That leaked email conveniently assumes the owner of Valve would sell it. I can’t think of a reason for Gabe to do that.
This is the biggest problem with Valve at the moment. They’re awesome, but only because of the current leadership. Once these guys retire or die, it’s very likely Valve will enshittify like every other business.
Valve needs to be hit by regulators at some point. They just have too much market power.
I wish the decent guys who started companies would leave a directive for the company that must be followed to prevent it from becoming just another shitty piece of garbage like everything else these days has become thanks to the geniuses with business degrees running the world.
But there’s no practical way you could hold the future owners of the business to that directive. If you own the business, you get to set the directives, including overwriting previous ones.
The only way to enforce it is to maintain controlling interest in the business. Or, at least spread the interest among multiple parties so no one person can dictate it.
The best way to do this would be to make the company Employee Owned
Even then though you could have employees voting to change the direction of the business. If someone offers to buy the business for billions, then it’s possible everyone would vote to accept the sale and change everything.
The business is always going to change over time.
Valve is not awesome at all. Ffs, they didn’t become a monopoly by accident. People need to stop worshipping this company just because they started packaging wine with their app.
This is the same company that literally started the trend of requiring storefronts and custom installers for their games with HL2… the exact same thing people whine about EA and Blizzard doing.
PC gaming will become a total shit show if Valve dies and they’ll be fully responsible for it.
just because they started packaging wine with their app
Even if that’s all they did, that is more than anyone else is doing. What they really did was make nearly every game they sell easily playable without requiring you to use Windows. As byproduct, DXVK (part of Valve’s Proton) provides greater compatibility and performance for Windows users as well (Intel ARC driver and DX9 game support for example). They have salaried employees working exclusively on making this work and their development is open source for anyone to use modify and share. Epic or any other store front could freely take advantage of this work and benefit why don’t they do that instead of whining?
Valve was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.
You have no idea how this works.
Gabe Newell quit working for Microsoft before Windows 3.0 was released. Valve is an employee-owned private company, Gabe Newell ensured that even after his passing, Valve stays true to their roots as long as there’s the majority of employees sharing his ideals.
Employee owned businesses are something else, Valve is just a regular privately owned business, one that the owner works for and takes a salary from.
Employee owned businesses are owned by all of the employees, collectively, with a slightly more democratic decision making process. The CEO still makes the decisions, but employees have a right to have their input heard as shareholders. With Valve, Gabe has the final say on everything.
I like to think Gabe knows all too well the importance of remaining a private business. Publicly traded businesses are the root cause of a lot of problems in the world.
I work for a company that has specifically stated it will never do that and has stuck to those guns for 50+ years
The thought of another company buying Valve, especially one like Microsoft, makes me actually sick. I have spent so much fucking money on my Steam library at this point. If my Steam library gets jacked by some billionaire dickheads it’s all over, I’m never paying for anything again.
Guess WE should buy it. Ensure 51% of the shares are locked up tight. It is a private company, so Valve would have to be cool with it. Otherwise, the wrong person getting a divorce, dividing assets in half, and it is all over.
MSFT is full of misfits.
Day 1 of suddenly having the urge to keep an offline and DRM free copy of all my steam games.
Yeah for a while now I’m been buying games on GOG where possible and keeping an archive of them, because I know at some point every company will eventually let you down.
@festus @headmetwall how do you make sure that when you load up a gog game that it does not launch the gog launcher? What are the steps?
The GOG launcher is optional (I don’t use it). On their website you can download offline installers for every game you own, and these installers don’t require the GOG launcher or any account authentication.
@festus where is this offline installer, exactly? Link? I just get hit with the gog new launcher option being advertised on the site.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148105-How-do-I-download-my-purchased-items-?product=gog has as the second option how to download the offline installers.
@festus nice. So what’s the point of the gog launcher app after this? Anyways, I prefer to use heroic. Much lighter and easier.
Honestly I’m not sure - as I said I don’t use it. I know of at least one game that’s “DRM-free” but requires the GOG launcher for multiplayer (No Man’s Sky). That’s fairly controversial and I think the only reason why it’s on GOG is because it came onto GOG back when it was a singleplayer only game.
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.
DONE with valve if this were to happen.
I’d rather not game at all than put up with that shit.
If it happens, the call of the seas will be irresistable.
