A great feature.
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Valve is a privately held company, and as long as it remains that way it doesn't have those perverse incentives.
Not really true, because that depends on the owners and those will change eventually.
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Epic Games is also a private company... and they're the posterchild for "fuck the consumer, we want a monopoly."
It might have something to do with Epic being partly owned by Tencent and Disney, but it more likely comes down to the philosophies of their CEOs. Gabe came from a corporate shithole and runs with the diametrically-opposed view that good service = loyal customers = profit. Sweeney, not so much.
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He won't die before releasing Half Life 3, which means he's immortal.
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being consumer friendly has brought them more money than any exploitative behaviour ever could have. Getting rid of that would be like butchering a goose that makes golden eggs just so you can get some extra money from the meat.
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I doubt Epic would give out the number of free games they do if they were public. Investors hate anything that takes more than a quarter to give returns.
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Everyone keeps labelling GabeN as the only one holding VALVe to standards, but by his own admission he's more of the equivalent of a board member now, not deeply involved in the day to day anymore. I think the only ones that truly know his level of involvement would be people at VALVe.
What I'm getting at is that I have the same concerns about what will happen after he passes, but I don't think he's the only person standing in the way of VALVe going full corporate.
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Butchering that goose is the common tactic of satisfying shareholders temporarily.
Fortunately, their shareholders are still private and they don't have to go to that level (yet)
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That‘s why I said his mentality leads to consumer friendly decisions. VALVe has been a holacratic since decades and GabeN has no special status. It is only because of his mentality and leadership which infects other employees with the same views. This might change if he passes. Hopefully it does not.
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if i was shareholder i would be furious about that. Isnt "infinite growth" the very point of all this insanity?
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One bad quarter beats any long term growth goals, for some reason