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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Google started out the same way. Hopefully this sticks
The advantage atm is that valves privately owned. The moment they go public, be very wary.
I think it will be fine as long as Gaben is there. I am afraid that after he retires or ascends into Godhood somehow John Riccitiello will get his ass into that seat.
It will never go public - they are making money over fist and have no reason to participate in public capital markets. They also aren't really interested in growing. The trade off is that not everyone will be able to get a job there.
The question is how long that mindset will survive once Gaben leaves. Or dies.
We need to upload him into a GabenOS of sorts. To preserve the Valve mindset, and also for science.
Some neurotoxin and mass murder would be a small price to pay.
To be a little more serious, I think there us a lot less risk that anything could happen. It is too profitable. I think of valve more like a company like Rolex, where they are crazy profitable and can do whatever they want.
No one can predict the future, and someone can always screw it all up with bad management. But I would predict that it is more likely that they would get bought out by Berkshire or something before going public or getting acquired by some VC firm.
Issue isn't now but the future. Gabe is content on what he and the company earned, he didn't feel the need to stuck an ever-growing tumor into his company. The story will be different when he's no longer the head of the company, unless Gabe made an unbreakable rule for the company to never go public, the chance of some next-in-line getting greedy on setting themselves and their next few descendant for life is pretty high.
But you can say that about anything. No one can predict the future.
Hopefully, if GabeN leaves, the next manager will be smart and manage steam well. Or they will be not smart and make bad decisions.
Emm yeah do you realise you're the one saying "they will never went public"?
I think it is very unlikely. But you are going "what about in the future?" Well, I still think it is unlikely. And then you can go "What about after that?" Well okay, I still think it is unlikely, even then. "How about after that though?"
Damn, okay, they are going to go public, all their developers will go on strike, make everyone buy all their steam library all over again and start selling GLaDOS NFTs. Is that what you want to hear? It's just a very funny comment. Yes, I don't think they will ever go public, till the end of time. The world will be a burnt out husk before Valve goes public.
Oof, you sound upset.
poke
poke
poke
Dude, stop poking me
poke
poke
Dude, fucking stop!
"Oof, you sound upset"
oof, we can't have a debate here now.
Not exactly unprecedented, see e.g. Bosch, Zeiss, or, staying in the US, Mozilla.
Going public would mean gaben has sold out. Which would make sense for him at some point. If he's still working there he'll be stuck with the worst of both worlds.
Whoever comes in under him will want to make their pie and ready it too.
There’s no point in selling out when you make money hand over fist. All going public would do is make him lose total control of his company.
Not everyone is interested in total control. If Gaben decides he wants to retire on an even bigger pile of money or if his successor wants to cash in quick they could easily go public and reap a massive amount since Valve shares are sure to be high. I think the former is less likely than the latter, but Gabe is getting to retirement age, I expect to hear about a successor in the next 10-20 years
pretty sure he is already unimaginably rich
worth 4.3 Billion as of latest
A lot of people are unimaginably rich, but that doesn't stop them from coveting more wealth. Gaben seems to be happy where he is, thus why I think it's less likely he sells out than a successor takes over and sells out instead
Or died.
That's the biggest piece, smaller but worth mentioning is they make money off of our purchases directly unlike Google.
That's why they do promote say sales, because they still get the same cut and might see more revenue out of it. Selling general ads doesn't fit with what they're going for, but they do aggressively push ads.
Which aggressive ads?
Maybe they mean the ads that popup occasionally when starting steam
Those can be turned off.
I have nothing against them personally but they are undoubtedly advertising and are turned on by default.
Yeah, but hardly aggressive. They only popup when you start steam. If you leave it running, even with the option on, you never see them.
I dunno pushing ads on every boot seems at least a bit aggressive (remember that steam auto starts by default on Windows).
Both still optional. You can easily turn off both boot with OS and the ads it's serving.
Aggressive to me is non-optional, in-your-face type crap.
For me, aggressive doesn't necessarily have to mean non-optional.
I don't mind them either
Valve opened in the late 90s and is privately owned. Never say never where corporations and capitalism are concerned... But hopefully they wont take the evil google approach this late in the game. I think good will from their customers really sets them apart from competitors like Epic.
I feel like most of it is private ownership. The minute you enter the CEO/Board of Directors ecosystem with investors to pay and expectations of eternal growth, everything turns to shit.
Yup, can confirm. The company I work for is public, and we recently did layoffs despite being profitable, because we weren't as profitable as we projected. That's the kind of nonsense you get from public companies. I suppose it could happen with private companies as well, but my experience having worked for both doesn't fit with that.
LOL Valve is not "starting out". They are about as old as Google.
Valve didn't suddenly get big, they've been dominating the PC space for many, many years.
And damn near every single Google effort into the games space has failed except for android games, which ride on the enormous platform install. Their latest effort was a joke - stadia was DOA.
I respect valve because they've provided indie game devs with the same distribution AAA studios get, they've never asked for exclusivity and did tons of uncompensated VR pioneering (remember Abrash and co were Valve before Oculus) and never once tried to 'own' vr. And they're a private company, so that means the decisions - and investments - they've made worked out enough to free them of a board dicking shit up.
Keep going, Valve. I don't like everything they do, but overall they're a gem in value added.