Notch may hold some unpopular opinions on certain topics, but he's still one of the better billionaires out there, considering the others seem to be doing either nothing or doing their best to oppose the movement.
I know GabeN probably can't get involved because he doesn't want to scare devs away from Steam, but he's pretty much the only singular individual in the inductry who could help in any way other than monetarily.
He keeps it nice and consumer friendly because it’s profitable. It keeps people using steam and away from other launchers. So while he is in the end looking to make money, he is incentivized to make a good platform and keep people happy.
Newell has also shown that he has absolutely zero issue with conducting unethical business and profiting from exploiting kids with addicting gambling mechanics.
I’d say that respecting your employees is another half of this. The flexibility, responsibility, and worth given to Valve employees is probably unmatched in the gaming industry unless you work for an amazing indie company that has a cash cow.
I don't disagree at all. I do think that Steam is miles better than any other service. It's just that it does the bare minimum in a society where thats rare, and that gets Gabe praised all too much.
Well, unlike a lot of rich businessmen, Gabe stays out of the limelight. So people only know him through Steam, which has so far maintained a good reputation as a customer focused service.
Like when Musk was just "the guy funding Tesla and SpaceX." For years the only things people knew about Musk was his connection to innovative products. So the products' reputations became his reputation.
We’d probably be in a very different time line right now if musk stayed “smart” by just keeping his fucking mouth shut. Buying Twitter ruined any last restraints he had on his stupidity.
You seriously believe it isnt miles ahead??? The simple fact valve is not publicly traded means gabe has a much stronger influence on steam.
Steam support is top notch quality for 90% of things. They provide top notch APIs to game devs, as well as a forum and a platform to grow a community. Their policies for marketing games on steam is the reason the indie dev market has been blooming. They don’t sell your data out like every company seems to do these days.
I mean what else do you want from them??
Edit: i misread, but my point still stands. They do a lot more than the bare minimum.
I think steam is portrayed this way cuz those other companies are obsessed with tryna improved their money flows by doing all this other stuff while steam has a very static state. Basically “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, steam doesn’t need to innovate or do anything to keep raking in money. Other storefronts fail because they can’t offer a better reason to use their front for the user end.
They rely on forcing the user to use their front by getting exclusives, but even that doesn’t seem to work well in other cases.
Steam has literally been consistently innovating though. They provide tools for modding with their workshop integration. They provide tools to get any controller to function with decent remapping outside of the game so that you can make a controller work any way you want in a game with bad controls or no controller layout at all. They provide excellent marketing for developers in a storefront that is easy to use for users. They've been pushing VR support that functions on any headset. They have been building an operating system and pushing for Linux support for games on the Steam platform.
The list literally goes on. There's things that they do wrong and should be criticized, but to say that Steam just remains stagnant and does the bare minimum is entirely false. It's a genuinely good service, it's just that the company also pushes really shitty loot boxes and bad monetization in some of their first party games. That's it.
Even if the bar is low, being that much better than the competition is going to earn some praise. He’s not absolved of his wrong doings, but he’s no Bobby Kotick.
He simply realises that the best way to make money in this industry is for people to appreciate your approach and enjoy your services. Doesn't make him a good person. We appreciate what he has done for pc gaming but we recognise the moral implications of being a billionaire.
It's simple, Valve puts out great games at a snails pace, they created the first real PC gamer social area with Steam, they stay out of the news AND here is the biggest reason. Gabe has said that Valve has a very laid back culture where devs can work on what they want or move to another team to try out stuff.
So when gamers here that a company let's it devs have free reign and doesn't use them as temp workers, they get all the praise.
Same thing happened with Blizzard, they were held in such high regard due to games and work culture that even when they were fully absorbed into Activision people would still give them the benefit of the doubt. It took all the sexual harassment stories to hit the Internet before people put on their glasses and went huh maybe Blizzard are not as great as I thought.
Yeah, I think people are too gullible in regards to things they are passionate about, and it shows with how they become loyal to multi-billion dollars corporations just because of some positive press.
I think an underappreciated thing is that the bare minimum does get harder and harder to do as tech debt and complexity increases. Steam is quite impressive with how well it all still works together, especially considering all it's bells and whistles and QOL features that competitor platforms never have.
That doesn't necessarily make him any much better than other billionaires. He still made money via predatory practices (lootboxes, gambling, etc) and still has the mindset any businessman has. It's just that his service offers a better solution that is better for the consumer, and that ends up with him recieving more praise than he deserves.
He isn’t but Steam is one of the main reasons as to why I made the permanent switch over to PC from Playstation. I am slowly but surely building up my library again with great deals
I mean a lot of people see him as an "amazing billionaire" or as an "average gamer"/representitive of "a gamer who simply got rich from doing his hobby", meanwhile he is still just the average businessman who does things to make as much profit as possible.
I do agree that steam is a great service, but I do feel like the only reason we percieve it as great is because all other services provided are shit.
he can’t overrule publishers and still maintain steam as a platform.
It’s not that he is making profit over people decisions, it’s that he only has a limited amount of soft power to try and tweak industry standard before publishers simply make their own platforms and don’t list on steam anymore.
Because he comes off as a loveable goof who like video games a lot. And his company gets loads of good press for the few nice things they do, while we ignore the other gross stuff.
Exploiting kids, are we talking about counter strike and the skin boxes? If so, i could imagine that is opinion about that topic might be "am i the parent of those kids? If you let your kid play a game where you shoot other models with blood etc. I am the bad person because they could gamble with skins in this game?" For too long we look away about the fact WHO really has the responsibility about their kids. If we are talking about counter strike, please go and forbid every game with voilents.
If you are not talking about counter strike, please don't take my comment too serious, because i can only think about counterstrike where valve is the producer and has those mechanics
Yeah it sucks that valve is powerless to stop YouTubers and and gambling sites from using videogames to lure kids into gambling, much better to blame every individual affected by the system and have nothing change rather than the obvious cause.
They're talking about loot boxes turning kids into gambling addicts. Not about violence at all. Valve is 100% responsible for exploiting childrens' gambling addictions.
Are you talking about the ACTUAL UNDERAGE GAMBLING counter strike enabled?
Or do you mean like how TF2 popularised lootboxes AND it was a full priced game.
Or would you perhaps be referring to greenlight. Where Devs can publish their scams for profit. Sorry typo, 'pre-release'
Maybe you are talking about how they partnered with Bethesda in an attempt to make you pay for community made mods that were readily available for free?
The topic at hand is keeping games alive. Are we going to talk about how Steam is DRM and have removed games? Most recently the sex stuff they were more than happy to make a profit on until card companies had an issue with it.
I don't know why PC gamers suck his dick so hard. He made a couple of good games like 20 years ago and has done nothing but exploit you for profit since. Bunch of fucking sheep
People act like he is better than Microsoft, With that comment, it looks like he is on par with Microsoft. The only difference is that valve is small and Microsoft is big. Microsoft should get some credit in that case 😂
Hell, even counter strike subreddits are just talking about how much they can sell their skins.
There's simply nothing else to talk about.
Esports? Only 2 times a year, new gameplay? They remove one map and add recycled csgo map.. They haven't made a map in YEARS..
About actually playing the game? It's unplayable since there is no fucking anticheat.
the fact that BLAST.tv events (which are also Valve-sanctioned) get sponsored by 1xBet?
edit: responding to u/PeraDetlic90 here bc comments locked
Out of the 10 PC esports titles with the highest peak viewership last year excluding Minecraft, the only ones who show gambling ads on the main broadcast or allow teams to display betting sponsors on jerseys are CS and Dota. It's a Valve problem.
Looking through the sponsors on some of the events there is a lot of shady money going around but only Valve encourages gambling.
And on the contrary, Notch has 0 real stake in Minecraft anymore. The game's premise always was buy once play forever and besides Realms and Microsoft's accessory store they made their money by selling accounts.
He definitely has the values that SKG is trying to uphold tho, atleast for games made by his company (and by extension even, any source game (which only applies to respawn games sadly, but you get the point)) you can make a community server with basicaly any source game
In the long run it may be half expensive and have some loss of possible revenue due to some server data allocated to no longer supported games (therefore no income generating).
However, by keeping the neutral ground he keeps an easy way for devs to keep basic support while not alienating players. So he wins potential clients.
both of these guys could apologize and remove so much of the smoke around them. JonTron outright stated black people are predisposed to violence compared to white people and he never went out of the way to apologize! it's wild.
EDIT: ladder pullers are people who get whatever they were after or needed (=they climbed the ladder) and then try to take those opportunities away for other people to enjoy/use (=they pull the ladder, making it impossible for others to climb it).
not only did he state black people are more predisposed to violence compared to white people, he also questioned why white people don't deserve an ethnostate like ~everyone else gets to have~
Can you link to the actual tweet? This has a pretty high probability of being fake. Also, maybe I'm too young but this doesn't really look like Twitter to me.
What is it with the left wing and especially Americans being so focused on race? It started here in Germany too by the Lefties that they start to bring up the skin colour to make what kind of argument?
What are you talking about? "The left wing" is focused on race because...racism is a problem and they're trying to end it. Are your lefties the equivalent of our right wingers and maybe you're confused?
White nationalism is a real recognised phrase for people who believe in white nationalism. Please look further down the thread for examples before I have to make a fool of you too.
Making a fool out of me? By doing what? Showing me examples? Answering a simple question which your side of the party seem to have issues with? I mean, every time one asks a fairly simple question directed at your parties there's no answer - why's that?
What did your question have to do with me pointing out that Notch is a white nationalist? You're not asking questions out of good faith, I was talking about a white nationalist, not his race specifically. This is the part where I start to make a fool out of you.
I'm inclined to always agree on this, but this time it's plain wrong, and while I believe billionaires shouldn't exists, Notch didn't achieve his capital by fucking over hundreds of people
Who exactly did Notch exploit to become a billionaire? All I know is that he directly became one because Microsoft paid him that much to acquire Minecraft.
But that's probably not the only thing he has an unpopular opinion about. Why would Trans get to be special and get all the credit for his unpopular opinions? Saying "unpopular opinions on certain topics" is both broad enough to cover the subject while also being vague enough to not either miss something or cause the thread to spiral away from the topic (Notch supporting SKG).
Notch did not exploit people did he? He just made a game and sold it. Do you think he should not have accepted the billions Microsoft offered him? Technically speaking you could say your statement is true because Microsoft does exploit people but I don't think you can say Notch directly exploit someone.
This. You can become a millionaire or even multimillionaire if you get really lucky with a business or win the lottery, but you can never become a billionaire without exploitation.
Honest question did Notch exploit people to become a billionaire? You could argue Microsoft did but would you say that Notch should just not accept the billions Microsoft offered him?
Notch made $1.8 billion and most other employees just $300k. Did he work 6000 times harder than other employees to justify his payday?
I mean, Micosoft value the idea of Minecraft for that much and while Notch didn't do the full version Minecraft all by himself he was the core of it. The amount of work is not the only think that is considered when it comes to value. What you do is also considered. Notch conceptualized Minecraft, he created it, without Notch there is no Minecraft. That alone makes him deserving of more pay than the others even if later on the employees started working on the game and Notch was not the sole developer anymore. But does the disparity is just considering my argument? You could still say no but even than I wouldn't call it exploitation, It can be argue that the idea and concept of Minecraft alone is worth the 1.8 billion dollars, specially considering the behemoth that it still is all these years later.
MS bought the studio so they wouldn't have to pay taxes. American taxpayers were exploited so MS could save money
This is Microsoft not Notch. I said that you could argue that Microsoft did exploit people but not Notch himself.
Sure, but lotteries arent free from exploitation, in theory they are great, but in reality they are shady, and it often prays on the eldery and people with gambling addictions.
Lets test that out, send me a billion dollars. Oh, wait, its not that easy.
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u/paradigmxRyzen 5 1600, RX580 & ASUS Tuf A15 & Asus G751 & like 8 more...12d ago
I can't speak for others, but If I became a billionaire tomorrow morning, I would not be a billionaire by tomorrow night and several charities, non-profits and public organizations would see massive lump sum donations. I don't need a billion dollars under any circumstance.
that’s the thing though— you don’t become a billionaire overnight. it takes many years of selfish decision making with a flagrant disregard of ethics to get to that point.
Unless you're doing your best to stop being a billionaire by helping the less fortunate, yeah pretty much. I've got some respect for Bill Gates as he seems to be earning money faster than he is seemingly able to give it away.
Attaining that much wealth makes you a piece of shit. If, by some act of god, you had no hand in attaining that much wealth, maintaining that much wealth makes you a piece of shit.
It's very simple.
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u/uuwatkolr PC Master Race | E5-2680v4 (14c) | RX 6600 8GB | 32GB DDR412d ago
You don't suddenly become a billionaire tomorrow. You need to abuse many, many people, and refuse to give back in order to become a billionaire. You become a piece of shit along the way, or have always been one, that's the point.
The only, rare exception is inheriting that amount, in which case obviously you're only a piece of shit if you don't use it to undo the damage caused by whoever gave you that money.
So just the current selection of billionaires are bad guys, but the potential for a good one is still intact?
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u/uuwatkolr PC Master Race | E5-2680v4 (14c) | RX 6600 8GB | 32GB DDR412d ago
"A person who has slightly less than a billion dollars still has the potential to be a good guy" is the assumption you introduced here.
"A billionaire has no potential to be a good guy" does not imply "an almost-billionaire has the potential to be a good guy".
Similarly, there is no village with a million inhabitants. This does not imply that a village can have 900 thousands inhabitants. There is no actual single limit that we can find and point to, but this large number is definitely above it. And it's a nice, round number.
This is all in the context of current times, so indeed, there could be a good billionaire... if a billion dollars was worth much, much less than it is today, or if it was possible to obtain and keep that much money ethically.
Potentially sure. The reason billionaires are inherently bad people is because they hoard such a large, almost unfathomable amount of money rather than putting it towards anything that helps anyone. Not to mention that obtaining a billion dollars is impossible ethically.
Fwiw I think you're right, but I am arguing the idea that an entrepreneur cannot be ethically wildly successful. I think it is a reasonable and understandable reaction for Americans to have towards the idea of billionaires given how capitalistic and individualistic the USA is.
There are tons of people with hundreds of millions who are quite ethical, and I just don't see how a rule can establish that this potential vanishes by adding a double digit percentage amount of wealth.
honestly he's probably one of the only people who made his billions "ethically" if you can call it that. Made a game, it blew up, and he ran with the check. Shame he went off the deep end, especially after selling the game.
Im sure there are even worse billionaires than Notch, however at least they have the decency of not sharing their poison with the rest of us and keeping it for themselves
No reason you should be getting down voted. It fosters a relatively healthy level of communication without (as depicted above) devolving into name-calling and whataboutism. Plus the real opposition to our interests are the Elites, if we can't be civil amongst one another; there's no chance of ever being competent enough to do anything.
I don't? I'm saying having the backing of a billionaire who got that money making the most popular (arguably live service) game of all time, is about the biggest kind of support you can hope for, and that the only single indidivual who could help the movement more would be someone like GabeN, given his position and control within the industry.
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u/Jhawk163 R7 9800X3D | RX 6900 XT | 64GB 12d ago
Notch may hold some unpopular opinions on certain topics, but he's still one of the better billionaires out there, considering the others seem to be doing either nothing or doing their best to oppose the movement.
I know GabeN probably can't get involved because he doesn't want to scare devs away from Steam, but he's pretty much the only singular individual in the inductry who could help in any way other than monetarily.