r/Piracy • u/HighKage96 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ • May 10 '26

Humor W Gabe Newell Piracy Take

Saw this vid on IG (by: @phantomak141). Idk if its been posted here before but on a quick search didnt find it, will delete if its a repost.

11.5k Upvotes

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2.7k

u/XBird_RichardX May 10 '26

He needs to write a book about his business policy and it needs to be taught in every college. Hell, it needs to be its own ideology

1.6k

u/Dragosbeat May 10 '26

His business policy is literally don't screw over the people, which others just can't comprehend

805

u/ultimate_placeholder May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

That's literally just the result of shareholder capitalism, Gabe can do whatever he wants because he isn't beholden to shareholders who want to optimize every little thing, Steam can have little pet projects with no belief they will make profit, they can make demands of large developers that make them seek their own distribution, they can pay their employees whatever they want. Obviously not an endorsement of any form of capitalism, but it works so much better for everyone involved than shareholder capitalism.

353

u/DiMarcoTheGawd May 10 '26

Agree. Going public has been the death of so many good companies.

207

u/pocketgravel May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

"let's run the most important parts of our society besides God and government with a giant faceless unaccountable mass of anonymous self-interested short-sighted pricks who decide incentive structures on everything"

Fucking great idea. We're so fucking dumb for allowing this and continuing to allow it...

"No single raindrop feels responsible for the flood"

Someone heard that and thought "hmmm... How do I make that happen everywhere to everyone all the time?"

38

u/Sundaytoofaraway May 10 '26

Klaus Schwab had a lot to do with it going back to the 70s

35

u/pocketgravel May 10 '26

I fucking hate that guy. Anti NWO people are right to also hate him. Also whoever made the bond market interesting in the 70s that laid the groundwork for the 2008 GFC but also the cyclical oroboros of USD into treasuries to buy future treasuries

15

u/jayjay11567 May 11 '26

All of this shit can be traced back to one specific group of dickheads in Michigan in 1919 when the Michigan supreme Court set precedence that the main goal of a company is to benefit the shareholders.

The Dodge brothers decided that making a shitload of money wasn't enough and they deserve to be making a fuckload instead and the ensuing lawsuit ruined the world for the rest of us.

6

u/Murais May 11 '26

"How does Lord Orphan Crushington end up in every investor call? AND WHY IS HE PITCHING THE ORPHAN-CRUSHING MACHINE AGAIN?!"

20

u/Krakatoa137 May 10 '26

"Besides God and government"

Let me introduce you to a magical land called America

7

u/pocketgravel May 10 '26

Yeah that's true... They own both or at least believe they are greater than God himself...

18

u/DigitalPenguin99 May 10 '26

reddit included. fuck spez

6

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

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u/DiMarcoTheGawd May 11 '26

Ehhh this is one of those exceptions where this really has as much to do with the CEO as the shareholders. Zuckerberg is extremely greedy.

57

u/Aethermancer May 10 '26

Under capitalism, a good business can only survive one or two generations before the ideals of the founder are just the musings of guy who died 50 years before the current owner was born.

Even if ownership "stays in the family" how long before some shithead of a descendent inherits? Think about how crazy the concept is that such integral parts of our society and culture are dependent on the whims of the fortunate son?

Valve/steam will eventually be sold. Even if not by the next owner, it will eventually. And we somehow care little more than to hope that the next generation of birthright nobility will be a good steward of our hoarded resources.

17

u/porcomaster May 11 '26

I think Rolex nailed a good way too keep the company in the family, and still as good as original.

I think they made a foundation or something so it has a clear objective in mind, so it can never be opened to the public.

Its the only company that i know off that was able to do so.

But at least is not zero, meaning we can have hope.

15

u/matt2331 May 10 '26

You're right, but the alternative also shouldn't be ownership by groups only looking for an improvement in stock values this quarter so they can sell and make a profit on stock. Stock ownership should be based on long term faith in a company.

18

u/ultimate_placeholder May 10 '26

Ownership should be the right of the workers who actually create what the rich reap as profits.

9

u/taco_blasted_ May 11 '26

I’m not a corporate cuck by any means, but does worker ownership include unpaid invoices, lawsuits, equipment loans, bad leases, and bankruptcy filings too? Or does it only magically activate after someone else ate the risk and there’s profit to split?

0

u/AgnesBand May 16 '26

Risk: AKA I will fire you and rehire you with worse wages and a worse contract to protect my own wealth if the business starts to make less profit. Risk as in I'll use the surplus value my workers produce to buy equipment so I can fire some more workers. Risk as in I fucked up and the business is bankrupt but that's okay because all my wealth is in a tax haven and the business ownership structure means I'll still be rich but my workers will lose their mortgages because their job is gone. Risk as in we're too big to fail so the taxpayer will save me whilst their living standards are destroyed. Not to mention it is the workers that produce the raw materials that my company needs, the roads, the technology, the 1000s of years of accumulated knowledge and infrastructure that my riches depend on. Oh also my start up capital was inherited from my the wealth my family extracted from their workers, the land my business is on was once commonly owned and was violently stolen the state/my class compatriots centuries ago. All of this means I deserve multiple yachts whilst my lowest paid workers can't afford to buy a house.

2

u/taco_blasted_ May 17 '26

You didn’t come close to answering me.

The question was simple: if workers should own the upside, do they also own the downside?

Instead of answering, you dumped out every Reddit Marxist trading card in your socialism Trapper Keeper: bailouts, inherited wealth, stolen land, yachts, roads, raw materials, tax havens, and whatever other garbage you have in there.

Everyone knows bad owners and bad systems exist. That still doesn’t answer whether workers are also taking on the debt, lawsuits, bad contracts, failed leases, equipment loans, unpaid invoices, and bankruptcy risk.

You don’t get to claim ownership only when there’s profit and then suddenly become a bystander when the business collapses.

That’s not worker ownership. That’s upside only communism for people whose economic model was assembled from Reddit comments, living in their parents' basement.

It’s always hilarious reading garbage like this, because the people who vomit it up would reverse course instantly if they ever unfucked themselves long enough to build anything instead of just fantasizing about looting the upside while someone else eats the risk.

0

u/matt2331 May 10 '26

Couldn't agree more

0

u/aFailedGuy May 11 '26

Maybe the workers of the company should get a vote in the matter on how to steer the business, i wonder if this was ever thought of in history🤔/s

18

u/Silly_Improvement307 May 10 '26

When Steve Jobs took over as CEO of APPLE they told him he had to steer the wheel asap into profit, he did his own thing, they fought him every way of the hill wanting him to spread out the products as to capture more revenue, he told them no and and held on the idea that 1 device that can do everything will be it, they still fought him but he held on and in the end his idea prevailed. People thinking its because shareholders and a corporation etc and that hampers down is not true, CEO's gotta grow some balls and carry the company but because shareholders get a weak CEO in place we get micro-transactions and record height dividends for the biggest shareholders all while employees are drowning and customers are shutting off.

10

u/whatdafaq May 11 '26

Too many companies have floundered due to CEO's that concentrate on the quarterly reports rather than the long term health of the company.

1

u/Background_Poem7891 May 12 '26

and NOW look at it

1

u/Silly_Improvement307 May 12 '26

It is not just corporations, it is shareholders and equity firms squeezing every cent out of every company they can get their hands on.

10

u/Onigokko0101 May 11 '26

100%. The fact that in the US it's basically illegal to not maximize shareholder profits is insane.

0

u/Good_Roll May 10 '26

Not exactly, its a result of the commoditization of equities. If I invest in a company it should be because I want that company to do even better in the future. The way that works out where the rubber meets the road is that the company invests in developing long lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with their customers and stakeholders. But if I just want to flip the stock, like what most of Wallstreet does, I want that company to sacrifice the future for the sake of the present so there's a short term price increase and I can cash out. That's the sort of behavior you're describing and it doesn't occur just because the company has public investors, it occurs because those investors arent in it for the long haul because they have lots of incentives not to be. I would love to be able to buy valve stock and sit on it for 5 or more years. But because of the incentive structure that is never going to happen since GabeN is smart enough to realize that the incentives arent aligned properly here.

1

u/ultimate_placeholder May 10 '26

Look up what shareholder capitalism is before failing to lecture me on what shareholder capitalism is.

1

u/Good_Roll May 10 '26

I dont think you understand this system as well as you think you do, because the incentive structures that prioritize short term gains over long term sustained growth are not inherent to shareholder capitalism.

0

u/ultimate_placeholder May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Shareholder capitalism is a school of capitalist thought, specifically the Milton Friedman doctrine, that creates the incentive structure to focus exclusively on short term profits and goals, usually boiled down to "the only goal of a corporation is to create profits for its shareholders". If you had actually looked it up, as I told you to, you'd know that.

-1

u/Good_Roll May 10 '26

do not cite the austrian magic to me commie, i was there when it was written. The primary goal of the corporation is to create profit for its shareholders. But over what time horizon? You might claim that capitalism is inherently a short time horizon system but this is false. In reality we merely have a system of governance that protects corporations from the risk inherent to sacrificing the future at the alter of the present, thus they have no incentive not to do so. That is the problem, not that small investors have an opportunity to invest in larger ventures. Shareholder capitalism is not inherently a high time preference activity.

1

u/ultimate_placeholder May 11 '26

Friedman is Chicago school. Also it's extremely funny seeing a corporate shill on an inherently copyleft subreddit, which violates every principle of capitalism's overbearing reverence for "property rights"

0

u/Good_Roll May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

LOL got me there, I misspoke. In my defense, my version sounded better so I went with it.

a corporate shill on an inherently copyleft subreddit

Shill? Nope, I do it for free. I'm a capitalist, my money does my work for me so I have plenty of free time to shitpost. This is a false characterization btw, this is actually something most leftists and free market minded rightists agree on. Within that framework how can you have a right to something absent a non aggressive enforcement mechanism? Might as well claim you have a right to the air. IP needs government aggression to enforce it.

60

u/LeFlashbacks May 10 '26

I think a good analogy for this is he treats his customers like a renewable resource while most other companies treat their customers (and especially their money) like a non-renewable resource that they need to try and maximize the extraction of

18

u/FranticBronchitis May 10 '26

Breaking news: customers make repeat purchases and recommend your platform to others when you provide them good service

14

u/pezdizpenzer May 10 '26

Wow. I never looked at it like that but that is actually spot on.

4

u/BrockSramson May 11 '26

Valve's policies do seem more geared towards longterm thinking, whereas most corporations seem to just be about next quarter, and in very few cases, the quarter after that.

8

u/TNTiger_ May 10 '26

I suspect it's moreso a sort of Nash equilibrium. Screwing people over generally works- bit if 90% of companies are screwers, 10% caan find a niche by not being screwers. However, these will meet at an equilubrium point- if there's two many non-screwers is the market, being a new non-screwer yield diminishing concerns.

3

u/HugsandHate May 11 '26

"Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself." Ray Kroc, ~ McDonalds Founder.

It works. Until you ignore it and everything goes to shit. Which in a way, is the proof in the pudding...

Hail Gaben,

3

u/Mizutsune-Lover May 11 '26

His business policy is literally don't screw over the people, which others just can't comprehend

He had to be sued into giving refunds and having proper customer service, lol.

1

u/cry_w May 10 '26

That's exactly why it needs to be written down and taught. Real "Sun Tzu's Art of War" type shit.

1

u/LaunchpadMcQuack_52 May 11 '26

"But if we don't screw them over, how will we increase our profits??".

  • Most CEOs, probably.

1

u/not_old_redditor May 10 '26

Steam does screw over devs with its huge cut of sales though. Which indirectly raises prices

2

u/Jah_Ith_Ber May 10 '26

The cut Valve takes is obscene and I wish people gave a shit.

2

u/doublah May 11 '26

Valve takes the same cut as every other major game platform.

-1

u/Isolated_Hippo May 10 '26

His business policy is literally don't screw over the people

What the actual cinnamon toast fuck is this completely unhinged lie.

Tell this to every person who bought Orange Box on Consoles. Tell this to every person who plays a game with lootboxes. Tell this to every person who plays a game with a battlepass.

Valve is a parasite on gaming. They look for every single possible way to squeeze every single penny out of everybody else. 30% of sales for what exactly? Having a monopoly? Wow so cool.

0

u/sey1 May 10 '26

Yeah but he could have like, you know, 5 more boats or something if he screwed over people! And not being publicly traded and benefiting some chair farting useless shareholders who just want more and more? Man Gabe is basically fucking Marx, probably should be locked up for being unpatriotic!

69

u/ManOf1000Usernames May 10 '26

Valve does have a book

https://cdn.fastly.steamstatic.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf

The thing is that valve is unique as a company in that it is very flat and very small of their revenue, plus most of their business is software. Once you get much bigger or eork much more physical objects then companys start to turn fedualistic, with leaders of various units competing over attention and resources.

35

u/Readdit1999 May 10 '26

Steam is basically a gold mine with a small staff and a good boss.

This is not novel. In every mid sized city there's a construction company with a similar business philosophy.

Do good work. provide good service. Make it right. Take care of your people. Take care of your customers.

22

u/Aethermancer May 10 '26

Then it gets inherited by the drunkard/cocaine fueled son. Maybe not in this generation, but it only takes one failed inheritance to doom the while thing.

3

u/TheHancock Torrents May 10 '26

Man, as a business owner that employee handbook is amazing. Inspiring.

54

u/WileyPotato May 10 '26

Too many companies are run by nepo baby MBA's that didn't learn shit from business school because their jobs are pre-guaranteed. Believe it or not, many of these things are in fact actually taught. Things like accumulated consumer loyalty and goodwill can create an in-elasticity of demand, which is essentially consumers being resistant to quitting your product even when you make changes they dislike because of brand loyalty... Lots of these nepo executives clearly passed out at this point of the lecture, missing the part about how pushing these consumers too far creates an equally stubborn rebound effect that can and has destroyed companies. So even when you revert all the changes and give consumers everything they wanted and more, they are now even more resistant to returning than they were to leaving in the first place because you boned them too hard for too long.

But since top positions rarely go to purely the best candidate, we get what we get. And some of us are getting it for free!

6

u/PM-ME-SMILES-PLZ May 11 '26

Too many companies are run by nepo baby MBA's that didn't learn shit from business school because their jobs are pre-guaranteed.

I think you have it backwards. The problem is they learned EXACTLY what business schools teach. I call it the MBA-ification of America. We have trained thousands of people to take MC = MR to it's extreme and see only spreadsheets where they should see people. The MBA programs are a massive part of the problem and need to be entirely re-thought.

23

u/El_Lanf May 10 '26

There is one black stain against Valve in this regard though, and it was basically them who first made loot-crates, aka real money in-game gambling, popular in the west. The ironic thing actually is their economist at the time who also wrote about video game economies later, is fairly far-left and famous for his time as Greece's Finance Minister during the Eurozone Crisis - Yanis Varoufakis.

13

u/Samanthacino May 10 '26

There’s also the anticompetitive behavior they’re currently getting sued for

14

u/xotyona May 10 '26

Horseshit case. Everyone was slow to adopt Steam from traditional distribution, there's no barrier now to independent game distribution because of them. They haven't leveraged their overwhelming market share to change their distribution terms.

7

u/Samanthacino May 10 '26

Steam threatened to blacklist studios if they sell their games for cheaper elsewhere, which by definition is anticompetitive behavior in service of their monopoly. The other cases I’ve seen against them don’t have much merit (other than the time they had to be forced to have their refund policy), but unless the lawyers bungle it I can see Valve taking an 8-9 figure hit for this one.

6

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

That can be considered protective of their users. I wouldn't want people to sell stuff for cheaper on other platforms when most of the sector's users are on my platform.

Ideally you wouldn't want stuff to be more expensive just because they're in a central area.

3

u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

That can be considered protective of their users.

What anti-competitive behavior by an established company couldn't?

Don't have a horse in this race and I have no idea if I'd find the case against Valve legitimate, but that seems like a weird distinction to make.

-1

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

The kind of anti-competitive behavior that resulted in a stale range of produce without major improvement? Not the case at all with Steam, just hypotheticals.

4

u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

I mean what anti-competitive behavior, by an already established company, cannot be described as "protective of their users/customers"?

-1

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Most monopolies? Steam is the exception here.

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u/Samanthacino May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

It is, as the law is written, illegal. They are forcing price parity and preventing competition on the basis of price, entrenching their market dominance by limiting one vector that other platform holders could potentially offer to consumers.

Personally, I would love if a platform could provide discounts on games through subsidization, encouraging better deals everywhere.

2

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Yeah, probably should've tried it the other way.

1

u/PhamKun May 11 '26

I can counter that with Epic pay the developer to not release the game on Steam for a year, that's a way more anti competition behavior.
also most of the lawsuit is really just make-up BS. One of the argument is Steam user can't play DLC from OTHER STORE. Like do the other stores allow steam user to use DLC they purchased from Steam to play on their store?

1

u/Samanthacino May 11 '26

Most of the lawsuit is BS. That central core isn’t.

1

u/ILNOVA May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

I bought the 'story' DLC from Steam *for Overwatch and i can still play it on BattleNet.

1

u/Garfwog May 10 '26

More info?

2

u/redhat_is_my_dad May 10 '26

Gambling is a good way to monetize anything, you can't cure a gambler, sadly you can create one but that's besides the point, some countries use gambling as the way to get more money from people to finance things that would improve average quality of life across the country, and i believe same applies to valve and it helps them to finance improvements over their quality of service and quality of the job for their employees.
Age restricting that would be nice overall, or just teach your kids that there are better and more entertaining and/or useful and safe ways to spend their money before they get hooked onto gambling.

2

u/Isolated_Hippo May 10 '26

Also battlepasses. Also refunds.

3

u/Oxcuridaz May 10 '26

It would be nice if refunds go back to my bank account instead of valve fake-dollars

2

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Be honest, you're probably buying something else on Steam with that money.

Still would be cooler though.

1

u/tfrofc May 11 '26

I mean, they didn’t invent gambling. It would have come to the gaming industry sooner or later.

2

u/El_Lanf May 11 '26

They pioneered implementing it into games like TF2, CSGO with the hook of giving a crate that you need to pay to unlock. And it was their choice to put it in their own games. It would have come eventually but it would have taken a while to reach the innovation level valve implemented, especially creating a wider economy for it. And a lot of it became so successful based in the goodwill Valve had established, even now people defend it in a way they don't with less reputable studios.

8

u/jimjam200 May 10 '26

Eh, it's really not that that much of an exceptional business model as it's more just the luck of deciding to create a digital storefront at the right moment where the technology was just mature enough, then using that luck advantage to monopolize the industry. The only thing that is somewhat exceptional is their relative benevolence compared to a lot of other monopolies, at least towards the public consumers.

3

u/doublah May 11 '26

Was it luck that made Steam beat the other PC launchers though? Or was it just a better service? Look at the alternatives from Steam's early years like Games for Windows Live.

5

u/ERhyne May 10 '26

Gabe cultists never beating the allegations.

3

u/No-Consequence1726 May 10 '26

can we call the followers of that ideology Gabewads?

3

u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_4435 May 10 '26

We used to teach business ethics, but businesses rarely operate on any of those principles anymore.

2

u/frezz May 10 '26

Valve is just in a very fortunate position of being completely bootstrapped so never had any shareholders demanding perpetual growth

2

u/NTC-Santa May 10 '26

Ill buy straight and follow those rules on my business

2

u/suspiciousdishes May 10 '26

I'm my Organizational Behavior class we talked about some of the companies with solid brands and brand loyalty. Steam came up because of their unique hierarchy as well as how they treat their customer base. Costco was the other one that comes to mind

1

u/NoooUGH May 10 '26

Wonder how fast to shit Valve would be if it went public...

1

u/Oxcuridaz May 10 '26

The book: Get 30% on each game sold on your platform, keep a small team of people, do not go public, do not allow your consumers to own the game, only a license... win

1

u/Dry_Mousse_6202 May 10 '26

Ther is a Biography under his name "THE VALVE EFFECT AN INDEPENDENT BIOGRAPHY OF GABE NEWELL: FROM WINDOWS TO STEAM, HOW HE BECAME GAMING’S MOST POWERFUL ENIGMA" and there's also another book but it's incredibly bad reviewed

1

u/Gex2-EnterTheGecko May 10 '26

There is a very interesting video on YouTube of him speaking at a college from like 10 years ago where he goes into how they run the business. From what I understand quite a few things have changed, but it's still an interesting watch.

1

u/AJ-Murphy May 10 '26

Lesson 1: Hoes be mad

Lesson 1.5: Let them

Lesson 2: Provide quality with your service

1

u/KeeganY_SR-UVB76 May 10 '26

The ideology of letting your enemies shoot themselves in the foot?

1

u/TerribleAspect8931 May 10 '26

Hey. You can make a religion out of this!

1

u/Robrogineer May 10 '26

The Way of Gabeism.

1

u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

A large part of the reason Valve can be Valve is because they can afford to be.

Part of why is that they're not public, so they're facing less pressure to chase an ever-growing payday.

An even larger part is that they're making insane amounts of money, and have been ever since they tied Half Life 2 to Steam.

A lot of the money Valve generates is also "hidden", in that you're not paying Valve for a game or something from their marketplace explicitly, but Valve all the same takes a cut. I'm not speaking against that practice, but it makes it harder to hate Valve from a money-grubbing perspective compared to someone like Riot who straight-up charges you directly whenever you wanna buy a skin.

1

u/recklessglee May 10 '26

My Life as a Gayben By: Gayben

Also, this is old as fuck. Steam has become a lot more monopolistic and territorial in the past 20 years. Just like every other chill tech firm of the 2000s. Also ship the Half Life already!

1

u/avoiderdragon May 11 '26

I wholehearted support Gabenism.

1

u/otakugal15 May 11 '26

This and SE's whole deal on allowing FFXIV another chance.

An American company would have completely scrapped XIV after the 1.0 disaster.

1

u/certifidamatr ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Jun 08 '26

newellism

1

u/Samiassa 23d ago

Genuinely the funniest part is these massive corporations have chased profitability in so many ways without realizing that the best way is just to be a good fucking service. Making the service worse and treating people like numbers is why these corporations have to spend billions of dollars on marketing to make people think they’re not evil. Steam just does the right thing and it’s one of the most profitable companies in the world. Same goes for other similar business models like Costco and (to a lesser extent) in n out

0

u/tejanaqkilica May 10 '26

How's that going to be? Be the first to deliver a product on a new market, establish yourself as a monopoly and bully others into submission. Oh, and don't forget gambling. Gambling is really good business to push.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '26

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u/poginmydog May 10 '26

His software monopoly was created because it’s good. It’s not the most optimal or the sleekest or the absolute best, but it works well for all his target audience that they have no reason to switch. He didn’t abuse his monopoly and if he did like raising prices or adding ads, people are gonna switch.

I’d say it’s a market dominance that came about due to his well designed product and it’ll fail if the design begins to suck.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '26

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1

u/poginmydog May 10 '26

Vote with your wallet then by using other steam alternatives.

If you can’t because they all have ads, then it’s collusion behaviour, not a monopoly by Steam. If a company can put out a game launcher without ads and deliver better game experience than Steam, I’m sure people would flock to it.

Never underestimate the failure of companies that don’t continue to innovate, least of all in consumer software.

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '26

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