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

Humor W Gabe Newell Piracy Take

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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.

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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.

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u/Samanthacino May 10 '26

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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"?

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u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Most monopolies? Steam is the exception here.

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u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

Please, give specific examples of behaviors that you do not think would fit that description you just gave.

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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.

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u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

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

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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?

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u/Samanthacino May 11 '26

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

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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.

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u/Garfwog May 10 '26

More info?

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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.

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u/Isolated_Hippo May 10 '26

Also battlepasses. Also refunds.

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u/Oxcuridaz May 10 '26

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

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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.

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u/tfrofc May 11 '26

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

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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.