That's a great discussion in itself. You can look at Valve as a company that started out focusing on making exceptional products (Half-Life), or focusing on their users (Steam), which then transitioned into a business that directed it's attention more toward optimizing profits.

A company can take this stereotypical start-up approach of worrying about users and the 'product' first, but eventually, you might end up in the same position as Valve - and here's the thing, maybe you can only end up in that position if you first focused on something other than pure profit? How many businesses get to be the size of Valve by purely starting out chasing profit vs trying to create a great product first?

It's common to see people begrudge a company - or even an artist - who seeks to make money with the least effort, we sometimes refer to them as 'sell-outs'. We tend to look at people who once concentrated on developing something that has a quality or true value, only to later exchange this for the pursuit of money over everything else, in a negative light. Conversely, we applaud successes where the intentions of the individual or the business were seen as 'honest.'

I think this just boils down to some basic human condition around what we perceive people and companies deserve for their efforts, about fairness. OP wanted to work at Valve because OP believed it was a company that deserved to be where it was because it created something of quality, something of value. OP was disillusioned because what was being produced there at the time didn't deserve the praise and financial success.

No. However, I work for a AAA games publisher, and it's clear that you can do both. We have games which are obviously our money makers and which fund the whole enterprise, but we also regularly make and release smaller games which are unlikely to ever make any money. Those later ones are needed to remain on the top of the game(ha!) in the industry and to give our creative people an outlet where they can experiment with stuff(and that's also how you push forward what games are meant to be and what the market likes/dislikes, without the risk of ruining your AAA big hitters). Valve was once known for pushing those boundaries with revolutionary games, but nowadays they only do what is super ultra safe. That's not great for the industry either.

I mean, yes and no. Every business exists to make profit, but most companies thrive when their customers are happy, not miserable. Many (but not all) microtransactions in gaming, particularly in the more predatory free-to-play models, don't exist for the good of the product, but to offer a relief to the player as the game applies more pressure and pain to try and force the player to cave and spend money. Even the "just cosmetic" microtransactions lean hard on techniques to get the player to spend as much as possible. Both sides of this aren't universal, some businesses are very much "minimum effort, maximum profit" without much care for the quality of their product, and some games take great care to not fall into predatory monetization techniques, even with microtransactions, but speaking generally, it's something that seems rather unique to the game industry.

No need for shame, but there is a more subtle dynamic in play, sort of a tragedy of the commons.

Gaming is the commons.

If all the games are max money, least effort, that commons will be shallow, sort of dull.

If all the companies are doing low effort works, that commons will be shallow, dull.

A dull commons will sell through well, but will not tend to attract everyone it could. It is a smallish, but high profit commons.

Hold that thought while I relate an experience.

A product I used to manage came in colors, and standard black and white.

It was observed most of the sales and money were standards, black and white, and oddly, one mint color. The rest all did sell, but in much smaller numbers.

When that data was seen, sellers immediately quit buying anything but black, white and some bought that mint.

Everyone sold less. And they sold less of the standards than usual.

Turns out what attracts buyers to the product is a variety. Gotta have interesting colors on display. When they are there, part of the display, more buyers consider the product overall.

They still tend to buy the standards either way. But they buy more more times per unit of foot traffic past the display, so to speak.

Max sales actually happen when there are both a fair number of interesting colors, those colors change every so often, and that is done in tandem with the standards being available.

Going back to gaming I think the parallels are obvious.

Many will just pick the few big hits, but a diverse and interesting set of games is what gets them to be a greater part of culture and more people consider and stay gaming.

There has got to be effort there, even though it may not directly improve revenue on a effort / title basis.

The market is a balance of needs and desires between businesses and customers. The perfect balance is achieved when a business focuses on delivering value to customers, and charges a price that's both bearable by those customers and profitable to the business. Trying to optimize for "most money" or "least effort" further generally leads to providing less value in a non-obvious ways - on the light side, through cutting corners and exploiting relatively weaker position of customers; on the heavy side, it transitions to borderline or actual fraud. As a customer, if I sniff that a business has this attitude of maximizing profits[0] at all costs, I do my best to avoid ever having anything to do with them - because it's a strong indication the business isn't focused on delivering value, and will throw the customers under the bus whenever it's beneficial to them.

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[0] - including, or maybe especially, "delayed profits" (aka. growth), as many startups do.

Very often the way to make money with the least effort involves some kind of scamming/fraud - and at the very least it's not usually good for consumers, so it's not good for your company in the long run.

Not everyone is trying to get rich quick and easy. Some of us are trying to get rich "slow and hard".

> Isn't this the goal of every business and employee ever? To make money with the least effort.

No

Most businesses and employees have some ethical limits whether they’re aware of it or not

When it comes to art, yes.

>> Isn't this the goal of every business and employee ever? To make money with the least effort.

Uh, not mine. Otherwise I would have stayed in finance.

What if the most money with least effort is made though tricking or manipulating people? Lately, that seems to be the trend. I’ve played mobile games recently where the only “content” updates were A-B testing schemes.