Valve doesn't sell ad space on Steam so it can make room for surprise hits: 'We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win'

Valve seems to be the only company on this capitalist world that actually understands that company profits cannot and should not grow exponentially forever without eventually destroying itself. All other companies don't know or want to stop the greed ad are constantly pushing for more profits to see until where they can push the greed and milking without losing "too much" costumers. They even weight the amount of costumers lost vs the extra profits to see if its viable to lose those costumers and still profit, like Netflix. Valve does not work like this. Valve grew to a size, and that size is giving them stable and steady profit. And they are holding that size, slowly growing more here and there but nothing big. The biggest thing they did in like 10 years was the Steam Deck and they will not update it with a Deck 2 anytime soon. Valve plays the very slow, but steady profits game. This is how you win as a company. You try to keep yourself on a balance between good profits and good public perspective.

If you wonder why public companies with billions in revenue can't make a Steam competitor is because they can't think long term, being a private company allows Valve to just work on what they want and grow If they need to

I'm not one that usually calls for the "Hail Corporate" BS where people lick the boots of big companies. In fact, I typically am very anti-corporate in every way, but Valve is one company I honestly have very little problem giving my money to. They very rarely have any anti-consumer things that crop up and every one to memory they've taken feedback and course corrected very rapidly. I'm afraid for the day Gabe Newell dies or retires, though. Whoever takes over Valve is going to have some big shoes to fill.

Google started out the same way. Hopefully this sticks

I really hope that Gabe has future-proofed valve. It really is a remarkable treasure and one of the most user-friendly platforms of all time. Especially in these days when we are seeing a corporate takeover of the internet, or realizing that we lost a long time ago when we put all of our eggs in the Google basket.

I could see so much potential for fuckery happening, can you imagine if steam was as fond of kicking people off the platform as Reddit is? Or if games were constantly being curated to make sure they check all the boxes like the YouTube algorithm does? Five Nights at Freddy's would have never existed if steam played by those rules, same for every other surprise Indie hit

Gabes replacement will be the tell all. and as much as i want steam to exist over multiple generations..i dont think it can survive turnover, greed, opportunistic bastards.

I hope Gaben outlives me.

Steam is a store.

Why would they try and sell you someone else's goods?

LMAO.

all hail Lord GabeN

SideQuest VR went the exact opposite direction.

If Steam isn't pay to win, how do I earn the points used to buy the profile doodads (avatars, avatar bezels, backgrounds, banners, etc) without purchasing games? 🤔

Based

Giga chads

Permanently Deleted

Lol. This is a cute idea but we all know it will go through enshittification with time. You are naive if you believe otherwise.

...Granted you can turn this off, but by default every time you start Steam an ad for a game flies up in your face.

I would also call every single store page on Steam a "sold ad." Again, granted that it doesn't seem you can pay to promote your game above anyone else's and the search seems to be fairly straightforward and functional.

While I do feel there is definitely advertising that happens on Steam, I'm okay with the level of it. I can find products I want, and products I do not want are not mercilessly crammed down my throat.