this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Valve support has historically been pretty awesome. They even replaced an index controller nearly a year out of warranty. Granted their controllers have a shit switch and they break after a few hundred hours, but good on support for being bros.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Gaben has ensures that he has 51% of the company so he can veto anything including a leadership change. He would need to sell or die.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sony really shooting themselves in the foot.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Image

I love this green text because valve really just be doing the bare minimum most of the time but everyone else is just so shit in comparison

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I feel like GOG deserves at least some respect. They don't have a perfect track record, by any means, but I find them at least reliable, decent sales, have gotten some fun freebies out of them in the past.

And, hey, shopping cart. Which shouldn't be a selling point, I'm fucking flabbergasted that it came to this on any platform, but that's another point above EPIC.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I agree although in some respects it feels like a dead app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

At least it's either optional or can use 3rd party app (Heroic for example)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Steam doing the right thing while Sony continues to be incredibly stupid.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The miracles you can perform when you don’t have shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's not shareholders specifically, but management that doesn't give a shit about the company long term.
The business has a fiduciary duty to benefit the shareholders, but it doesn't have to be short term only, or at the cost of long term benefits.

Most publicly traded companies end up with leadership who are only interested in justifying their employment through the next earnings call or making sure the stock price has gone up between when they last got options and when they next vest.

Valve does good not because they don't have shareholders, but because their leadership is not gonna get fired for thinking about next year instead of next quarter. So they don't squeeze the consumers for every dime, so people stick with them, and developers stay even though their fee schedule is not the best because they have all the people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Valve does good not because they don’t have shareholders, but because their leadership is not gonna get fired for thinking about next year instead of next quarter. So they don’t squeeze the consumers for every dime, so people stick with them, and developers stay even though their fee schedule is not the best because they have all the people.

All of that short-term thinking is because of the stock market. All of their shareholders think of, day in and day out, is "line go up".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well, I'll disagree a bit there. The largest stock investors are institutional investors managing funds on behalf of retirement plans. Those investors tend to prefer consistent long term growth over a narrow quarterly growth target, and will actually look at things beyond just stock price, like strategy and long term market prospects.

Short term thinking from the leadership team is them not having a good idea on how to provide the long term strategy that investors prefer, and instead hoping to appeal to the smaller group of investors who do only care about short term growth so they can secure their own payoff, potentially at the expense of the long term prospects of the company.

Valve is a corporation. They have shareholders other than Gabe, many of whom are not employed at valve of in their leadership team. Their leadership team isn't looking to ensure that their paycheck comes in over the future of the company, so they make good choices.
Compare with companies like Coca-Cola, which are publicly traded but have that long term plan that lets them openly talk about sacrificing revenue to pursue product plans and market growth that leads to more stable long term profits.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

The largest stock investors are institutional investors managing funds on behalf of retirement plans. Those investors tend to prefer consistent long term growth over a narrow quarterly growth target, and will actually look at things beyond just stock price, like strategy and long term market prospects.

Based on what evidence? They just make sure the line steadily goes up each quarter, instead of accounting for companies that invest potential profits into longer-term plans. If not, the 401K investor will either drop the stock, or put it in a higher-risk plan.

That sort of thinking is akin to corporate suicide when in a publicly-traded market, so they don't do it.

A company like Valve isn't publicly-traded, and they have a limited number of investors they can talk to about their plans. That and they have a reputation of quality products, so even the investors are going to put up with short-term drops in profitability for even more profits.