this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
1200 points (98.6% liked)
Source Memes
951 readers
53 users here now
Community for memes about the goldsrc/source engine and Valve games.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's called "being privately owned" or "not having to suck up to shareholders"
Yup hit the nail on the head. Not only can he make decisions that are risky that don't pay off he is also 100 percent legally in his right to make decisions that lose the company money. If he feels it pushes the industry in the right direction.
It’s crazy to think the Steam Deck may not have been a reality due to this. And crazier to realize that Valve probably, at the very least, doubled their annual revenue due to all these new Deck owners, some who may have never had an account before, now buying all these games because of the cheap handheld.
Not only that, all the lack of proprietary things on the Deck like locking down the OS or forcing only Steam games and discouraging emulation or disallowing mods and upgrades like the removable SSD, even on the cheapest option with eMMC that is usually reserved for cheap soldered storage.
If revenue growth is farther out than end of next quarter, it doesn't exist
Doubled their revenue? I think you're severely underestimating how much money Steam pulls in yearly if you think ~2 million Steam Decks are that much of a percentage of it.
They weren't talking about deck sales, they meant the games that the new deck users that didn't own a gaming PC bought from steam. Idk if that holds true but that's what they meant.
He also doesn’t need to demonstrate revenue growth every 3 months.
This is the big one
Drags them kicking and screaming
Valve also has a very unique organizational structure where engineers manage themselves and pretty much all decisions are handled by horizontal committees.
I heard they had to stop that momentarily for Alyx to get done.
Is this true? I'd love to get a source or smthn.
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/half-life-alyx-helped-change-valves-approach-to-development/
Ah, thank you!
Costco is a public company, and their CEO just pushes back whenever investors ask why they don't increase the membership fee or prices on staple goods.
His answer is consistently "because we don't need to"
There's definitely room for companies to have responsible growth. It's just that most execs don't care enough and just want a giant payday in the form of short term gains so they can do it again at another company.
It seems like no publicly traded C-suite cares about a brand anymore. Even though building a loyal userbase and delivering a consistent good product is essentially a long-term cash machine, they all just want the short-term growth and quarterly profit.
I've given up on brands. It used to be that brand meant something, but most of the solid brands have been bought out and turned to crap for a quick buck now.
epic are also private, the difference is that Gabe aren't a dubmass CEO, now epic...
That's the facet people miss. Being privately owned gives you the opportunity to make better decisions. Doesn't mean they'll actually happen.
I say this every time this comes up but if valve changes CEOs or talks about going public then run.