great but we still have gog. And steam games unless noted do not have DRM. They are playable without the steam client.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    No such thing as a good billionaire. Least bad doesn't cut it.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    I think we have many, many more billionaires to worry about than attacking valves employees. As far as I know, valve employees aren't donating to fascism and death camps, rigging elections, and promoting disinformation bots. Or denying healthcare.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    They certainly are paying tax money to the Trump-Epstein Administration, as is every other American company, further enabling all those things. You have GOG as the European option that won't pay tax to the Epstein class. Also you don't really get to be a billionaire without also having substantial political influence...

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Have you ever looked at the steam forums? Valve absolutely promotes fascism and bigotry by not monitoring the content on their platform. They have more than enough money to do it or to just close the forums because mothing good ever came from there anyways, but because Newell is a libertarian fuckwad his platform promotes hatespeech.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    Can you please give me some links to the fascism on their forums? I already know they sell fascist games like The Great Rebellion (GOG is guilty too), or that one asset flip where LGBTQ people somehow rule the US with an iron fist - I forget its name but I saw it in a video and it was genuinely bad and creepy.

    I'd dare say they don't do ANYTHING against fascism, so in my books they are just as much enablers of fascism as the companies actively lobbying for it. You know, Nazi bars and all that. Plus I've got a feeling those who insist they aren't fash because they don't spend their money on fash things are not aware of or even ignore things they're actually doing, or benefiting from the current admin.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Gabens isn't the employee, he is the owner. When I talk shit about Amazon and Bezos, I'm not attacking the employees.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago*

    Sure. But it makes more sense to direct the rage at the actual evil billionaires. I don't really care if Joe that got rich off wood lag screws made a billion and fucked off to his own land never to be heard from again. I do care about the ones meddling in elections and raping children.

    Its like the incel Nintendo rage. No one cares.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (4 children)

    I've kept hearing these scare stories for years. Sorry, they're shallow as shit. I'm not settling for Valve just because scawy EA is worse. To hell with them both. Anti-consuner is anti-consumer. A billionaire is a billionaire, and all of them are delicious.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Very lemming of you.

    "Perfect is the enemy of good".

    Same people who wouldnt vote at all in the US Because "Biden might do a bad thing" well guess what, Drump rapes and kills children and kidnaps innocent people, while starting wars.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    You know there's more than two game companies, right? You know that unlike the presidency in the United States of Fascism, there can be more than one game distribution platform, and those can be run by multiple companies, yes? While you're at it, buying games from Steam means your tax dollars go to the Trump Administration.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago* (6 children)

    Gaben gave us DRM and games you don't actually own.

    THANK YOU for saying this. Their launcher based DRM scheme and its direct attack on ownership, physical and used games has been a scourge. Don't forget their popularizing the F2P economy model and lootboxes, leading to more US-grown harm.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    THANK YOU for saying this. Their launcher based DRM scheme and its direct attack on ownership

    FYI Steam only applies a very weak DRM to stop people from copying games, but you can easily bypass it using Goldberg. Just copy/paste a few files into the game folder and you can play it outside of Steam.

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  • [–] -2 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    I know it is weak, I have cracked the games I used to have there myself before just giving up the account. It doesn't change the facts it harmed games forever, that it is the poster child of "you will own nothing and you will be happy."

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    You say this like Steam created DRM... DRM already existed back in the day, and in way more intrusive ways. Having CD keys, games that would activate only once by connecting to the servers, etc...

    Steam is the poster child of making digital games popular. That's it. It's not that deep.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Iirc, half life 2 was the first major game, having DRM and needing validation through steam, even with a hardcopy. After that, all the other companies jumped aboard with using DRM with steam.

    I feel like people think cd keys are the bar and if you are slightly better (online activation) them you get flying marks. Same with comparing to Xbox and epic.

    They all fail, including steam. It's crazy to see people defending any of them but Gaben always gets defended. Steam deserves the critique as much as the rest.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    It's crazy to see people defending any of them but Gaben always gets defended.

    Well I should've looked at the sub before deriding yacht owners. Of course it is pcgaming. He is their god. To criticize him or his company is sacrilege. Never mind that he is cut from the same cloth as every other CEO. But he did one good thing so clearly the two billion bad things don't matter.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (6 children)

    Yeah, glasses houses and such it's odd for Valve to comment on this.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Not that odd. Valve doesn’t have mass layoffs because they don't over-hire. Beyond that, it's salt in the wound towards Sweeney's inability to compete.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    You're conflating. While I don't disagree that Valve is soaking up money, and when it fleet-of-yachts money, it's just as sickening as when any-and-everyone else does it. Where there's a difference is in the 'How'. While I have my problems with Steam, generally speaking, they offer a good service. They provide servers and bandwidth while selling games far cheaper than their closest competitors, by one means or another.

    There's also how they're using that money as a company. Right now, I can think of three different lawsuits Valve is involved in just off the top of my head, all of which are fighting to worsen the hobby for gamers and Valve is opposing. Obviously, it's in Valve's interest as a game's marketplace to keep gamers throwing money at them, but the 'Why' matters a lot less in this circumstance that the 'What'. Even if it's not the express purpose, Valve is the only company I know of that's putting in any amount of effort to defend consumer rights in the gaming space. Everyone else with money comparable to what Valve has are too busy trying to exploit the market or diminish Valve's share while providing nothing as close to as good as Steam.

    News that has come out since your comment involving Valve includes an agreement with Facepunch Studios to make Source 2 available to public without any licensing fee under the name of s&box. While it's obviously in Valve's interest to increase the possible amount of games that will be sold on their platform, and Facepunch have done a significant amount of heavy lifting in making Source 2 both available and useful to the masses, that's still Valve doing their part to make the gaming community a better place and provide an alternative to the (in some people's opinions) over-used Unreal and (horribly untrustworthy) Unity.

    As Zorque has said before me, Valve aren't angles, but I truly believe Valve is bringing a net positive to the market, unlike any other company with comparable bank balances.

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