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Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!"

Well yeah. That's what a company is. Companies are also people, and people make decisions, and those decisions are sometimes influenced by more than the mere bottom line. You can't read their minds, and it's the opposite of charitable to assume the worst.

Fully agree about the rest though. It certainly makes business sense. But it took around a decade to maneuver themselves into this position, and it's pretty hard to believe they did it all solely for the green.

I used to exchange MSN messenger messages with Zoid, one of their most productive Dota 2 programmers. (Boy that sounds like ancient history.) He didn't strike me as a person who was particularly ruthless and mercantile. Just a driven programmer trying to do good.

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>Oh please. Any time a company does something good. "Let's not kid ourselves. It's all for the money, honey!"

I didn't say that I'm not happy for what Valve is doing, but I don't trust any billion dollar tech megacorp like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nintendo, Valve, etc. to have the best interest of the consumer in mind, regardless of how fun their IP is for my entertainment.

Pro-consumer actions on their end are always motivated by their internal Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy against their competitors, but ultimately they're not your friends, they're just fighting for your money and marketshare.

In the end, you're still just a dollar sign that pads their stocks or bottom line, regardless of some of how pro-consumer some of their actions seem.

Yes, everyone here knows a company does things for money, and I'm not knocking Valve for wanting to make money, I'm just saying it's good to be paranoid when billion dollar tech companies are being too generous and benevolent with consumers, and try to think of what their end-game is, as that might turn out to be not be very consumer-friendly in the long run if they become a monopoly.

Yes, and we're not their friends. We'll go elsewhere as soon as we see a better deal.

So what?

There is no elsewhere, when you consider network effects. The largest platform has the most to gain, when it makes use of social interaction.

> There is no elsewhere, when you consider network effects

There is an elsewhere. Playstation, XBoX, Nintendo, GoG, Epic, Apple Games, Android. Network effects aren't anything to do with a company being your friend. You aren't staying through friendship with the company; why is it non-silly to criticise them for not being your friend?

Most of the social interaction in the games space happens on discord these days though, and has since about 2016. The only social network effect steam currently has is with game invites, since it's slightly more annoying to join a party of friends via the xbox version of sea of thieves than the steam version, for example.

I’ve been using Xbox Game Pass on PC, and while for me it’s a good value. Their invite system is terrible compared to Valve. I just want to play games with my friends and Valve seems to have that part down. Hell even the whole “play with friends” thing has worked great. Like the good old days of friends coming over and playing a four player game only now we play on the internet (and we only need one person to own it).

Consider also that Steam is the only place to go for Valve games like CS:GO and Dota 2.

This is still nothing to do with a company not treating you as a friend. You're not their friend; they aren't yours, and that's normal.

> corporations are not our friends

While true, good luck living your life without dealing with a corporation.

In fact, you're a dollar sign for your next door shop as well.

Exactly, mom & pop shop doing it for the money too. Mom & Pop good at making pies, you’re good at fixing cars. Instead of bartering, you exchange cash. Mom & Pop happy their car is fixed, you get pies in return. Everyone is happy, every one benefits, despite money exchanged. No one sceptical that mom & pop doing it for cash.

Doing something for money does not mean that you can't be interested in what the effects of your work have on others and it abusolutely does not mean that you have to prioritize the amount of money you make over everything else - but for publicly traded companies the incentives do push that way and that's where the cynicism comes from.

I wouldn’t exactly consider valve a billion dollar mega corp. For one, they aren’t public and therefore aren’t beholden to the whims of share holders.

They are still beholden to the whims of those who stand to benefit the most from the company making a profit, even if they aren't "shareholders" as such.

But that is very different, every company owned by shareholders starts behaving in exactly the same predictable manner. However as long as the founders controls everything the company behaves as the founder wishes, it could be good or even worse than what you'd get with shareholders. On average it is probably the same but for an individual company it still matters a lot.

Yes, but they are not subject to the whims of short-term "investors" who only care about maximizing the next quarter or financial year's numbers.

That's the biggest problem in modern public corporations, a significant number of shareholders have no long term interest and will happily hurt the company to sell out with a higher number.

I hold no delusions that Valve is doing things for my benefit, but they have managed to position themselves in a place where their interests and the interests of PC gamers mostly align.

Valve is valued at $10+ billion. They're not big tech in the style of Microsoft, however they are a mega corporation (a very large company). Any company with their scale, revenue and influence is a mega corporation. If Valve had been public in this extreme stock market era, they'd probably have gotten a $30+ billion valuation (Unity at the peak was worth $60 billion).

Gabe Newell is worth $8 billion courtesy of his ownership stake.

https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/gabe-newell/

Agreed. Profit is fine, monopolies are not. It's not a hard line to draw.

Well seeing as there is little to no consensus on whether certain tech companies have a monopoly or not... I'd say it's a hard line to draw.

I think this is just because we misuse the word monopoly.

Monopolies in tech are pretty rare I think, especially things like online services -- it is pretty hard to completely dominate a market when there are other big tech companies out there and they all dabble in everything. However, tech companies engage in anti-competitive behavior all the time. Unfortunately people want to say "monopoly" when they see anti-competitive behavior, because it sounds cooler. This is quite unfortunate because it leads to the whole "technically not a monopoly" debate, which really misses the point.

There is never any 100% monopoly in other sectors either unless it's something government enforced where only one company is allowed to do something. What matters is that a significant amount of consumers do not have a choice of dealing with with the company in question if they want certain types of things. That is true in tech if you define the "type of thing" narrowly enough and is true nowhere if you define it broadly enough. The debate of where you draw the line is independt of the terms used.

OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games, Spotify has a near-monopoly on music, and both of these are working great for me as a consumer.

Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit. I have to work out what platform a show is currently streaming on, and decide whether it's worth paying for that to see the show, and the lineups are constantly changing. Honestly, going back to piracy for video is looking good right now.

The GP's statement "piracy is a service problem" is so true. And, unfortunately, to provide the kind of service we want, that means a single platform. I'm utterly uninterested in a world where I have to remember which platform that game was on. I refuse to buy games if they require Origin (or an Xbox account, or in fact creation of an account anywhere).

I realise that at some point Steam is probably going to become evil and take advantage of its monopoly position. I hope we can persuade it to stay honest when that time draws near. I don't see any other option - I wouldn't want the government (which government? I live in Germany) controlling the platform either.

> OK, but Steam has a near-monopoly on games,

Playstation, XBox and Nintendo all want a word with you first.

After that Fortnite and PUBG developers are waiting.

> Spotify has a near-monopoly on music,

ITunes wants a word with you too it seems.

> and both of these are working great for me as a consumer.

Good. That is because both Valve and Spotify know how vulnerable they are.

> Netflix had a monopoly, but now not, and it's shit.

Unlike Spotify they weren't humble.

They abused customers by enforcing the dumb rules of the film industry.

I'd almost say good riddance to them but it's not in me to enjoy others misfortune.

I think he means Steam on PC.

It is still wrong.

Gog, Microsoft, probably Funcom and a number of others (I'm not into gaming, I'm just pointing out he was extremely wrong, so wrong even I could see it. Or there is some missing context that I failed to see despite trying twice now in which case a clarification might be needed.)

Edit: Blizzard and Activision publishes outside of Steam (too)? (I don't know if the publish on Steam.)

Well they have all tried breaking Steam's dominance on PC. The ones that come closest are probably Microsoft (especially with their acquisition of Activision Blizzard) and Epic. Almost all of them still publish on Steam, because they basically have to.

Gog and Funcom are drops in the ocean in comparison.

The music streaming market seems pretty competitive, Spotify is on top but they appear to only be in the 30% range.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-s...

> I'm utterly uninterested in a world where I have to remember which platform that game was on.

I'm starting to use GOG Galaxy for this reason, as it happily integrates with many of the services. I got shifted from my 'if it ain't on Steam, it doesn't exist' mindset by Epic giveaways (resulting in a single actual well discounted sale!) and later Gamepass. I'd still prefer a single service with everything for the right price though, but that will never happen while multiple groups are trying to deliver it.

I bought a few on GoG too, mostly because they were old games that aren't on Steam, and DRM-free :) Happy to support that! But I'm not signing up to Galaxy.

I supported HumbleBundle's Choice, mostly because again they were either DRM-free or sold as Steam keys. Then it got weird and "here's 12 games you're never going to play" each month.

I'm not going anywhere near Epic (or the shitshow that used to be Blizzard) because I know they're just trying to break Steam's grip, and as soon as they do they'll treat their customers badly.

I mean, Valve is still privately owned as far as I know, so wherever it’s going is entirely up to the mind of it’s founders.

Edit: Tring to do good, and they made Dota 2?

1v1 sf mid scrub

The history of dota is pretty fascinating. As someone who worked on Heroes of Newerth, I can vouch that https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/ is pretty accurate, based on the reactions of all of my coworkers when it came out. So there's some juicy drama for you.

It's true that Valve makes decisions based on money. But it's also true that they execute on them fantastically well. Far better than S2 could ever dream to achieve.

It was wonderful to have a front row seat to the steamroller. In hindsight I wish I'd relaxed and enjoyed it more.

I can believe almost everything else, and I imagine War3 mod making wasn't the "cleanest" thing ever, but this:

> your first realization was that Abdul was a poor designer

from here: https://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/

is almost categorically false.

I've been playing Dota since... 2004, I was there almost immediately after the Eul/Guinsoo/Neichus stuff. I did research the previous versions a ton, out of curiosity.

There's almost no comparison between Icefrog's additions to Dota and what came before. The other versions were brilliant in their concept but generally very poor in their execution.

Icefrog added more brilliant concepts but primarily greatly cleaned up Dota mechanics and execution. He took an amateurish mod and made it have professional level execution.

Maybe he sucks to work with in a team (really hard to believe, to be honest, considering the development and testing team he built around Dota and the changelogs, OMG, the changelogs; I'd rather think he might suck to work in a on-site team, because his online team management was pretty solid), but criticizing his management/design of Dota for so many years is really silly.

100% agreed, and I’ve said as much in the past. I winced to forget to qualify my statement with “but this part is nuts.” Thanks for calling that out.

Privately owned and operated means that squeezing out a little more profit hasn't much influence on the owner's wealth. Which happens to be the decisionmaker's wealth. And there's a real possibility that they will care how their money gets to them. But being publicly traded changes everything, suddenly a crowdsourced projection of profits into the future enters the picture, leveraged to the nth degree. This even affects companies still held by a strong founder majority. And when decisions are delegated to the salaried class, incentivized by options and bonus mechanisms, the payoff magnification effect gets even stronger. Suddenly a percentage point change in profits can cause a tenfold change in personal wealth. Or more. When there are tradeoffs to be made between decency and greed, always bet on the public company outdoing the private. It's not a guaranteed win, there are some truly nasty examples of privates, but they are outliers. Publicly traded means nasty by design.

Yeah I think the main takeaway for me is that the work they are doing for Linux isn’t being kept only to themselves. Betting on Linux is giving people options. I would love to drop windows all together, and they are making this more of a reality (because the only key thing keeping me on windows is gaming, I can get all my other regular computing just fine on Linux).

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