Both Sony and Nintendo have been consistently posting record revenue numbers in the past few years. Neither are that far off Valve.
Regardless, this whole Steam circlejerk reminds me of the early days of Android, when people still believed that Google wasn’t “evil”. Let’s hope I’m in the wrong here.
Google isn’t privately owned. It’s hard to be on the stock market and not be evil. I think Costco is the only one that has managed it for any appreciable length and that is under threat of death from one of the co-founders.
The difference was that people pretended like Google ever had an option to “not be evil”. At the end of the day, they were a publicly traded company, and thus, line must go up, or else the collective hive mind of the public market would vote the leadership out and replace them.
Steam is private, thus, the current leaderships can ignore the demands of the public market hive mind. Private companies can be evil, but it depends on who owns them. They’re not guaranteed.
Fundamentally you can’t compare a private and public company. Private companies have a legal requirement that drives them towards becoming shitty for the consumer. While a private company isn’t.
Steam is literally a mom and pop shop. A huge one but it is. They have no legal pressure to enshitify they have no legal requirement to put money and share holders before customers cause they have no shareholders.
Public companies do not actually have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. That is a myth based on a misreading of the Dodge V Ford decisions. That specific reading of the precedent of that decisions has never actually been used in a court case to charge a CEO.
![Steam competitors be like. [Extended?]](/https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/8d2d46eb-234c-41bd-b7c1-fb9c4c9f2508.webp){kind=link}
Both Sony and Nintendo have been consistently posting record revenue numbers in the past few years. Neither are that far off Valve.
Regardless, this whole Steam circlejerk reminds me of the early days of Android, when people still believed that Google wasn’t “evil”. Let’s hope I’m in the wrong here.
Google isn’t privately owned. It’s hard to be on the stock market and not be evil. I think Costco is the only one that has managed it for any appreciable length and that is under threat of death from one of the co-founders.
In fairness Google was just becoming evil at that point. It was a fantastic company when the founders ran it.
The difference was that people pretended like Google ever had an option to “not be evil”. At the end of the day, they were a publicly traded company, and thus, line must go up, or else the collective hive mind of the public market would vote the leadership out and replace them.
Steam is private, thus, the current leaderships can ignore the demands of the public market hive mind. Private companies can be evil, but it depends on who owns them. They’re not guaranteed.
Fundamentally you can’t compare a private and public company. Private companies have a legal requirement that drives them towards becoming shitty for the consumer. While a private company isn’t.
Steam is literally a mom and pop shop. A huge one but it is. They have no legal pressure to enshitify they have no legal requirement to put money and share holders before customers cause they have no shareholders.
Public companies do not actually have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. That is a myth based on a misreading of the Dodge V Ford decisions. That specific reading of the precedent of that decisions has never actually been used in a court case to charge a CEO.
Umm… I think I’m confused now
The first word of that sentence should probably be “public” - then it makes sense.