this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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Steam is privately held, so there's plenty of reason to be hopeful. The recent rapid enshittification of what feels like every company is mostly due to US laws that require publicly traded companies to squeeze every last dollar out or face severe penalties. Privately held companies are not subject to those laws, and so they can stay actually decent and care about their customers without threat of legal repercussions. An example is Lego Group - there's some valid criticism, but legos have stayed a top quality product for nearing a hundred years - and show no signs of suddenly degrading in quality. So, I wouldn't worry unduly about this until Valve announces an IPO. Then you should start worrying.
Just to be clear, there's no actual law requiring that. It's just an excuse they use to be greedy.
If you breach fiduciary duty the best thing you can hope for is to be fired. Executives have been criminally charged for it as well though. And while it has to be an intentional act of malfeasance, that gets pretty blurry when the shareholders hire thousand dollar an hour lawyers to come after you.
So while yes, the root cause is greed, the system itself is setup to feed that.
It's more complicated than just one law that says "you must be a bastard" I admit, but fiduciary responsibility is a core requirement of any publicly traded company and very much is legally enforceable (this parenthetical aside stands in for about three pages of niche caveats and overly wordy exceptions that I'm just going to shamelessly handwave away). At best a CEO might be found to be civilly liable, but ~~peasants~~ non-C-suite employees are criminally charged for neglecting their fiduciary duty every day in the US.
Absolutely, but fiduciary responsibility, has never and was never intended to mean absolutely maximizing profits and especially at the long term expense.
That was a twisted idea that was put forward in the late 70s early 80s as a means to justify destroying companies for short term gain.
Oh, then yes I agree completely!
...
So anyways you coming to Steve's "eat the rich" party? I hear he's got a new barbecue.