Well, that's certainly an article title isn't it. But I mean it. Microsoft, don't you dare touch Valve. You're fat enough already and too big as it is.
Yeah, there is some hope for as long as Valve isn’t publicly traded. It’s investors that push companies to care only for short term gains.
Valve is not saintly, they have their own sketchy aspects like how they profit over that cosmetics trading market, but releasing the Steam Deck shows they are still thinking of the long term future of PC gaming.
I think valve will be okay as long as they have Gabe Newell, since it seems like he really does care about things like linux support. I’m worried what will happen if he ever leaves though
the man is 60 and morbidly obese. even if he never leaves there’s every chance he’ll have sudden health problems. at least he’d have the money for good medical treatment
That doesn’t guarantee much of anything, though, and private companies still have investors that can influence the direction of the company. E.g., a lot of people are wary of Tencent’s influence over Epic or Reddit even though both are private.
Well the thing is … yes Valve has shareholding investors… Only one that matter as far as anyone knows is Gabe Newell. Given it’s private corp, they don’t have to publicly tell what his exact ownership is and I think it is known it isn’t anymore 100% unlike at some point. However all “as far as we know” indications are, Gabe Newell maintains 50%+ controlling shareholding. Rest of the shareholders as people understand are employees and ex employees, who got private shares as part of compensation packages.
We don’t have actual look at the books, but Valve people have on multiple occasion said “Valve doesn’t have external investors”. Given it was public official comments by official people, I would think they wouldn’t lie about it. So there is no external VCs or share external investor investors.
Gabe pretty much has probably pretty universal control only limited by business regulation and maybe whatever clauses the corporate charter has. However since he was at one point sole owner, I doubt it contains anything too much curtailing him. Since the way any other people have gotten shares is by Gabe agreeing to give them or sell them to people in the first place.
As far as I understand at no point has Valve been cash strapped such as to need to ask for external investors. Since it is company founded by two early ex-Microsoft people who had made decently money at Microsoft already before Founding Valve. Gabe ended as sole owner as the other founding owner decided to leave the business and Gabe bought him out.
One person being the majority shareholder doesn’t stop people from worrying, though. Epic is majority owned by its founder like Valve is, but everybody still points to the minority investors and says, “What about their influence?”
In any case, my point is more that just being private isn’t some kinda of magic bullet to forever avoiding outside influence. It’s possible that, eventually, the other 49% not controlled by Gabe have sold out to Tencent and they’re in the same position as a lot of other companies with outside investors holding just under the majority.
I love Steam (have 2000 or so games on it) but I realize it is only a matter of time before it gets enshittified.
Maybe, but it’s still a private company.
Yeah, there is some hope for as long as Valve isn’t publicly traded. It’s investors that push companies to care only for short term gains.
Valve is not saintly, they have their own sketchy aspects like how they profit over that cosmetics trading market, but releasing the Steam Deck shows they are still thinking of the long term future of PC gaming.
I think valve will be okay as long as they have Gabe Newell, since it seems like he really does care about things like linux support. I’m worried what will happen if he ever leaves though
the man is 60 and morbidly obese. even if he never leaves there’s every chance he’ll have sudden health problems. at least he’d have the money for good medical treatment
That doesn’t guarantee much of anything, though, and private companies still have investors that can influence the direction of the company. E.g., a lot of people are wary of Tencent’s influence over Epic or Reddit even though both are private.
Well the thing is … yes Valve has shareholding investors… Only one that matter as far as anyone knows is Gabe Newell. Given it’s private corp, they don’t have to publicly tell what his exact ownership is and I think it is known it isn’t anymore 100% unlike at some point. However all “as far as we know” indications are, Gabe Newell maintains 50%+ controlling shareholding. Rest of the shareholders as people understand are employees and ex employees, who got private shares as part of compensation packages.
We don’t have actual look at the books, but Valve people have on multiple occasion said “Valve doesn’t have external investors”. Given it was public official comments by official people, I would think they wouldn’t lie about it. So there is no external VCs or share external investor investors.
Gabe pretty much has probably pretty universal control only limited by business regulation and maybe whatever clauses the corporate charter has. However since he was at one point sole owner, I doubt it contains anything too much curtailing him. Since the way any other people have gotten shares is by Gabe agreeing to give them or sell them to people in the first place.
As far as I understand at no point has Valve been cash strapped such as to need to ask for external investors. Since it is company founded by two early ex-Microsoft people who had made decently money at Microsoft already before Founding Valve. Gabe ended as sole owner as the other founding owner decided to leave the business and Gabe bought him out.
One person being the majority shareholder doesn’t stop people from worrying, though. Epic is majority owned by its founder like Valve is, but everybody still points to the minority investors and says, “What about their influence?”
In any case, my point is more that just being private isn’t some kinda of magic bullet to forever avoiding outside influence. It’s possible that, eventually, the other 49% not controlled by Gabe have sold out to Tencent and they’re in the same position as a lot of other companies with outside investors holding just under the majority.
That’s true, but Gabe still owns over half the stock, and I doubt he’s looking to sell.
Honestly I just assume Valve is Gabe’s hobby workdesk at this point.