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Yes, 'Good guy Valve' makes an estimated 3 billion from Counterstrike's 'not-gambling' and Steam is estimated to have made 9 billion in 2022... that's a not insignificant portion of their income.
There's no good guys in the big players in a Capitalist society, it's about how long and well they can hide their shitty practices.
@anianimalsmoe There’s something to the whole “live long enough to become the villain”. I don’t think they wanted to become the dickheads, but when you get a crazy amount of power it’s just very very difficult to remain nice and effective.
Maybe letting anyone become big is the issue in the first place.
(Also how crazy is it that 9 billion seems small compared to MS with ~250 and Apple getting close to 400.)
@chikorita157@yon @anianimalsmoe Believe it or not, I'm thinking of the same quote from Batman himself.
Such a same, but not surprising. It makes me wonder why those Valve fanboys defend them no matter the questionable business practices.
It's too bad that they kind of have a lot of control over the PC game market, although there are alternatives, not all games are available outside of Steam.
@chikorita157 @yon Steam not needing to be super profitable (because ahem, other income and private ownership) makes it really hard for anyone to come close.
Humble Bundle is also in the hands of slippery investors.
Epic is beholden to Tencent, Disney and Sony.
I hope GOG never dies, but its gamer-centric DRM-free policy is not helping its case with game companies.
@anianimalsmoe @chikorita157 Tencent (not because they are Chinese btw, I have zero love for that damn Swedish company that bought up so much and then just failed at everything. Name escapes me.) is really the big looming horror on the horizon. They have 10% everywhere and it’s bad.
Epic just feels like absolute dickheads. No idea why they are fighting such odd battles and acting so odd. If there’s a store I do *not* want, it’s theirs.
I really need to try out gog etc. Question is, will I be at the mercy of Linux support (which sucks, even Linux says so and he’s 100% right. It’s because of too many useless distros.), or can I use proton? Because Proton is a real game changer.
@chikorita157 @anianimalsmoe I think people want to belong, and then they make it part of their personality and find solace in being able to ape after the group.
So going against the group is going against their identity. Which is why I applaud people like Thor (not that all he says is correct nor great per se) that says things like “don’t outsource your critical thinking”.
Me, I just want to get rid of the propaganda. Which includes pro propaganda for what I believe in. Valve, Apple, Sony, Nintendo, etc, I just want us all to stay with the facts. People will feel differently about the facts, but all the BS makes it impossible to talk about these things in most circles (this one being an exception).
Let’s face it, no monopoly is a good monopoly. It would be much better if we had many game companies, many distributors, and many stores. With a proper ownership so the store front isn’t needed to play, and you can move your games.
Also, is that a Batman quote? I’ve heard it many times, but I didn’t know where to attribute it. Kinda sounds like some old quote in Roman:) Like who watches the watchmen.
@yon Apple/MS has a crazy insane amount of employees and assets. Valve has 336 full time staff and mostly contractors, and they're privately owned too.
And don't forget that these numbers are estimates because they don't have public shareholders to be beholden to. 
@anianimalsmoe Yeah they are insanely profitable per employee. Imagine if we taxed the shit out of that and helped the poor… (UBI)
But it was more of a reflection of how insanely abstract these numbers have become. It’s so much money that it’s incomprehensible to us mere mortals. We’ll never see a tiny fraction of that:(
It’s not like saying “I own 9 manga” and someone else saying “I own 250”. Those are comprehensible. But imagine the same with billion!
Tax ‘em.
@anianimalsmoe reminds of a comment I saw from someone saying they stopped using Spotify and moved to Apple Music because they pay artists better, yeah, I guess so, but the only thing stopping Apple from paying artists as little as Spotify does is their smaller userbase, with less users they have to attract more artists, so users can come, so they can change their terms and pay artists pennies. There cannot be real ethics under capitalism.
@maxalmonte14 @anianimalsmoe that's true. I think a lot of the time all we *can* do as ordinary people is make personal decisions, sometimes merely to choose the "least bad" option. Because capitalism is a global, systemic issue and we only have so much control over that. But ultimately, rather than just a bunch of individuals making personal decisions, what we need is organized movements to pass regulatory laws that stamp out exploitative and predatory behavior like this.
@anianimalsmoe I will always like what valve did for the Linux side of the world, and I think a lot of other people will, too.
However, this is truly an unfortunate case coming from valve and it says that they, just like any other company, participate in malicious practises.
Hopefully valve will take responsibility for allowing these actions on their platform and will take appropriate action to make sure it doesn't happen again.