• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3665 months ago

    It’s called “being privately owned” or “not having to suck up to shareholders”

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1595 months ago

      Yup hit the nail on the head. Not only can he make decisions that are risky that don’t pay off he is also 100 percent legally in his right to make decisions that lose the company money. If he feels it pushes the industry in the right direction.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        405 months ago

        It’s crazy to think the Steam Deck may not have been a reality due to this. And crazier to realize that Valve probably, at the very least, doubled their annual revenue due to all these new Deck owners, some who may have never had an account before, now buying all these games because of the cheap handheld.

        Not only that, all the lack of proprietary things on the Deck like locking down the OS or forcing only Steam games and discouraging emulation or disallowing mods and upgrades like the removable SSD, even on the cheapest option with eMMC that is usually reserved for cheap soldered storage.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          165 months ago

          If revenue growth is farther out than end of next quarter, it doesn’t exist

          • capitalist
        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          115 months ago

          Doubled their revenue? I think you’re severely underestimating how much money Steam pulls in yearly if you think ~2 million Steam Decks are that much of a percentage of it.

          • Fushuan [he/him]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            115 months ago

            They weren’t talking about deck sales, they meant the games that the new deck users that didn’t own a gaming PC bought from steam. Idk if that holds true but that’s what they meant.

    • @Socsa
      link
      English
      565 months ago

      Valve also has a very unique organizational structure where engineers manage themselves and pretty much all decisions are handled by horizontal committees.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      345 months ago

      Costco is a public company, and their CEO just pushes back whenever investors ask why they don’t increase the membership fee or prices on staple goods.

      His answer is consistently “because we don’t need to”

      There’s definitely room for companies to have responsible growth. It’s just that most execs don’t care enough and just want a giant payday in the form of short term gains so they can do it again at another company.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        95 months ago

        It seems like no publicly traded C-suite cares about a brand anymore. Even though building a loyal userbase and delivering a consistent good product is essentially a long-term cash machine, they all just want the short-term growth and quarterly profit.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          85 months ago

          I’ve given up on brands. It used to be that brand meant something, but most of the solid brands have been bought out and turned to crap for a quick buck now.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        125 months ago

        That’s the facet people miss. Being privately owned gives you the opportunity to make better decisions. Doesn’t mean they’ll actually happen.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      165 months ago

      I say this every time this comes up but if valve changes CEOs or talks about going public then run.