Remember that there is no grey area. Everyone is either a literal demon or agrees with you 100% of the time in every single subject!
this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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I will accuse Gabe of being a piece of shit once he does something that makes him a piece of shit. He has yet to do so. I don't see what's so hard to understand about this.
Valve certainly isn't perfect, and I used to buy more games on GOG. But then I noticed those games, which initially had Linux support, were no longer getting updated or working properly on distros. Their Linux support just kind of fizzled out.
On the flipside, even in it's early days, Steam/Proton made Linux gaming such a far nicer experience. If Proton were proprietary, I would stay away from Steam still. But what Valve is doing for Linux and free and open-source software is a net good right now, and that is worth supporting.
There are things that suck about Steam, like the drm. Just the other day I had a game running and also tried to run a second game through GameNative only to find Steam only allows me to run one game at a time, dumb. And there will probably be a day when Valve pulls some kind of enshittified bait and switch like Google is doing with Android right now.
And when that day comes it will be necessary to fork and forget them. But until then I'll enjoy the ride.
Technically they only block the second game launch if both are online. If you switch steam to offline mode, you can launch as many games as you want.
That's slightly better, but the salient question is, how would these things function in system that overall is more rights respecting and built on free software principles? It's still an anti-feature, it's still drm, and it's still a component of a part of Steam that is proprietary.
While Steam is doing a lot of good, it can't be forgotten that the majority of their systems are still not free software, and still fall far short of a more ideal platform.
What'd be really nice to see is maybe something like Bazaar but with a gaming focus. A much more open storefront that can still allow game devs to be compensated for their work.
Guillotine ALL billionaires
Is this just blind zeal for dogma, or do you have any scrap of justification to mob justice this guy? To be blunt, I can point to evils that Gabe is responsible for, and if you can cite one, I'll support ya - but if you're oversimplifying "rich = evil" because it's a convenient and fun, than you're as evil as those you'd behead.
In the wake of the French revolution many good people died for the crime of being distantly related to a noble. After we murder a few billionaires, can we take their money and make a gift of it - we could then gift billions of dollars to anyone we don't like and murder them for being a billionaire! It's a perfect system!
Yes. Gabe is rich - but honestly their behavior is by and large the practical example by which other billionaires are condemned. If all billionaires were as responsible as Gabe, society would be much less inclined to grab their pitchforks in the first place - we'd still have a broken system that needs fixing, but without gaudily selfish billionaires I'd be optimistic that it could be fixed without bloodshed.
All rich people are evil, it's obvious. If you end up with a lot of money and you're somehow not evil, you'll give it away instead of becoming rich.
I don't believe you. I believe you're earnest, I just also believe you're wrong. If you grew up in a modern industrialized nation with luxuries like plumbing, sub millimeter precision engineering, electricity, internet - are you suggesting we tear those things down because others don't have access to them? 'Cause if no, I have news for ya, buddy - by the standards of history, you're exceedingly rich. You wouldn't understand though because all rich people are evil, obviously. 🙄
There's a difference to having plumbing and having useless shit like holiday houses, private swimming pools, luxury cars, gold tat etc. And a multi-millionaire like Gabe Newell can even buy all of that and still have a lot of spare money to pay off anyone for any reason. Why would any single person be entitled to that?
Gabe worshipping is cringe. he's a dude. have some self respect.
capitalist. he’s not a dude.
he just happens to run a business that is beloved by its customers and that fact is not lost on him
Let's all celebrate the capitalist pig!
I'm not a fan of him, but other tech billionaires have been engaged in publicly shaming or calling for vendettas against anyone angering them. Or indulging in shameless shows of wealth. Or simping for cruel politicians in exchange for asshole policies favoring white Christian males -- and enormous tax breaks. Or aiming to destroy anyone opposing them by using information stolen from the masses.
Why does this dude have to be a billionaire? Like he has some decent views, but being a billionaire generally not ethical unless you are a billionaire in Indonesian Rupiah, because then it would only be tens of thousands of Euros.
I don't think it's necessarily evil to become a billionaire. But remaining one absolutely is.
Man simply got rich on the platform he helped created. Hardly recall any instance he asked for more.
there is no such thing as “simply” when it comes to capitalists.
Valve still takes 30% of revenue for every game that's sold on Steam. Granted, you do get a fair bit for it: payment processing, deployment, advertising, statistics, workshop. But the average street mob boss who takes a cut for letting you have a brick and mortar store in his territory still only takes 10%, so that's that for comparison.
Maybe Gaben wouldn't have a superyacht and Valve wouldn't be designing ultra expensive custom hardware if they took the same share as a criminal mob boss, instead of driving indi game studios out of business.
Real curious where you got that 10% figure from. Like I know you pulled it out of your ass 'cuz in my experience the real number is a flat fee for your business sector (do you really think the mob is running a tax service to calculate amounts owed??) but dude there's no standard here. Also indie game studios are absolutely flourishing right now, especially on steam.
There's real reasons to criticize Steam, maybe use some of them instead of just making stuff up?
Just talking from personal experience for the figures, it doesn't really matter. Do you really think Valve is entitled to a third of everything that they let on their platform? Absurd.
You could have lead with presenting their 30% cut as absurd on its own and had a discussion about that! Or gone with the lootbox/skin controversies in CS, or the license-only access to digital goods, or even their abandonment of game development in favor of becoming the middleman but... instead you chose to make the claim that steam is 3x greedier than the actual mob. So, because that's your whole argument, it absolutely does matter that the numbers you're using to demonstrate the validity of your point are lies you just made up to make your argument sound good.
There is a real and important discussion to be had here, and bringing in your bullshit does nothing but damage the credibility of the people you support who are actually trying to have that discussion.
Gabe doesn’t do a lot of interviews and mostly keeps out of the public eye. Elon Musk also had a lot of fans until he started running his mouth too much and revealing who he really is.
We already know a bit about Valve's internal culture due to leaks and interviews, and it's dysfunctional but in a completely different way from almost every other company.
Thanks to having a small headcount plus more money than God, Valve has zero (internal) pressure to release, and has embraced a culture of freedom where developers can work on whatever they want. This has led to tons of Valve projects getting 80% finished before being abandoned once they reach the final stages of development and are no longer fun to work on. Every release they've managed since Steam took off has been due to a few major players with the charisma to swing others to join their pet projects and stay for the long haul.
In a rarity for the field, I'm not aware of any toxicity issues in Valve's workplace or a single complaint about Gabe himself. Those who've quit have nearly always said it's because their passion project got canned due to it being so hard to get anything past the finish line. Other than that, employees seem to love working there (the massive paycheck probably helps too).
Gabe seems to be held in high regard, even though the internal structure he's cultivated is such a mess. And I still prefer this clusterfuck of inefficiency to literally any other AAA developer.
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