There’s dozens of other people bringing that up in this thread. And to be fair, if Gabe put the money Half Life 3 development, those programmers, writers and artists would be getting paid.
Everyone on here acts like Gabe is THEIR billionaire, and Steam is THEIR capitalist billionaire corporation.
Gabe is a dirtbag and a thief by the sole virtue of being a billionaire. Nobody earns a billion dollars, you get it by stealing wages and time from the workers below you.
Steam is a dirtbag corporation as well, no matter how many fanboys try to sweep Steam’s history of fuckery under the rug
It turns out that things are complicated, and that a company that is pro consumer in so many ways that almost nothing else is can get praised for that and denigrated for doing predatory loot boxes.
And that a billionaire owner can get praised for maintaining a pro consumer company and denigrated for running a loot box racket and buying yachts. All at the same time.
It’s so exhausting how people like you have to go on every thread and complain that people are happy about something instead of mad about everything, energy single time the company comes up.
You’re really going out of your way to baby face the corporation that would fuck and sell your kids if it made them a buck. It’s one of the sickest things about Americans, Their NEED to love and defend billionaires and brands. It’s demented. Gabe could be in the Epstein files and you would go all Megyn Kelly and defend him.
There’s nothing complicated about it, steam is a corporation out to milk you out of your money and so is Gabe.
Imagine having a dedicated yacht hospital for yourself when most can’t afford decent healthcare. I hope people stop idolizing Gabe, he is just your run of the mill billionaire.
He does at least use his vessels for research via his company Inkfish. They map the ocean floor, discover new species, study different underwater environments etc. They actually hold world records for deepest manned dives of all 5 oceans.
Billionaires still shouldn’t exist though of course (not /s)
High chance if he decided to take home “just” $10 million per year, he could pay every single one of the Valve employees at least 100k more every year.
That or they could take less than 30% from developer profits.
In fairness, the employees are the highest paid in the industry, making well over 1/2 million a year + bonuses, and even the janitor I believe is well paid, from a leak that came out once in the news.
They also have very few employees surprisingly.
And they’re private, so there’s no “line must always go up” mentality either.
Should they be paid even more? Yes, but compared to basically all other corporations, he’s like last on the list. Not to mention gaming on Linux and open source software (and now, VR on Linux) has basically become possible and easily achievable thanks to Valve, so at least some of that huge money is going back directly to the relevant community. That’s way more than can be said about any other tech company.
He’s still on the list, but he might be the furthest down.
Usually small, they have a trust company buy the yacht. As a company, it benefits from various advantages/cuts and can be located in the most optimal country. Then the company rents the yacht at cost to the rich person so that the company does not declare profits, the rich person does not own the expensive yacht themselves and they can even deduce the rents from their declared fortune.
There was an article about a year ago posted to Reddit about how Gabe owns 6 yachts worth $1B. I called him out in the comments and got flamed by every gamer on the platform. It’s crazy the mental gymnastics these simps do to defend others living like Gods.
We are so used to billionaires being obnoxious assholes that one that isn’t obnoxious about their billions feels like one of the good ones, I guess.
He made his money (like any other billionaire) by overcharging and underpaying. He wastes his money on useless bullshit like any other billionaire. But he’s not obnoxious about it, which causes people to just ignore the part about billionaires that’s actually bad (the way they became billionaires).
I agree mostly, but Valve employees are reportedly paid an incredible amount of money compared to the market average, so underpaying would probably only refer to the hefty (but industry standard) 30% cut of game sales they take from game publishers.
I’ve been told over and over again that Valve needs that 30% and they can’t possibly do all that they do with a lower margin. Clearly hosting some files, hosting a forum, processing payments, etc is about ONE THIRD of all the talent and effort that goes into creating a game.
Lol yep they’re an extremely wealthy company with that 30%. But it seems like almost every other storefront operates under those margins for digital sales (not just in gaming).
I do value the cloud saves, I think those would actually add up a bit for their storage requirements as well as hosting all of the game files in presumably many locations globally.
15%, they’d still be a multibillion dollar company
But it seems like almost every other storefront operates under those margins for digital sales (not just in gaming)
Notable that Epic Games takes only a 12% cut, and 0% of the first $1 million in sales (effectively 0% for the vast majority of indie games). A cynical take is that they’re just doing this to attract developers to their store, which is almost certainly true, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll take a higher cut if they become dominant. Unfortunately the Epic Games platform is missing the majority of extra features that Steam has (built in streaming, family share, input binding, big picture mode, etc)
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, is about 80% as wealthy as Gabe Newell, and has done much more philanthropy, although it only represents probably less than one percent of his net worth.
True that text is small files, but some Skyrim saves are easily in the dozens of MB for example. I’m sure you multiply that by millions and it adds up. Surely them needing to store many copies of the game files themselves is a larger file size footprint for them though.
I think the underpaying would be not having nearly as many employees as similar sized companies. They could have several divisions producing games while also developing their hardware and software. He has been happy to make changes at a slower pace while their store keeps taking large cuts of each sale.
I suppose so, but maybe they don’t want to grow too large. Microsoft absolutely devouring studios the last few years has not produced any truly great games. Valve clearly know how to make a good game still, when they want to.
More developers doesn’t always means faster shipping of products, but it can lead to disconnected and soulless releases.
Valve only release something new when it makes sense to or they have an innovation that means it makes sense to.
They don’t really work at a slow pace in my opinion, it’s just you may not always see constant changes in one part of their products all the time because of how the engineers work (freedom to work on whatever).
Probably for the best they aren’t hiring thousands of people to pump out random stuff that is only there to make money. They make stuff that makes sense.
He charged less than others and pays better than others.
Valve also can’t take much of a lower cut on game sales because their current cut is the market average and valve would get in legal trouble for monopoly practices and unfair competition because they’re already so much more popular than the few competitors they have. What Gabe could do is give money away and be like alteuistic.
How come Epic can charge 12% then?
I believe there was some thresholds at some numbers of sales also even for steam? Like if you sold a million you pay 20% or something?
Epic is in no position or standing to compete against valve. To be a monopoly, you have to actually own an overwhelming portion of the market you’re in.
I think you are missing the point of my question. Why would valve get in legal trouble if they charged less? Both EGS and steam is stored, no? They should be bound by the same laws. Afaik there are no special laws just because you are the market leader.
I think you maybe need to take a second look at this post- you seem to be substituting random words at places and it makes it difficult to tell what you’re trying to say.
Yes, sorry auto correct got me this time and english is not my native language while writing in a hurry. I should spend more time to try and be throughout in my writing.
I don’t know the laws but from what I read from the previous message is that valve can’t do what epic does because that would be unfair and create a monopoly. To me this sounds very strange as depending on your position in the market you would abide by different laws? If epic would gain a lot more people and players, would they also need to charge more per game then?
once you hit $100M, you have enough to never work again. you could spend the rest of your living days spending time in a community making sure everyone there is fed, housed, and safe.
even just maintaining your personal status quo of working the way you did to get into 9 figures is inherently supportive of the global system of torture all of us are forced to live in. while i agree gabe newell, jay-z, and taylor swift shouldn’t be the main focus of our ire, i find the degree of worship they receive confusing.
Depending on where one lives and how lavish they want to live, 1mil USD at 4% interest is enough to make a life on.
That’s what my financial advisor tells me and I think it’s more than reasonable.
Yeah, it’s like $5. The 4% rule puts this at $200k, and even a very conservative 2% is $100k. That’s more than the median household income, and you get that for doing nothing.
My personal number is more like $2M, which is $40-80k. Assuming my house is paid off, that’s enough for me to be generous while not worrying about basic needs.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
No humor/memes etc…
No affiliate links
No advertising.
No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
No self promotion.
No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
No politics.
Comments.
No personal attacks.
Obey instance rules.
No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc…)
Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
And how much would Half-Life 3 cost to develop?
Or like… Food and medicine for the desperate of humanity?
There’s dozens of other people bringing that up in this thread. And to be fair, if Gabe put the money Half Life 3 development, those programmers, writers and artists would be getting paid.
Developing a good game is not only a money problem.
The good talent that wanted to make that game left because Gabe waited too long.
Fucking disgusting. There’s no way to be a billionaire while not being a total shitstain that just sucks the society dry.
Everyone on here acts like Gabe is THEIR billionaire, and Steam is THEIR capitalist billionaire corporation.
Gabe is a dirtbag and a thief by the sole virtue of being a billionaire. Nobody earns a billion dollars, you get it by stealing wages and time from the workers below you.
Steam is a dirtbag corporation as well, no matter how many fanboys try to sweep Steam’s history of fuckery under the rug
It turns out that things are complicated, and that a company that is pro consumer in so many ways that almost nothing else is can get praised for that and denigrated for doing predatory loot boxes.
And that a billionaire owner can get praised for maintaining a pro consumer company and denigrated for running a loot box racket and buying yachts. All at the same time.
It’s so exhausting how people like you have to go on every thread and complain that people are happy about something instead of mad about everything, energy single time the company comes up.
sigh
You’re really going out of your way to baby face the corporation that would fuck and sell your kids if it made them a buck. It’s one of the sickest things about Americans, Their NEED to love and defend billionaires and brands. It’s demented. Gabe could be in the Epstein files and you would go all Megyn Kelly and defend him.
There’s nothing complicated about it, steam is a corporation out to milk you out of your money and so is Gabe.
Can’t really do anything but roll my eyes at this ridiculous hyperboly
Go fuck your Gabe body pillow
Either you didn’t read what I said originally, didn’t understand it, or are just a sad troll at this point. I recommend touching grass
Gabe looks a lot like me. I think I see where they could have cut some corners.
Is that honestly the most comfortable sitting arrangement he could buy with $500M?
Better boats than politicians.
Eat the Rich includes him
Imagine having a dedicated yacht hospital for yourself when most can’t afford decent healthcare. I hope people stop idolizing Gabe, he is just your run of the mill billionaire.
Ye but he’s one of the good ones
Least bad perhaps. There are no good ones.
/s?
He does at least use his vessels for research via his company Inkfish. They map the ocean floor, discover new species, study different underwater environments etc. They actually hold world records for deepest manned dives of all 5 oceans.
Billionaires still shouldn’t exist though of course (not /s)
High chance if he decided to take home “just” $10 million per year, he could pay every single one of the Valve employees at least 100k more every year.
That or they could take less than 30% from developer profits.
deleted by creator
In fairness, the employees are the highest paid in the industry, making well over 1/2 million a year + bonuses, and even the janitor I believe is well paid, from a leak that came out once in the news.
They also have very few employees surprisingly.
And they’re private, so there’s no “line must always go up” mentality either.
Should they be paid even more? Yes, but compared to basically all other corporations, he’s like last on the list. Not to mention gaming on Linux and open source software (and now, VR on Linux) has basically become possible and easily achievable thanks to Valve, so at least some of that huge money is going back directly to the relevant community. That’s way more than can be said about any other tech company.
He’s still on the list, but he might be the furthest down.
Wow I was a day one Steam Machine, Frame and Controller buyer until this. Maybe people like me are the problem.
It’s not you, it’s the billionaires who are the problem. It doesn’t matter what you buy.
$500 million that could have gone toward the development of Half Life 3…
$1M/year/person, he could have hired 50 talented developers to work on Linux for 10 years, which makes himself a hero afterall.
Or taxes
I wonder what the sales tax on that yacht was
Usually small, they have a trust company buy the yacht. As a company, it benefits from various advantages/cuts and can be located in the most optimal country. Then the company rents the yacht at cost to the rich person so that the company does not declare profits, the rich person does not own the expensive yacht themselves and they can even deduce the rents from their declared fortune.
There was an article about a year ago posted to Reddit about how Gabe owns 6 yachts worth $1B. I called him out in the comments and got flamed by every gamer on the platform. It’s crazy the mental gymnastics these simps do to defend others living like Gods.
G*mers are fucking troglodytes.
We are so used to billionaires being obnoxious assholes that one that isn’t obnoxious about their billions feels like one of the good ones, I guess.
He made his money (like any other billionaire) by overcharging and underpaying. He wastes his money on useless bullshit like any other billionaire. But he’s not obnoxious about it, which causes people to just ignore the part about billionaires that’s actually bad (the way they became billionaires).
I agree mostly, but Valve employees are reportedly paid an incredible amount of money compared to the market average, so underpaying would probably only refer to the hefty (but industry standard) 30% cut of game sales they take from game publishers.
I’ve been told over and over again that Valve needs that 30% and they can’t possibly do all that they do with a lower margin. Clearly hosting some files, hosting a forum, processing payments, etc is about ONE THIRD of all the talent and effort that goes into creating a game.
Lol yep they’re an extremely wealthy company with that 30%. But it seems like almost every other storefront operates under those margins for digital sales (not just in gaming). I do value the cloud saves, I think those would actually add up a bit for their storage requirements as well as hosting all of the game files in presumably many locations globally.
15%, they’d still be a multibillion dollar company
Notable that Epic Games takes only a 12% cut, and 0% of the first $1 million in sales (effectively 0% for the vast majority of indie games). A cynical take is that they’re just doing this to attract developers to their store, which is almost certainly true, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll take a higher cut if they become dominant. Unfortunately the Epic Games platform is missing the majority of extra features that Steam has (built in streaming, family share, input binding, big picture mode, etc)
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, is about 80% as wealthy as Gabe Newell, and has done much more philanthropy, although it only represents probably less than one percent of his net worth.
lol what. No he hasn’t. Get off sweeney’s dick.
I suppose it depends on if you count conservation as philanthropy. Like I said though, it’s not that significant compared to his overall wealth.
Epic only takes 12%, and they too have cloud saves.
If they could take 15% while being a multibillion dollar company, then taking 30% is by definition overcharging.
And that many others also overcharge doesn’t change that fact.
To be fair, epic is losing money trying to gain users from steam. They weren’t profitable even before they lowered their cut.
I’m pretty sure valve could go lower than 30%, but I doubt they could go as low as 12% and still remain profitable.
I’m not disagreeing. Epic’s 12% would still be hugely profitable for Valve.
I bet I, myself, with my current hardware could store ALL of the cloud save files with redundancy.
Save files are usually some type of text. All of the text on Wikipedia comes out to about 24 GB.
True that text is small files, but some Skyrim saves are easily in the dozens of MB for example. I’m sure you multiply that by millions and it adds up. Surely them needing to store many copies of the game files themselves is a larger file size footprint for them though.
What are you betting? Paradox save files even compressed are quite large.
I think the underpaying would be not having nearly as many employees as similar sized companies. They could have several divisions producing games while also developing their hardware and software. He has been happy to make changes at a slower pace while their store keeps taking large cuts of each sale.
I suppose so, but maybe they don’t want to grow too large. Microsoft absolutely devouring studios the last few years has not produced any truly great games. Valve clearly know how to make a good game still, when they want to.
More developers doesn’t always means faster shipping of products, but it can lead to disconnected and soulless releases.
Valve only release something new when it makes sense to or they have an innovation that means it makes sense to.
They don’t really work at a slow pace in my opinion, it’s just you may not always see constant changes in one part of their products all the time because of how the engineers work (freedom to work on whatever).
Probably for the best they aren’t hiring thousands of people to pump out random stuff that is only there to make money. They make stuff that makes sense.
They could pay their employees double. Or even quadruple.
But they don’t because Gabe needs another yacht.
I don’t think its necessarily how much he pays his employees. The larger issue is that the tax rate at the top isn’t high enough.
It’s all of it. He takes too much for the services he offers. He gives too little to his employees. He isn’t taxed enough for what remains.
It makes sense that people can earn a few multiples over the median for working hard and maybe also for taking risks.
It makes no sense that people can earn a million time as much as the median by not working hard and never facing actual risks.
He charged less than others and pays better than others.
Valve also can’t take much of a lower cut on game sales because their current cut is the market average and valve would get in legal trouble for monopoly practices and unfair competition because they’re already so much more popular than the few competitors they have. What Gabe could do is give money away and be like alteuistic.
Steam takes 30% cut while e.g. Epic takes 12%.
No you don’t get in trouble for unfair competition if you don’t overcharge.
Epic dropped to try and compete. It doesn’t work the other way around.
How come Epic can charge 12% then? I believe there was some thresholds at some numbers of sales also even for steam? Like if you sold a million you pay 20% or something?
Because epic isn’t the market leader, by a large margin.
So that means they operate under a different law which was the point of my question? Doubt.
Epic is in no position or standing to compete against valve. To be a monopoly, you have to actually own an overwhelming portion of the market you’re in.
Has Epic become profitable yet? I vaguely remember the plan being for it to become profitable later, and that it was living off Fortnite money.
Steam could just charge at most 20% then though, I don’t remember what the thresholds/conditions for different costs like 30% and 18% are.
Because EGS offers roughly 5% of the services Steam does, and Epic is still spending a shitload of money keeping EGS going at loss.
I think you are missing the point of my question. Why would valve get in legal trouble if they charged less? Both EGS and steam is stored, no? They should be bound by the same laws. Afaik there are no special laws just because you are the market leader.
I think you maybe need to take a second look at this post- you seem to be substituting random words at places and it makes it difficult to tell what you’re trying to say.
Yes, sorry auto correct got me this time and english is not my native language while writing in a hurry. I should spend more time to try and be throughout in my writing. I don’t know the laws but from what I read from the previous message is that valve can’t do what epic does because that would be unfair and create a monopoly. To me this sounds very strange as depending on your position in the market you would abide by different laws? If epic would gain a lot more people and players, would they also need to charge more per game then?
once you hit $100M, you have enough to never work again. you could spend the rest of your living days spending time in a community making sure everyone there is fed, housed, and safe.
even just maintaining your personal status quo of working the way you did to get into 9 figures is inherently supportive of the global system of torture all of us are forced to live in. while i agree gabe newell, jay-z, and taylor swift shouldn’t be the main focus of our ire, i find the degree of worship they receive confusing.
I think the line to never have to work again is pretty far under $100mil
for sure. i just wanted to hit a number that someone couldn’t at all be doubted for “i could retire at 18”
Depending on where one lives and how lavish they want to live, 1mil USD at 4% interest is enough to make a life on. That’s what my financial advisor tells me and I think it’s more than reasonable.
Yes, but I think inflation quickly makes that a pretty low number.
Yeah, it’s like $5. The 4% rule puts this at $200k, and even a very conservative 2% is $100k. That’s more than the median household income, and you get that for doing nothing.
My personal number is more like $2M, which is $40-80k. Assuming my house is paid off, that’s enough for me to be generous while not worrying about basic needs.
He should probably be taxed more
I too take to the seven seas.
He’s come a long way on the last decade.
This isn’t a new pic. Just keeps getting reused for those articles.