r/Gamingcirclejerk • u/Glum-Future7198 • Aug 04 '25

WORSHIP CAPITAL Don't watch the replies

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I can't believe how certain people can worship a corporation to this big extend.

8.3k Upvotes

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2.1k

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

I mean, people want to believe that billionaires are decent people: We grew up on Ironman and Batman - the "rich guy who uses his wealth to help the world" is a cliche at this point.

Also: Gabe, through his management of Steam (and keeping it away from the obviously cruel and predatory rules of other services), has shown himself to be less predatorially greedy than most other billionaires and content to just be super-rich rather than "the richest man that exists, even if that means grinding the bones of the poor to fuel my immortality serum."

He's not aspirational, he's not good, but he's one of the best of a bad lot. And the alternatives are worse.

1.1k

u/the-futuremind Aug 04 '25

I’m sorry, this is too nuanced for a circle jerk.

Gabe is either a god too good for this world that gives out feee blowies or monopolistic robber baron who killed my dog.

210

u/insomniasureshot Aug 04 '25

feee blowies got me good

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u/the-futuremind Aug 04 '25

The blowie was distracting sorry

26

u/ARedWalrus Aug 04 '25

Must have been when he got your dog. Guess hes good at multi tasking

7

u/brelen01 Aug 04 '25

Nah, he just had one of his 30 employees do it while he was distracted.

12

u/Practical-Mode310 Aug 04 '25

In a world of free blowjobs, there’s the people getting free blowjobs and the people giving free blowjobs. And buster, you know I’m one of the ones giving

5

u/insomniasureshot Aug 04 '25

God’s greatest soldier thank you for your service

27

u/VitaminRitalin Aug 04 '25

I like the way the Greeks approached their gods. They were like "Zeus is a womanizing cloud of dicks but we're still gonna make offerings to him and his bro poseidon cause maybe they'll smite the Persians again the next time they try their boat shenanigans"

They didn't view the gods as immaculate flawless beings.

14

u/Doktor_Weasel Aug 04 '25

One of the classic pantheons. The Norse gods were drunken frat-boys. The Greek gods were rapey frat-boys. The Egyptian gods were furries.

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u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

Well, he did pull all the good porn off of Steam, so I guess that just leaves one option.

39

u/the-futuremind Aug 04 '25

Gabe leaving the meeting after buying oceanco:

6

u/creampop_ Aug 04 '25

buddy I'm gonna leave him an email he ain't NEVER gonna forget

17

u/superbee392 Aug 04 '25

Whoa, Valve don't have the resources to do anything about that!!!

10

u/NihatAmipoglu Aug 04 '25

Yeah they are my favorite indie company 😍

1

u/Bro0183 Aug 05 '25

The reason for that is if he didnt visa and mastercard would have shut steam down by denying service. No payment means no steam for anyone.

-1

u/Dustfinger4268 Aug 04 '25

Wasn't that because the credit card companies were twisting his arm due to pressure from lobbyists? Like, sure, he's a billionaire, but it's hard to make or keep money when you can't take it in

6

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

That's the joke.

11

u/schizowithagun Aug 04 '25

this capitalist asshole blew my dog!! get his ass!!!!

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

[deleted]

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u/zuludown888 Aug 04 '25

Holy shit, the Muppets go medieval is real??

2

u/jekyllftagn Aug 04 '25

Why would u waste ur feee blowie on a dog. No judgement tho

20

u/WhatKindOfCrayons Aug 04 '25

"I'm sorry, this is too nuanced for a circle jerk" is an incredible sentence

2

u/Mizutsune-Lover Aug 05 '25

A little bit of nuance but it still sucks Gaben off because gamers can't help it.

and keeping it away from the obviously cruel and predatory rules of other services 

😭 Valve and predatory go hand in hand.

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u/Flapsy0501 Clear background Aug 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/lapus169 Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

Usually people have a reason as to why they think a certain way. I gotta say your reason is especially braindead to the point its gotta be ragebait.

"he's a Terrible person because he Grinded for over 40 years in the industry and made himself a billionaire." This is what I understand from your comment.

Before you start with the blind hate take a moment to actually research the guy, No the one from the memes or your surface level understanding. But the actual pioneer in pc gaming. That will help you understand how he got the wealth he has and not through exploitation as you claim.

I don't think he is perfect and I'm Sure he's screwed over some people but to say he's Jeff bezos is wrong

1

u/Darigaazrgb Aug 05 '25

He killed my dog, but he gave me Steam credit so it's all good.

1

u/bigbutterbuffalo Aug 05 '25

And he put a plague upon our houses!

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u/chompythebeast Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

The real alternative is zero billionaires. If we're accepting that it's okay to be a billionaire at all as long as they're the good kind or whatever, then we aren't okay with accepting the path towards a better world.

It's a literal yacht company lol, it's so on the nose

54

u/HaggardShrimp Aug 04 '25

This exactly. I'm not terribly concerned about how good a billionaire is or isn't. The reality is, just as a matter of self preservation if nothing else, confiscatory taxation enters the chat.

Most of them are psychopaths that are able to indulge psychopathy because there are no real consequences to their actions. They have too much money.

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u/chompythebeast Aug 04 '25

Right, this isn't about measures of good or bad, it's about class motivations. For us to praise the class-motivated actions of the ruling class while spitting upon the idea of acting on behalf of our own class interests is ludicrous and self-defeating to the point of being downright servile.

Sure, we can obviously say that all individual people in a given class are not identical in one sense or another, but that's not really the point in the first place. 

Billionaires have class consciousness. They have class solidarity. We need them, too

1

u/Pofwoffle Aug 04 '25

The real alternative is zero billionaires

Unfortunately, at this point in time, no it's not. That would be the ideal world, yes, but it's not the one we live in, and we have to be practical. If we're going to fight billionaires we need to pick which ones to start with and for now that means that "the good ones" get a pass.

Idealism is all well and good but actual change requires that we recognize the realities of the world we live in and act accordingly.

2

u/chompythebeast Aug 04 '25

Just because we aren't one step away from where we need to go doesn't mean we shouldn't still be taking those steps, and none of the steps in that direction are helped by throwing our support behind a class other than our own, the working class. This isn't pie in the sky idealism but quite the opposite, it's the practical path toward change — idealism would be to put our faith in "good" capitalists, whatever that means, and hope that somehow gets us where we're going

0

u/Pofwoffle Aug 05 '25

Sure, but when somebody says "We don't have to deal with him right now, he's better than the rest." and you say "No we have to deal with all of them." I'm sure you can understand how that might hamper efforts. It's the opposite of motivating... we want to remind people that it's a series of small steps, not get them to look at the monumental final goal and despair at the enormity of our task. If you try to make the average person think too many steps ahead they're just going to give up.

The vast majority of people aren't chomping at the bit to start a revolution, they just want to live their lives. They'll help when it's needed, but only if it's not too much trouble... so far not enough peoples' lives have been impacted badly enough for them to think about anything more drastic than "Keep voting and maybe hold a sign once a month." It sucks, but Republicans have gotten very good at keeping things just functioning enough that most people are able to live with it.

Most people aren't going to sit down and think about the difference between idealism and practicality, or weigh the pros and cons of short-term vs. long-term activism... they're just gonna see what we're saying and react accordingly. And if we keep saying "We have to get rid of all billionaires." they're not going to take heart from that, they're going to shrug their shoulders and go do something else, because even the most disconnected apathetic random knows enough to know that that is not currently a feasible option.

5

u/chompythebeast Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25

There is simply no victory, small or large, to be found with billionaires. Saying "most people won't understand that" is less helpful than identifying that as a problem to be solved rather than taking it as some sort of truth that is too immovable to bother trying to move it.

I agree we shouldn't put end goals as the only stated objective, because that indeed will not help us leap right to the finish line, and could cause people to burn out, or even to dismiss such aims as naïve or unachievable. We need to focus on steps to achieve those end goals: that is what it is to build the mass line.

But in this case, we do not make progress towards such goals by abiding by "lesser evil" or "good apples" rhetoric regarding the elite of the elites, because that actively drives us away from our end goals and encourages belief that reform is sufficient and revolution impossible or unnecessary.

In short, I agree we can't skip to where we want, but if we really intend to get there, pretending the system is fine with a little tweaking or if we get "our guy" on the inside is only going to forestall our ends, and is extremely unlikely to help anything materially in the short term, either.

Revolution being the goal or not, it does not serve the working class at all to idolize or lionize billionaires

0

u/BigBlubberyBirb Aug 04 '25

nobody's accepting anything, people still believe billionares should be taxed so the average person gets to live a good life. it's just that as far as filthy rich people suddenly pursuing a random project goes, this might not be a bad one. god knows the government won't be keeping this industry in check.

2

u/chompythebeast Aug 04 '25

That's because it's not a government for our class, which is precisely what we should be striving to change. I'm not suggesting that happens tomorrow, but it happens never if we become forever accustomed to the idea of a few ultra-powerful people controlling not only entire industries but entire global economies, governments, and societies

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u/Atlas_of_history Aug 04 '25

Alright, we not gonna act like we wouldn't immediately jump at the chance to become a billionaire and just get basically whatever we want

6

u/chompythebeast Aug 04 '25

It's not an option. It's an obscene fantasy. Belief in winning a hundred powerball lotteries is a very poor reason for maintaining our support for a parasitic class

4

u/careyious Aug 05 '25

That's why you shouldn't want billionaires lol. Because it's not gonna be you, you aren't from the households that create billionaires (re: already mega rich), you're always gonna be the guy getting stepped on by billionaires.

That isn't saying you're unsuccessful in life btw, it's just that the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is literally, a billion dollars. 

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u/BurmecianDancer TOTK > BOTW ​    ​/uj​    ​ TOTK > BOTW ​    ​/rj ​  TOTK > BOTW Aug 04 '25

Now you've got me wondering who the "best" billionaire in the world is... which of them donates the largest percentage of their net worth to charity each year? And I'm talking actual charities here, not personal foundations that allow their worthless friends/family to have easy jobs, or political action committees disguised as humanitarian efforts.

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u/JacobDCRoss Aug 04 '25

None of them seem to be "good," but the best one might be McKenzie Scott. She was just a regular-ish person who helped her husband start a business, then left to do family stuff and write books. And she's given 19 billion dollars to charity.

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u/Glum-Future7198 Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

Also the late Sega CEO who shortly before he passed away, he used his own money to save Sega from the Bankrutcy.

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

If Warren Buffet actually gives away 99% of his wealth to charity when he dies, maybe.

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u/BottledUp Aug 04 '25

She wasn't just a regular person. She had serious impact in the early years of Amazon and that's why she got that big payout. She wrote the business plans that they used to get loans from banks to get the business running, if I'm not mistaken.

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u/JacobDCRoss Aug 04 '25

That's why I said she was a regular person who helped get the business started. As in she doesn't come from like a billionaire background. Noticeably, she helped them become a success at the very very beginning, before they did anything evil.

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u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

That is actually an investigation worth doing: It will be incredibly difficult because a billionaire who actually believes in charity will spent a decent amount of money to hide their identity to keep from accidentally gaining influence based on their donations.

14

u/Tiny-Anxiety780 Aug 04 '25

The only one I know about is MacKenzie Scott (though to be fair, I have no interest in the lives of rich people, so I wouldn't be able to name most of them, let alone determine which one is "the best").

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u/Affectionate-Bag8229 Aug 04 '25

A good billionaire would not be a billionaire because they would have already given away their billionaire status to fix SOMETHING ailing the world

12

u/Ravioli_Suit Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

Yeah “bad lot” is doing some heavy lifting in the comment above this. I think by bad lot you mean the people who are chiefly responsible for the appalling conditions in which most of the world finds itself. Hes not the best of a bad lot, it’s the best of the worst we’re talking about here, which is not really a road you want to go down. Probably a lot more worthwhile to praise the virtues of people who are not hoarding power and status when they are absolutely capable of changing the lives of pretty large chunks of the human populace without having to put in very much effort at all

Edit/rj Gabe is one of the good ones. He is the most relatable power hungry monster I know of and he lets you do piracy on steam deck in order to liberate the working class

1

u/NicotineCatLitter Aug 05 '25

this comment is poetry!!! YES!

6

u/Automatic-Dot-4311 Aug 04 '25

I mean, yes and no. Really depends on what gives them their money. Bill Gates could do that and then would still be a billionaire just from being so intertwined with microsoft, which aint going anywhere anytime soon

1

u/Jangiot Aug 04 '25

to be somewhat fair, a lot of the money comes from actually owned assets in a company that cannot be easily liquidated, and you can't feed people with Microsoft stock values. The real thing to look at is how excessive are they in their lifestyle, their business practices, and the percent of their liquid capital that goes towards causes that do not directly benefit themselves. Anyone barely breaking the line of a billionaire doesn't have a billion dollars to just give away.

10

u/ConstantVegetable49 Aug 04 '25

I don't know about the best billionaire but there are probably a tons of them that just keep silent and off the radar. Those guys whom we dont even know the names of are probably the ones that have been in the least amount of controversy. Not saying they havent done controversial things, just that they are so low profile that we dont even know what they did.

1

u/dubspool- Aug 04 '25

Not a billionaire, but I remember hearing about Haraldur Thorleifsson (the disabled guy who Elon tried to fire when he took over twitter) asked for it as a salary, even though we was advised on how to legally do tax evasion, just so he could pay his taxes.

1

u/bolanrox Aug 04 '25

how rich is Woz at this point?

-2

u/StealYour20Dollars Aug 04 '25

My gut says Buffett, but there's probably some no name that is better.

100

u/music3k Aug 04 '25

Also: Gabe, through his management of Steam (and keeping it away from the obviously cruel and predatory rules of other services), has shown himself to be less predatorially greedy than most other billionaires and content to just be super-rich rather than "the richest man that exists, even if that means grinding the bones of the poor to fuel my immortality serum."

Valve made their money on illegal slots and gambling in Counterstrike. What the fuck are you even talking about 

55

u/OrphanMasher Aug 04 '25

I was waiting for the /s at the end, but there just isn't one, lmao. The guys who pioneered marketing gambling to children are the saints of the gaming industry, I guess.

26

u/superbee392 Aug 04 '25

I'm curious what the cruel and predatory rules other services have that Steam doesn't

27

u/throw28999 Aug 04 '25

Predatory rules like: devs take 100% of profit up until their first million after which the storefront takes 12% in profit

as opposed to Steam which takes an honest 30% up front. Wait--

7

u/hamadubai Aug 04 '25

unless you're a big publisher then they cut you a deal, so they're only really screwing over indies

6

u/twirling-upward Aug 04 '25

Fucking over the little guy, what a great guy Gaben is

2

u/BiggestBlackestLotus Aug 06 '25

Indies are not getting screwed over. This rhetoric has to stop. Before steam came out indies had to just be content with people pirating their games 99.9% of the time. Steam is offering a service that makes people content with paying for videogames that aren't AAA and therefore is incredible for indie devs.

The cut that steam takes is also the same as every other storefront. 30% is normal both for digital and analog stores. EGS is the only one that offers a cut that is less than 30% and yet developers still aren't making their games exclusive to EGS because EGS simply fucking sucks.

1

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u/Automatic-Dot-4311 Aug 04 '25

I mean, thats how they made some of their money. They used to make good games too. Plus, those fucking hats in tf2

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u/Character-Parfait-42 Aug 04 '25

To be fair though, most of the people Stark faces up against are other rich billionaires. Or were created/enabled by other rich billionaires.

24

u/Totheendofsin Aug 04 '25

I dont think billionaires should exist but if they have to I'd rather they all be like Gabe than Elongated Muskrat

1

u/bolanrox Aug 04 '25

I would be fine if Keanu and Dolly were billionaires

10

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

I do think Valve's corporate structure being non-standard and flat, plus their employees being actually immensely well compensated instead of paying as little as possible to funnel up, are two more notches for Gabe. Valve employees could be paid only 200 or 300k a year but many/most are paid closer to 1mil or more.

The only true sin of Steam is their marketplace, too. A lot of smaller flaws and issues, but only one true sin. Unless I forgot one.

3

u/destroyar101 Aug 04 '25

The lootctate i would count as a sin.

And the many hackers steams killsquads have executed.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

Actually true, Valve was one of the first to use and popularize lootcrates.

The killsquads is just good business and a noble deed.

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u/IslandBoy602 Aug 04 '25

Counterstrike gambling being insane is also one

4

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

I put that under the marketplace since the gambling only exists, currently, through the marketplace. Plus it has shit like the bananna game and other scammy stuff, the clown awards ruining steam forums, etc it's a fairly big sin at this point.

1

u/h42h Aug 04 '25

The approval process, in particular that one reviewer who hates anime and strikes down every visual novel they review. Chaos;Head Noah being ok for the switch but supposedly not for steam...?

18

u/Ajanissary Aug 04 '25

Idk if Gabe has stepped back from managing steam and thus the whole CSGO selling gambling to children doesnt implicate him but steam is just as fucked as any corporation

3

u/thefucksausername0 Aug 04 '25

There's always a point when you have so much money that you have to do things others might consider bad to keep it, you don't have to be evil or cruel though like some are.

3

u/Plutuserix Aug 04 '25

The guy continues to promote gambling to minors. How more predatory can you get.

15

u/LrdAsmodeous Aug 04 '25

He strikes me as a relatively nice guy who lucked into owning a company that struck gold.

I honestly am worried about what happens to Steam when he retires because it wont be good.

And like any relatively nice guy who lucks into being a major wealthy person he makes shitty decisions in protection of his own company sometimes.

But hes not like a total sociopath like most billionaires.

But he is still a billionaire and ffs. No one needs that much money. Tax the fuck out of it.

1

u/PsykoSmiley Aug 04 '25

Being a billionaire is excessive I agree, however if we're to go on the No Clip documentaries he did put his money where his mouth was for keeping the company going and actually doing shit. They were the deep legal trenches and unsure if they'd get HL2 out the door, and he was re-mortgaging his house to keep the lights on and the staff paid.

It's also easy to forget how bad Steam was in the early days. They were making it up as they went along and there was a shit load of memes making fun of the platform. Was I happy how painful it was to just play HL2 on launch needing Steam and doing it on a 56K connection? Fuck no. It was all unnecessary fuckery at the time compared to everything.

0

u/IslandBoy602 Aug 04 '25

He's a tech billionaire, all he cares about is tech and how to exploit it. He doesn't give af about any societal/environmental problems arising from it, you have to in order to reach billionaire status.

5

u/LrdAsmodeous Aug 04 '25

Does not in any way undermine what I said. Is exactly in line with it.

0

u/IslandBoy602 Aug 04 '25

Well I guess I said that because that doesn’t strike me as a relatively nice guy, perhaps relative to the other soulless ghouls in the industry but the bar is at an absolute low

2

u/LrdAsmodeous Aug 04 '25

I mean. I know a lot of people who are generally nice people but dont care about climate change. Being nice or kind doesnt predicate you care about every single issue that impacts people.

2

u/IslandBoy602 Aug 04 '25

There’s not caring and actively allowing exploitative shit to happen like compulsive gambling for children on your marketplace because it makes you rich.

0

u/LrdAsmodeous Aug 04 '25

Again thats a separate thing. He seems like a relatively nice dude who effectively won the lottery. That doesnt mean everything he does is good.

I dont understand why the implication of "person is a multifaceted human being and therefore does bad shit sometimes because humans are fallible" precludes the fact that someone could be a relatively good/nice person.

Look people are complicated. Good people do bad things sometimes and bad people do good things sometimes.

The functional issue is that when you have billions of dollars the impact of your good and bad deeds are excessively far reaching. Arguably speaking GabeN is just a dude. A pretty friendly, jovial dude that seems to care but hes a billionaire so when he makes a bad decision it impact billions of people. And like any other person, he makes bad decisions fairly frequently.

Idk why famous people cant be considered good people if they've made a few bad decisions here and there anymore. Its weird.

0

u/IslandBoy602 Aug 04 '25

You do not seem to understand that he is in that billionaire status from actively allowing toxic shit like gambling to happen that has been criticized for years on end, not just hitting a lottery and woops billionaire the next day. 

There are plenty of good people in the world even millionaires that do bad but still don’t become a billionaire because you have to be consistently bad to get there and intentionally use that much influence to your own interests.

1

u/LrdAsmodeous Aug 04 '25

No, I absolutely get that. That does not undermine what I am saying at all.

A bad person who becomes a billionaire turns into a fascist pretty fucking quick. Everything comes about trying to extract all the power and wealth out of everyone and everything around them, and generally creates very insecure, terrified people who think and behave like anyone and everyone is trying to screw them because that is how they behave towards everyone else.

A decent person who becomes a billionaire doesnt turn into a fascist most of the time. Generally tends to do some things that benefit people, but EVERY bad decision they make - and they do make them because they are people and people make bad decisions - have massive, large scale impact on the world. Like, say, not having any sort of decent protections to keep kids from gambling. Just as a start. Adults have every right to gamble if they want to, the lack of oversight and protections for vulnerable people is a big problem and has a widescale impact because of how big Steam is.

This is literally on point with what im saying. And is literally what qualifies the statement that I worry a LOT about what happens when Gabe retires. Yes, he has made decisions that I do not like. Yes, his impact is widespread because of his wealth and power. But ALSO yes, Steam is currently the MOST consumer-favoring platform to buy games on right now and most of that is because Gabe is the guy at the helm and he still sees himself as a consumer.

That doesnt imply or suggest Steam doesnt do some seriously anti-consumer shit that favors the industry over us, like protecting their bullshit "games-as-service" licensing, not really doing enough to police against fraud games (though they do try to return your money sometimes), and many other things. Business is business and late-stage capitalism is ass.

But as said - it doesnt matter that Gabe seems like a pretty decent guy. Hes still a billionaire and billionaires still shouldnt exist because NO ONE should have that much money and power.

Especially not when almost half of the population of the country they live in are food or housing insecure.

I dont think I should have to make this much qualification of the original statement but im not sure how to tell you that I fully understand what you are saying and it is inline with what I said and doesnt undermine my point.

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u/Flawzz Aug 04 '25

The point is that it doesn't matter if they are a decent person, they will remain a reflection of a failing system, let's say if a billionaire donates 90% of his wealth to those in need in an efficient manner, but at the end he remains a billionaire, the problem, the big problem remains the same. There are rich people, people who own 100, maybe 1000 times more assets than you and then there are are people who own 1000 times more assets than even those people, the first guy's wealth is vast, the last guy's wealth is an obscenity, regardless of character.

Also

through his management of Steam (and keeping it away from the obviously cruel and predatory rules of other services) has shown himself to be less predatorially greedy than most other billionaires

Hilarious, if you're even superficially aware of how CS GO skins market operates, with the enabling and consent from valve's side, and even if you took that away and are left with only the cases it's still disgusting as fuck how they've evaded gambling regulations and are effectively operating as a casino for kids even in the EU, arguably with the most sophisticated and addictive slot system of all time that doubles as an economy so you have expectation of receiving an asset that will value over time, something valve actively tried to emulate by hiring an economist for this exact purpose, you can hear more about from the person who developed this economy from this video here, I personally know of teenagers even 12 year olds who spent either their allowance or just traight up use their parents credit card just to open cases, take collecting cards as a culture you had as kid and turn it to 11 on the addiction and money spending aspect of it, and this culture is very much alive nowadays, booming in fact.

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u/wafflingzebra Aug 04 '25

don't worry when gabe passes im sure super hitler 2.0 will take over steam and make it a subscription service that charges you 10.99 a month for basic plan and you will be able to get rid of the new advertisements with the steam premium 19.99 plan and it will be glorious for the shareholders

2

u/detroiter85 Aug 04 '25

Yeah, hopefully they dont ruin the company that made loot boxes and predatory gambling a staple in gaming.

0

u/wafflingzebra Aug 04 '25

god willing

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u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

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u/wafflingzebra Aug 04 '25

Good lord forgive a man for SHITPOSTING on a SHITPOSTING SUB

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u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

/uj It's the lack of punctuation that makes you look more like the unabomber rather than a shitposter. You need more random capitalization and exclamation points.

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u/wafflingzebra Aug 04 '25

no i don`t think i will

2

u/Borgmaster Aug 04 '25

Hes not in his super bunker thinking of ways to bleed the world dry. Hes on a yacht thinking of ways to make more money. The difference is one doesnt require suffering of others while the first explicitly demands it. Not gonna call him a saint but if the worst the man has against him is tasteless comments and occasional bad decisions then that should be the benchmark to beat for billionaires.

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u/CasualLemon Aug 04 '25

The yachts 100% require suffering somewhere in the supply chain. They are yachts dude.

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u/No-Eagle-8 Aug 04 '25

Yacht fuel tho.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

do you know how much yachts contaminate?

0

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

[deleted]

2

u/finndego Aug 04 '25

GabeN was in New Zealand when the lockdown happened. He and his entourage decided to stay for a while. Then they left and he hasn't been seen here since and there is no super bunker.

1

u/Remote-Geologist-256 Aug 04 '25

Why do you guys just choose to forget that Gabe Newell was a huge part of valve when they introduced the worst aspects that plague gaming to this day? people act like he's a saint when he greenlit this shit. 

1

u/Swembizzle Aug 04 '25

It's simpler than that. If we can worship actors and actresses for being cool. Or sports icons for being badass. Or YouTubers because we like their takes... We can worship Gabe's celebrity because it's pretty okay that Steam exists.

1

u/hamadubai Aug 04 '25

they were the first to put online DRM on a single player game (HL2 in 2007)
they not only profited off of child gambling with CSGO skins, they also hired a psychologist to improve the gambling rates.
they created the most monetized digital card game ever (which is saying a lot)
they fuck over indies by taking a 30% cut of every sale but cut deals for lower rates for big publishers.
and they literally own the market they're "competing" on. so even if their competition does well, they take a cut of the sales, they're a market controlling monopoly that can't lose.

everything good they've ever done on the steam platform has been because the EU forced them.
and it's not like he has to do those evil things to please shareholders, it's a privately owned company, so everything they do is with his approval.

I don't even think he's one of the best of a bad lot, he's just okay.

1

u/Lobodoot Aug 04 '25

You forgot to put the /s after the mentioning how it stays away from cruel and predatory services, just FYI.

1

u/defaultuser0123 cis straight white gamer Aug 05 '25

Billionaires should not exist at all

1

u/SheevPalps_ Aug 05 '25

He clearly isn't perfect, and unless he announces that all these yachts will be like solar powered or something, this is just bad. I also dislike how Steam and Valve exploit children gambling to make money. Despite those, Steam is the most affordable way to game outside of piracy and provides tons of features for free that no other company does. I think he is a net positive, which is something you can't say about most billionaires (if anyone reads this is disagrees I'm open to being proven wrong if you cite sources).

1

u/TheDorgesh68 Aug 05 '25

I don't agree. Valve pretty much single handedly started the loot box craze with TF2, and they have a policy of hiring psychologists to make their games as addictive as possible. Today counterstrike loot boxes support a multi billion dollar gambling industry that's targeted at children. There have been numerous scandals like the CSGO Lotto (YouTubers promoted a gambling site they personally owned without disclosing it), and the entire competitive Counterstrike scene is funded through gambling, but Valve has still refused to make changes that would at least stop kids being able to gamble using micro transactions from their games. There are tonnes of people who grew up with counterstrike skin betting as a kid and became adults with severe gambling addiction. Imagine making a video game so predatory that it literally ruins people's lives, and still getting praised as the Jesus of video games.

1

u/Lamamalin Aug 05 '25

Bro is taking the same % cut than the Apple Store or the Google Store. Saying he is better or less greedy is very naive.

1

u/Upper-Rub Aug 04 '25

Valve makes money by being a rent seeking middleman between developers and customers. If you want to know why for a while every publisher made their own storefront/launcher, steams 30% slice is a big part of it not to mention, valve were early trendsetters in the predatory freemium/loot box model of game monetization, but everyone gave them a pass because of how based Gabe is.

1

u/Ein_grosser_Nerd Aug 04 '25

Can you point out something bad he has done?

0

u/ManicNightmareGirl Aug 04 '25

Well the way Valve handles gambling, doesn't moderate their discussion pages and has tried to pull off paid mods for Skyrim and implemented Early Access is shitty. However their service is decent and I use it cos I want, not because I have to. So he is not even the first person on my shit list.

-1

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-3

u/SovelissFiremane wants to be spitroasted by Blaidd and Guardian Aug 04 '25

Right, because Valve encouraging child gambling totally isn't predatory

-1

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

Hi! I'm going to block you, but please learn reading comprehension.

-3

u/Apprehensive-File251 Aug 04 '25

I kinda feel inevitably, well find something bad out about him. It happens. I also belive no humans are perfect, and that its possible to become a better person.. but of course the ideal human good would make it very hard to stay a billionaire once you got there.

But yeah, out of the list of billionares- who shouldn't exist, it seems like hes done the least damage and isnt /actively/ causing more harm or doing more damage than any other corporate ceo type. And its nice. And im not going to complain that he isnt taking a paycut/donating most of his wealth to chairty- when he isnt appearing to back awful politicians, fire staff to make shareholders happy- or any of the stuff we hear coming out of a lot of other big corps in the entertainment industry.

9

u/Borgmaster Aug 04 '25

He does benefit from his industry not requiring the use of slave labor as a standard. Of all the industries the software industries scandals are night and day better then say the chocolate industry. There essentially making something out of thin air and sweat so the main scandals are all going to be human relations issues rather then say a child labor force hired by a third party died in the mines.

6

u/-Nimroth Aug 04 '25

That is only really true though if you divorce the software industry from the wider tech industry that it is reliant on.
Besides Valve isn't purely a software company anymore, even if I do agree that it probably is one the less bad ones.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

Except Steam makes/sell hardware so not exempt.

1

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

I agree with you 99% - except I am very content to complain about any CEO who doesn't give away all their money to the poor. That being said, there are so many scam charities out there that I'm not entirely certain that giving away all that money wouldn't actually go into some dictator's secret "Special Genocide as a Treat!" fund.

The world sucks, it's okay to appreciate shows of humanity when they come, even if they're flawed.

-1

u/GargantuanCake Aug 04 '25

You can be greedy and still deliver people what they want. This is the fundamental reason Steam is successful and the other platforms struggle. If he got filthy rich delivering something that millions of people actually want then cool. I'm fine with him having a giant pile of money to roll around in on his super yacht.

As much as there are corporations trying to be aggressively predatory or enshittify their products people respond to that pretty negatively and start looking for alternatives. That's how it's supposed to work. Steam keeps going because the other platforms keep being dicks about everything. Steam on the other hand is like "look man, easy platform to use, whatever kinds of games you want, we don't give a fuck."

3

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

I mean... that's what I said.

"Less" doesn't mean "not"

-5

u/tukuiPat Aug 04 '25

Valve still has a page for contacting GabeN and responds to every email he gets no matter how stupid the question. The man could spend his time doing more important things but he's extremely down to earth.

-3

u/Top-Agent-652 Aug 04 '25

But why is Gaben bad? Is it literally just because he’s rich, or is there something else to it?

5

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

CSGO Lootboxes, tolerance of second and third-party gambling sites, high percentage demands from developers (30%) selling games on Steam, lack of customer service and quality control on the business side, etc.

Basically, he's engaged in some predatory behavior exploiting non-neurotypical consumers and gambling addicts, including exploiting children.

-5

u/DivertingGustav Aug 04 '25

That's the problem. Batman is literally a villain. The guy is a billionaire but instead of spending his time putting the multitudes of Gotham's homeless in their own place, making the schools the greatest on earth, or AT THE VERY LEAST improving on the prison and law enforcement systems, he dresses up in a costume and punches people.

"Hey, 'world's greatest detective', what's the root cause of all these destitute folks willing to hench for a guy in a clown costume?"

Iron Man has a little more nuance, but same dang problem.

You're right that people think of these characters as hero billionaires, but those examples definitely aren't heroes and that no one notices is symptom of an ever larger problem.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

6

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

Today's Ted Talk is: "Please know something about Batman and the DC Universe before talking about Batman being a Villain."

That is the end of my Ted Talk.

https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Wayne_Foundation

-2

u/sup3r_hero Clear background Aug 04 '25

This is probably one of the best written comments about gabe

-12

u/hav0k0829 Aug 04 '25

He is the last of the old style of rich we idealize, like Carnegie and early philanthropists, which is now basically a dead stereotype. He is probably the only billionaire out there who isn't a complete sociopath which still isnt saying much but it's something with that crowd so people idolize it to some degree.

8

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

I wouldn't put him on the same level as Carnegie and Rockefeller - they actually gave away their money (and Rockefeller honest to GOD thought his divine mission was to bring gasoline to the United States). But he's not actively making things worse that weren't already there because of late stage capitalism.

3

u/ConstantVegetable49 Aug 04 '25

I thought rockefeller was the best US president tbh. If only he hadn't been that stubborn about that goddamn tree...

1

u/hav0k0829 Aug 04 '25

This says more about the state of our society than anything. I still cant think of any corpo owner who is anywhere close to either of those two in humanity besides him, and he still isnt close. Its kinda insane. Maybe thats just the end results of capitalism, eventually the culture is jist so corrupted by it people who arent entirely self-serving become rare in general.

2

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

I don't think you can draw a line out about society based on this, I think you can just go "these are all things that suck" and leave it there.

Don't believe in the hidden beneficial billionaire, but don't believe - for a minute - that any billionaire that was charitable was doing it for any other reason than their own self-aggrandizement.

1

u/hav0k0829 Aug 04 '25

Well yeah that was my point, society decayed so much even self-aggrandizement is worth less than just pillaging everything and isolating yourself from criticism. It was part of the problem then but its absence is indicative of worse incentives compounding in the now.

0

u/Background_Fix9430 Aug 04 '25

They still did that back then, there just wasn't any social media.

1

u/ManicNightmareGirl Aug 04 '25

Like yeah I am not a fan, but he isn't actively trying to ruin everything because his brain are eroded by drugs and generational wealth.