There must be something magical in the fact that they don't need to feed their shareholders with mountains of cash every quarter, and actually focus on their customers, as happened in this post.

[–] Budd@lemmy.world 69 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fun fact, they used to be public but Gabe took it back private after realizing how shitty it was having to answer to shareholders.

[–] speaker_hat@lemmy.one 15 points 10 months ago

That's an interesting piece of info

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 63 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

True, private companies are generally more focused on customer satisfaction, but that can suddenly change, for instance when the owner dies, and the new owners don't share the same ideals.

Private companies have a certain single point of failure built-in by having often just one or sometimes a small number of owners.

Nobody really knows what will happen when Gabe dies.

I just hope that valve becomes a worker cooperative... That would be the most stable form of company that probaly stays focused on customer satisfaction long term, since workers tend to favor providing long-term profits via good service instead of short term gains, for high frequency traders.

[–] Jessvj93@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Gabe-AI, it's the only one I'd trust to run Valve. We need to preserve his personality starting today!

[–] cordlesslamp@lemmy.today 45 points 10 months ago (3 children)

And the fact is they still make a mountain of cash every quarter, just by focusing on their customers.

[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don’t know about that. They run one of the most predatory examples of gambling in gaming.

The new EU ruling really brought to light how big of a problem the CS:GO gambling is.

[–] Reddit_Is_Trash@reddthat.com -3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Is gambling really that bad though? It's voluntary. Valve isn't forcing you to buy keys or cases if you don't want them

[–] Liz@midwest.social 6 points 10 months ago

It's addictive. We regulate other addictive things like cigarettes, no reason we shouldn't put guard rails on gambling. We already do, but I think we've got to the end regs in a few areas.

[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Same argument could be made for Heroin that is illegal as fuck.

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

And the fact is they still make a mountain of cash every quarter, just by focusing on their customers.

"Win-Win" for the win!

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

but what about the latest investment fad like AI or NFTs? Won't they think of the poor scammers?

[–] MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

to be fair Sony still updates the ps3, i think

[–] olympicyes@lemmy.world 21 points 10 months ago

Also to be fair they tried to kill PSN store on the PS3 but the resulting backlash made them realize to do so would kill customer faith in the PS4 and PS5 PSN stores and so they backed off. Nintendo could only get away with it because they already trained us not to trust their online stores and buy physical only. Since Steam doesn’t have a physical option they need to play their cards right.

[–] dandu3@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

They only do it to make sure the latest Blu Rays work AFAIK. this is also how they get the decryption keys for the latest movies lol

[–] SquigglyEmpire@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Twitter (sorry, X.com) is also privately held now so it's not always a happy story :/

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 2 points 10 months ago

Ofc not, what you need to show is a public company that does not fuck over customers

[–] scottmeme@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

Easy answer. Valve prints money.