this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Happens when you don't have competition. (Except to steam seemingly)

[–] niels 153 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The difference is that Valve is privately owned. They don't have to please a board of shareholders who want to see the platform milked for the slightest increase in profit margins.

[–] [email protected] 107 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Bingo. Enshittification is mostly confined to companies that have gone public or whose sole aspiration is to do so quickly.

It shifts responsibility from satisfying customers/users to satisfying shareholders (who are never satisfied).

You can build the perfect product and ride a gravy train as a private company in relative perpetuity. As a corporation, you're just going to strive for perpetually increasing profits on a quarterly basis with no real care or focus past that

[–] ArchmageAzor 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We need more companies like that, then.

[–] TwilightVulpine 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For that you need passionate people who are wealthy and not primarily driven to acquire more wealth. That seems to be very rare in large scale businesses.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It isn't wealth that breaks or makes it. The system, and in this case the shareholding system makes it or breaks it. Valve owner Gabe is insanely rich (in the billions I assume) yet, because the system he put up, it is consumer friendly.

The system is the one, not the people.

[–] TwilightVulpine 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, the problem is when shareholders only want profit at any cost. These are the wealthy people I was talking about.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, the other thing that's kind of stupid is - lets say a companies stock once issued goes to 0 and is delisted. So what? That's not the company going bankrupt. The stock market valuation has no direct application to a company once the shares are issued and bought the first time. But ignoring shareholder demands that would destroy the company wouldn't likely tank the stock of a otherwise good company - because there's someone out there who just wants value to hold and preferably dividends vs infinite growth (that doesn't exist). Now, you could buy enough stock to throw out the CEO and whatever, but that's likely to be expensive and a PITA. So while there's going to be some high profile examples, A) that gets close to taking a company private anyway, and doing a shitty job and B) generally limited numbers of companies will have people going to these lengths.

I think the bigger issue isn't wanting companies to be profitable - that's kind of the point of companies. The issue is shareholders trying to make capital gains on everything. This isn't possible long term because infinite growth isn't possible. I would argue what people and decent investors should want is the steady dividends and not worry about if the stock is up or down.

[–] cottonmon 2 points 1 year ago

This isn’t possible long term because infinite growth isn’t possible.

I could never grasp why the growth needs to be constantly growing instead of the business just consistently being able to generate profits. It's not sustainable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I'd have to think Newell has a lot more skin in the game or passion for his platform. He actually believes in the business and what they do, instead of just viewing it as a way to make money

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

So you're telling me that I can generate stable revenue if I work on my product and try to satisfy customers? Sounds kinda radical... who do we even screw over to get the money??

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This isn't entirely accurate. If Valve were a public company, the enshittification factor would increase significantly. The reason they're great now is because the current board is the original founders who are passionate about their business, and actually care.

Private or not, once Gabe and the other old farts die, Valve will enshittificate. That's almost guaranteed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Private or not, once Gabe and the other old farts die, Valve will enshittificate. That’s almost guaranteed.

I think they will just live on as ghosts in steam itself. GabeAI here we come!

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Steam has some competition, its just that said competition never took off because Steam is so much better.

[–] Dasnap 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

(Except to steam seemingly)

For now. I'm curious what'll happen when Gabe eventually retires.

We also can't ignore the fact that the Steam Marketplace is a hellhole and the origin of a lot of today's microtransaction hell.

If you buy all your games on one platform then you're thoroughly fucked if it turns heel.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

We all know the answer to this. There will be a hundred threads with thousands of comments with people saying it's not bad, the company promised x and y and we should be cautiously optimistic, but in the end it always ends the same way.

Exactly the same thing happens with IBM buying Red Hat. No shortage of articles talking about how this will be good for Red Hat and the entire open source community but of course last month they started the enshitification process that will now March on relentlessly. Even now there are defenders of red hat, talking about how it's not that bad and there are workarounds, but in the end they fail to see this is just the first step.

Once started on this path, the rule is always enshitification, any exceptions are exceedingly rare. If steam ever gets bought/sold it will follow the same path and it's defenders will stay by its side until it looks like the screen shot above.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I agree. As much as I like what Valve is doing and currently trust them, I prioritize buying games on GOG and keeping archives of the installers.

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

The point still stands though, you can easily filter out anything you don't want to see.

But I doubt the same would apply if it was owned by shareholders.

[–] Dasnap 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A future change in leadership could very easily lead to it going public and then all the regular bullshit follows. Don't just assume it'll always be great; always be ready to jump ship.

I get worried with the amount of gamers who want Steam to be a monopoly. The existence of competition seems to upset some people and it's really odd.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A future change in leadership could very easily lead to it going public and then all the regular bullshit follows. Don’t just assume it’ll always be great; always be ready to jump ship.

Ok, but what has that anything to do with what I said?

[–] Dasnap 3 points 1 year ago

Only really the first part of my comment. I ended up on a rambling tangent for most of it.