I know he has a fleet of megayachts but i wasn’t awake he owns an entire megayachts business
friendly reminder that valve is not your friend. they operate the way they do because that’s their business strategy to make the most money long term.
No corporation or billionaire is your friend. No matter how nice they appear just because the rest are genocidal sociopaths.
Not all of them are necessarily evil either, but regardless of their intentions, they’re almost always a net loss for society.
Regardless, we should reward socially beneficial behavior. Billionaires are humans, and as such trainable through a correct reward structure. Harm reduction is important.
They deserve negative reinforcement though. “Rewarding billionaires” for anything feels very wrong, regardless of the ends.
Do you want to punish billionaires for their wealth hoarding sociopathy or to make things better? Both is ideal, but one matters more than the other.
Ppl used to worship billionaires, musk, gates, etc. were very popular until recently, musk killed his reputation overtime by not shutting up lol
They are always donating outside the counry too, like great and all but youd think theyd help the country and ppl that made them rich instead of cutting down on employees and maximizing profits
I think people have realized that A) they’re never going to be that rich, B) being that rich means you’re an evil person. We just want to fucking live. The only ethical billionaire is Dolly Parton.
And of course they are maximizing profits. They are all sociopaths. If they weren’t, Dolly wouldn’t be (as) special.
Negative reinforcement or positive punishment?
Negative/positive refers to the introduction of a thing (positive) or removal of a thing (negative), while reinforcement/punishment refers to the intended effect.
Negative reinforcement is the removal of a displeasurable stimulus. Positive punishment is the introduction of a displeasurable stimulus.
Similarly, positive reinforcement refers to the introduction of a pleasurable stimulus while negative punishment involves removing a pleasurable stimulus.
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But remember the CIA is TOTALLY your friend!
~unless you are a third world country. Terms and conditions may apply~
He’s also not an enemy though. For an extremely wealthy person he’s a decent guy imo. Then again, I don’t know everything about him
Quite a lot of people thought Elon was a decent guy once upon a time.
I just think Gabe is a bit smarter in what he says and does publicly. Most extremely wealthy people seem to be higher in measures of narcissistic traits, self-entitlement, and egocentrism.
Fair points. Let’s hope he doesn’t lose his marbles
So we should hate him on the off chance he might one day be a douchebag?
Why take away a motivation to be a decent person by punishing them for it? I would say give them every opportunity to be decent human beings, dont pre-crime their ass because you have a prejudice against people in their social class.
Most extremely wealthy people seem to be higher in measures of narcissistic traits, self-entitlement, and egocentrism.
Literally what capitalism rewards the most as they’re the most willing to exploit.
Eh, decent guys don’t need that many boats
His wealth is stolen. He is the enemy.
All billionaires are the enemy. Valve is privately-owned, which means their evil is more long-term. You know the shit Sony’s getting flack for right now? Valve’s been doing it for over 20 years.
Gabe is absolutely an enemy, stop sucking this guy off… He doesn’t give a damn about you. The only reason valve even offers refunds is because they got sued multiple times for not doing so. Now you get a measly two hour window and people will actually defend that. Meanwhile gog gives you a full 30 day window but cultists only want to use steam.
Gabe intentionally destroyed physical PC games and therefore permanently drove up game prices. He did this using literally the same tactics we all criticize epic for using. But moron gamers will act like getting $10 off a AAA in a steam sale is some kind of crazy deal.
Fairly happy to find a business that wants to make money long term. Pretty rare these days. I would say thats a good thing, wouldnt you?
How do they do it? Looks like expanding into the open hardware space, the open source space, have good customer service and avoid ads except to promote games.
And the alternative is what? GOG?
In the end they are just a store front, so it isnt even like they are the only place to buy a product, yet somehow they are the only ones that seem to even give a shit about me playing games on Linux.
And then there are the employees. As far as we know (please if you work at valve say something) they are the highest compensated people in the it/game industry.
Valve is legendary for being a good employer. I remember hearing about an employee who tried to tender a resignation when he was diagnosed with something chronic and debilitating. Can’t remember what. Anyway, point is, he decided he couldnt do his job, tried to resign, Newell refused to accept it and told him “your job at Valve is to get better. Come back when you’re better.” So the employee kept his pay, his benefits, all of it. And this was right around the release of HL2, so Valve was not yet the monopoly market maker it is today. Gabe Newell is a billionaire. He may or may not be a good person. But he is a forward thinker and a good boss.
Yeah there was some leaked payroll data around 2021, so its old info, but with bonuses, profit sharing and base salary the average compensation is something like 1.4 million per employee.
Way back when Gabe said he didnt want employees he wanted partners and they would share the success. I don’t know what its like today though.
I would say thats a good thing, wouldnt you?
Yes, that’s why I simply reminded folks that they are a business and not your friend. So many people jumping to Valve’s defense over a perceived slight makes me feel the reminder is necessary.
That’s…that’s how a business should operate. Not chasing quarterly reviews and stock prices, but being in business as long as feasibly possible. Making products and/or services that meet the need of the market and continual improvement of them.
Instead most businesses, especially dealing with video games, are ran by short term thinking psychopaths who only care how a quarter looks and not the long term sustainability of the entire company. They saw a massive influx during the Covid lockdowns and didn’t realize that was temporary growth for a particular difficult time so keep chasing those kinds of profits with layoffs, studio closures.
You are not my friend, doesn’t mean you are my enemy either.
I think Gabe acts more like the European rich. They are still pieces of shit, but they learned a long time ago to STFU about their money after a long history involving guillotines and the like that the U.S. hasn’t experienced to the same extent just yet.
I will settle for a company who’s demonstrated long term strategy is mostly in line with my interests. It’s not perfect, but I’ll take “morale because it’s profitable” over “enshitifcation for a quick profit”
that’s why i said friendly reminder and not “boycott valve”
Fair, fair.
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Their organizational method is pretty cool and their book on it is open sourced.
Cool, still not your friend.
It is very cool
I like steam I send them a christmas card every year with my life updates.
I never thought he was my friend. The CEO being my friend is not a requirement for running a company I don’t mind buying from.
Do you refuse to buy toilet paper because no TP company CEO is your friend either?
when did i say never buy anything from valve?
Corporations are not your friends. They may do something you like but will shit on you if it benefits them.
Yeah, og only more companies thought that way. Most seem to only care about making money in the short term.
Yeah you’re right 😔 why can’t they be motivated by morals and social high standings like people
Fuck capitalism
Steam is a good service compared to the alternatives, but corpos will always be corpos. Having loyalty to any company, no matter how good they seem will inevitably lead to disappointment. That said…the vast majority of my game library is from steam, but I have been trying to get more of my games from GOG. Its best to be safe cause you never know when companies like valve will go mask mask off and become the next EA or Microslop.
I guess if they ever decide to go public, that would be the start of the enshittification process.
Steam is a good service compared to the alternatives, but corpos will always be corpos
This. I was telling friends back when Google’s motto was “Don’t be evil” because the rule is never trust a corporation.
Then again, I grew up around the home of WalMart so I guess I may have been used to shitty tactics with the veneer of “helping the community”
It’ll happen when Gabe dies and gets replaced
What’s wrong with having yachts, and a yacht company?
The business provides a service, employes people, most of his employees made a million a year.
Money that didn’t go to back into the company or wages.
So they should make how much them? They already get millions a year in compensation. You think the employees sold her paid more?
Already you think those yachts are free? That money went into circulation.
Their wages should go up with profit indefinitely.
And if they really make that much money, they should be paying more taxes.
Nobody should be a billionaire.
You think the guys making the yachts are making a million dollars a year?
No, the people that work at valve do
I am boss man. I have lots of money, I don’t need to work, you need work or you die.
You work for me, I give you payment. It’s a good payment, more than average person, you can live comfortably on it.
But your work gave me a yacht. You exchanged a multi million dollar yacht for $1 million. Why? Because I had the leverage to force you to accept such a shitty deal. If you didn’t need to make this deal to live, you’d tell me to shove it and go make all your money’s worth with your labor.
Capitalism is exploitative by design, and a capitalist contributes nothing but control of industry. Valve and Steam is a great platform to use today, that doesn’t make Gabe a good guy or somehow mean he deserves the vast majority of his employees’ labor value.
Specificly the yacht company is bad because it’s a useless service only servicing the Uber rich and is a hallmark of excessive decidence, I get what your saying but it’s a bad marker given current socity.
That’s what I hate about billionaires.
They all spend their money on luxury shit like this for themselves or other people like themselves.
None of them ever thinks of helping poor people get housing, food and healthcare.
Like imagine what you could do with that kind of cash. You don’t even have to give it away, you can just run good businesses that aren’t based on unsustainable greed.
Say you build decent housing and set the rents so the break-even date is 40 years from now, let your foundation own it, and kick back with a tall glass of milk. Say you build an insulin factory in Vermont and pump out pens at $7 each. Say you buy up some farmland and build proper greenhouses to grow food efficiently, allowing 90% of the land be rewilded.
Why in the fuck would you buy 3 Bugattis every year.
But think about the big number going up!
Or just putting the money back into the company or wages.
That too
I actually support the rich spending money on extravagant yachts. The problem is when rich people hoard money and just use it to get richer. When they spend it, that money goes to employing people. Do you have any idea how many workers it takes to build a yacht? Then you have to hire people to maintain and run the thing. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from the rich to the working class.
When rich people try to use their money to “improve society” they inevitably end up using it to influence politics and to try and control things. After all, if your goal is to use your money to help to improve the world as best you see it, you quickly realize that the best bang for your buck is by buying politicians.
For example, imagine someone genuinely does want to spend a billion dollars to help people get medical care. You could spend that billion on paying people’s medical bills, or you could spend a billion dollars lobbying for Medicare for all. If you’re trying to spend money to change the world in a direction you feel is best, politicians are the best bang for your buck. So you end up with politicians being bought by various rich people, each tasked with enacting what the rich people view as the best path for the world. One way or another, it means that the wealthy completely control the government, rather than the people. And while you’re probably in favor of Medicare for all, the rich people will be lobbying for whatever they think the world needs most. Their idea of charity might be spending a billion dollars to “protect babies” by lobbying against abortion.
I would rather the rich spend every penny they have on extravagant luxuries. Their ideas of charity are usually quite different from my own.
They don’t have enough cash to help the poor or feed everyone, let alone tackle housing. California already spends 60k per homeless and hasn’t fixed anything. So thing another billion is the problem?
And Amazon makes about 2500 dollars every second. If we taxed them at my tax rate, that would be ~1000 dollars a second. So every minute that Amazon is taxed at the same rate as the rest of us would pay for services for a homeless person. There are ~180,000 homelsee people in CA, we could pay for 60 of them in an hour, 1440 a day, and all of them in 125 days. From taxing one company’s current profits at the same rate that the rest of us are taxed.
Tax. The. Rich.
You know who gets rich in a gold rush? The guy making the picks.
Gotta spend all that monopoly money some way.
I have seen plenty of comments here trying to make Gabe out to be an ultra bad capitalist evil villain because he owns this company that, as far as I’m aware, pays it’s employees. And most of those arguments are around the fact that it’s a mega yacht company. All sounding like people shouldn’t have unnecessary luxuries. If we went down that route, nobody needs video games, nobody needs music recordings, movies or tv shows, nobody needs clothing that expresses themselves, we all should only have the basic necessary tools of work and the most utilitarian of clothing and homes. Food only to sustain, not enjoy. Tell me I’m wrong.
I won’t disagree that some people don’t need mega yachts, but I feel that having this company, maybe he could work on building better floating housing systems. Or maybe he is employing people and giving them good paychecks for working on these yachts.
Tell me I’m wrong.
You are wrong. Russian oligarchs and billionares shouldn’t have access to any sort of luxury the same way a pedophile or a rapist shouldn’t. They are criminals. You can be rich, even a millionaire but to get away with a billion you have to play dirty and be greedy. Valve did evil shit such as promoting gambling to kids. Owning multiples megayachts it’s not like watching tv or playing videogames it’s more like collecting elephants tusks. We are on the verge of a climate crisis and everyone is getting poorer, the megayachts business is a smack in people and humanity face.
So, I love boats and sailing.
Megayachts aren’t for people who love boats and sailing, they’re for rich people who love the privacy of having a mobile private island. In their operation (big diesel engines, fiberglass hulls made with MEK, dumping raw sewage and such), they pollute a lot more than basically any other method of travel/living.
The people at Gabe Newell’s company probably make decent money. But it’s a dangerous job working with extremely toxic chemicals (if it’s good for the boat, it’s bad for the environment, and it’s bad for the workers). A lot of them probably have to retire early with health problems.
I love boats and sailing, but this megayacht shit sucks.
Its a great example of why we don’t want to abandon calculated social services for the whims of billionaire philanthropists.
Even the best billionaire backed project is still taking their part of the pie, even if it’s just adhering to their vision.
EoD society generates value and we have right to collectively invest that value in bettering our own circumstance. Billionaires syphon that value from society and give it back to us pennies on the dollar.
What a weird parasocial position to attempt a sincere defense of… Really planning for the future huh, you temporarily embarrassed millionaire?
One daty you’ll get that sweet mega yacht invite, and you’ll be able to say, “don’t worry friends, I always had your back when THEY would try to disparage you” and they’ll say, “we always knew you were different, better… one of us, Stewart. We just had to wait until you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, as of course, we all had before”
The amount of tankies on here is why, some of them just hate the fact rich people exists and not the fact a lot of them simply cheat the system and exploit legal loopholes and do shady deals. I don’t like that mega rich people exist but I don’t care if they do simply exist, I HATE that they influence legislation and law to suit themselves in spite or neglect of the average person, It’s childish to attack those who are simply successful.
I don’t think you know what a tankie is…
far lefts that dont realize they have more in common with an Totalitarianism then they do democracy or real Marxism?
Not wanting Billionaires to exist and own megayachts isnt far left. They are beating you to the right with the overtone window at this point
and your makeing assumption as well with that statement, just because someone is successful doesn’t mean they should be punished for just that, plenty of far bigger names to hit then gabe.
They shouldn’t be punished, but they shouldn’t be rewarded to the point where they’re building things like megayachts while the majority of the people on earth can’t own a vehicle of any kind.
It’s obscene
Don’t forget he bought his kid a racing team.
It’s amazing you defend this guy for rent sitting because he’s one of the good billionaire monopolies 🙄
If Epic took like 10% of the budget they use for free games and timed exclusives and put that towards making their UX not dogshit, Valve wouldn’t even have a monopoly.
It would help if they also supported Linux and open source.
Nah, the UX isn’t the problem. Fixing that isn’t going to convince all the Valve fanboys. They will find something else to bitch about.
Something else? Ah, the review system is also terrible. If a product sucks and you get a refund it will remove your review.
The reason people like him even here where most billionaires are hated, is that he’s doing essentially nothing to maintain the monopoly and Valve gives back to the community by working on Linux compatibility. Sweeney, despite having much less market share, is the one engaging in monopolistic practices (paying for exclusives in particular) and refuses to even consider Linux a potential target OS, he wants gaming to remain Windows-only.
“Shipyard owner puts pirates out of business”
Seems like a massive waste of time, skill, and resources.
So is playing Counter Strike
Yea it is, so it seems like everything surrounding Gabe Newell is a massive waste of time, skill, and resources.
A megayacht is defined by the ability to fit at least one standard yacht within its swimming pool while still leaving ample room for maneuvers.
Fuck me that’s in my home town!
What’s a gay acht ?
