friendly reminder that valve is not your friend. they operate the way they do because that's their business strategy to make the most money long term.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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No corporation or billionaire is your friend. No matter how nice they appear just because the rest are genocidal sociopaths.
Not all of them are necessarily evil either, but regardless of their intentions, they're almost always a net loss for society.
But remember the CIA is TOTALLY your friend!
~unless you are a third world country. Terms and conditions may apply~
He's also not an enemy though. For an extremely wealthy person he's a decent guy imo. Then again, I don't know everything about him
Quite a lot of people thought Elon was a decent guy once upon a time.
I just think Gabe is a bit smarter in what he says and does publicly. Most extremely wealthy people seem to be higher in measures of narcissistic traits, self-entitlement, and egocentrism.
Fair points. Let's hope he doesn't lose his marbles
Elon had a full time PR team that was pushing that image since he wanted to be known and popular, then he started posting stuff himself and we all saw the mask fall off. I don't think Gabe has the same thing since he seems to try and stay out of the spotlight as much as possible.
Elon also had staff who describes their actual job as essentially jangling keys in front of Elon, because he has a tendency to just randomly have an insane idea and decide everyone is doing that now.
This uh... was from Tesla, a decade ago. Now of course, its all sycophants.
Compare that to Valve's odd, flat-ish hierarchy, just work on something cool and be useful work culture.
Gabe has been known to occasionally bring the hammer down, but the vast amount of Valve's style, intentionally created and maintained by Gabe is... hands off. Hire the actual best, they'll direct themselves, kind of thing.
Ain't perfect, but... probably a lot less of an insane tyrannical bastard than Elon.
Oh man you're about to get attacked for this one. I've been piled on massively for simply suggesting he was better than others.
And on top of that, Steam is just better than its competitors. As a normal consumer who enjoys decent deals, Steam is pretty great.
I like Gabe to be clear but come on. Even if he just isn’t as shit as the others, the guy clearly knows to separate his public and private profiles. This guy knew that him simply hammering three times on something was going to be dissected by 1 million nerds and used to confirm a game that never came.
Let’s not forget that Valve essentially made a significant portion of their money selling gambling to kids. He’s “better than others” sure, that’s because the others are so subsumed by their narcissism, they’re doing Nazi salutes on podiums while gutting welfare and spouting stale memes. It’s not exactly a high bar to stumble over.
No, Valve is privately owned. That means the company does whatever the owners want it to do. Unlike public companies which can be sued by their own shareholders of they don't pursue profits hard enough.
That's not to say we should blindly idolize a billionaire, but he and in turn Valve can in fact do things that are friendly to consumers.
can be sued by their own shareholders if they don't pursue profits hard enough
You can be sued by anyone for anything, but many actions are unlikely to be successful, including that one. In practice, company executives have extremely broad latitude to pursue profits in a way they see fit. If the make the argument in front of court that using Linux, having pretty good customer service, a UI that doesn't suck donkey balls, and not monetising gambling addicts TOO much is the best path to long term profit, the court isn't going to say, "you know what I know better than you".
The shareholders can sue in situations where execs embezzle money, or deliberately fuck the company and leave evidence that they've done so, things like that. Not just because they think that the company should do something else.
What absolutely can and does happen is that the shareholders fire the CEO. But a public company doesn't have to be structured so that that can happen.
Corporations are not your friends. They may do something you like but will shit on you if it benefits them.
Hardly surprising, the dude fucking loves boats. It's too bad he isn't fascinated with the age of sail. Billionaires would be cooler if they sailed in treasure galleons and were assailed by pirates.
Swallowed by the waves, occosionally. Without heirs.
I never thought of this. That is tragic. It would also be cool if they got obsessed with airships
What I've heard is he wanted to refit the yacht that he bought, so it could support a deep sea submersible.
So... to expedite the refit, he essentially just bought the entire dockyard, the company that owns it. Literal fuck you money lol.
And he does legit use that yacht's submersible to sail out deep sea explorers, exploring the hadal zones south of Japan, other places.
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/gabe-newell-inkfish-unclassified-ocean-creature/
As I've said in other threads, dude is just actually playing Subnautica IRL.
https://m.youtube.com/@inkfishexpeditions
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-explorer-vessel-08172025.php
https://www.vard.com/articles/inkfish-and-vard-signs-contract-on-groundbreaking-research-vessel
I think these are all ... revolving around the same ship, not 100% sure.
Yeah he's a billionaire, but he at least seems to be an old school tycoon in the sense of... doing actual philanthropy, instead of fancy accounting fraud.
Also, barely anyone knows much about this, so... probably not a naked ploy for positive PR?
You know who gets rich in a gold rush? The guy making pickaxes.
Why would toothpicks be useful in a gold rush?
They meant guitar picks dummy!
A megayacht is defined by the ability to fit at least one standard yacht within its swimming pool while still leaving ample room for maneuvers.
Seems like a massive waste of time, skill, and resources.