there's a big difference. a corporation is owned by a board of investors. those companies are legally obligated to provide maximum return for their investors. corporations have been sued for being "too charitable to their customers" rather than maximize profits. a private company can do whatever it wants at the whims of it's owner. in this case Gabe Newell actually kind of wants to create a decent experience because that's what he believes has created their market dominance. he's right.

corporations like Ubisoft and ea are legally obligated to squeeze you for every penny in their platforms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

what word would you use then? megaentity? megabusiness?

[–] thedirtyknapkin 10 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (2 children)

like... company or business. they're not actually very big compared to true megacorporations. like Amazon and ge are megacorps. they make many many things across thousands of facilities with millions of employees. you cannot live in modern society without encountering them. be it amazon Web services or the light bulbs in the street lights outside. valve is just a company. they do one thing and do it well. there are alternatives that you can easily use. it is not hard to avoid them as a company and most people don't actually use steam. sure, most Western pc gamers do, but that's a small percentage of the global population.

valve is just a company. not even an especially large one. not every successful business is a megacorp. some aren't even that bad. the world is shades of grey, some big businesses are much much less bad than others. valve doesn't do much harm. megacorporations always do.

[–] kautau 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It’s most certainly still a corporation, that’s the way a business is organized, but you’re correct that because of their private ownership steam hasn’t fallen to the levels of the other gaming platforms that are constantly trying to tweak their UX toward engagement. I do wish they’d clean up their UI a little, but if that comes at the cost of keeping the platform how it is, I’m fine with it.

[–] thedirtyknapkin 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

oh, i guess you're right. they're just a privately owned corporation. regardless of specific terminology the point stands. they aren't publicly traded and certainly aren't a megacorp. and i also don't agree with evening they do. i generally like gog better.

people are just always painting things like this with way too broad of a stroke. there's a serious problem with conglomeration. Sony is a megacorp in the gaming space. a true megacorp that makes and has a gigantic hand in almost everything. from tvs to music to books to weapons of war. they exist solely to absorb wealth from any and all spaces they can. I'm real bummed about them acquiring kadokawa recently... it will not be good for games, anime, manga, or light novels.

that is not valve. they are not part of that problem and this point is weakened by people saying that they are.