Gabe is helping, sure, but he isn't holding up gaming. People were gaming on Linux before Proton even existed, myself included. Also, even if Valve went away completely, Proton is open-source and there are people like GloriousEggroll who work on Proton entirely as a community member. Proton will live on, specifically because it is open-source. All the progress made on Proton won't suddenly disappear, all the games that were previously playable on Proton will still be playable on Proton.
It's a somewhat reasonable fear but it's not a realistic fear. Proton isn't going anywhere.
For sure, valid to fear the enshittification of steam. But they aren't killing proton. Maybe ignoring proton at worst. But Steam has profit motivations for not being reliant on Windows, which has actively been trying to supplant them with the Windows Store for years.
As another separate, profit-motivated company, with a gaming division and a lot to gain from eating Steam's lunch, Microsoft is not Steam's friend. Proton is a critical bargaining tool for them, and not having to include windows licenses for devices like the Steam Deck helps their costs too.
I think this post massively overestimates the power a CEO has. The CEO is beholden to the shareholders. Valve is private,
soand its shareholders are its workers. It would be useful to know how many shares Gaben has of valve, but I still don't think the next CEO would suddenly also be the majority owner.Also, I know things have changed a lot in the last 12 years, but 12 years ago regarding the total dissolution of Valve, Gaben said:
“It’s way more likely we would head in that direction than say, ‘Let’s find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate."
Also, forcing users onto windows is THE way to kill valve's profits. The whole point of the Linux push was a direct response to the windows store, and msft's threat of forcing valve to give them a cut of purchase through steam. Msft will still do that the first chance it gets. So even the most profit-minded new leader wouldn't make that choice, as it's plainly shortsighted.
Yeah I do have a similar fear. Valve is something special. I tried to hate them, they're filthy-rich corpos after all, but I can't. Something of value will be lost when Valve finally succumbs to enshittification, which cannot be said of a lot of other big companies.
But my fear isn't necessarily about Steam. I have like 20-30 games in my library. Steam is simply the least shit way to play games you have/want to pay for.
I think there are important considerations to keep in mind.
First and foremost, Valve is not a public company. I don't know if it has investors, but it is not driven by profits like many typical public companies are. These companies tend to allow themselves longer investments without any clear visibility of immediate profits. They also do things for the greater good, even though it does not bring profits.
But also, I think the whole of valve is a set of gamers and people who genuinely care about the gaming business and making great products. I think they all share Gabe's values and goals. It's not like Gabe is the only one holding everything together or else it would instantly crash into the profit driven company it could be.
Both of these scenarios keep me hopeful that this is a longer lasting stance and doesn't hinge on just one person. It's not a proof it will never be a typical profit company but these are barriers which are not typically present. Let's hope for the best and keep rewarding them for their contributions to gaming, open source and for their good actions.
What many posters in this thread fail to realize is that there is a very good reason why steam hasn’t been hit by the enshittification that otherwise permeates human existence in 2024.
Of course, Gaben as their CEO has the last say in it. And he’s just a good guy. But wait, aren’t there other companies that have good guys as their CEO and yet the enshittification persists?
The profound reason is that Valve is not a publicly traded company. They have no obligation to any investors to make number go up. They are a private company, they can do whatever the fuck they want. If they stay flat and keep paying their employees, that’s totally fine, and there is 0 pressure on them to change anything. THAT‘s why Valve seems like such a different company compared to everything else that’s out there.
Of course it’s still a choice to go public or not, and they have made the right call (for us consumers).
If you don't expect enshitification these days you are dumb. Very rational fear
Considering how much money they make with gambling, I think Valve is not as saint-like as people think it is.
He is a gazzillionare. We better hope he is working on a foundation or something that is legally bulletproof.
Anyone who thinks their steam libraries will be safe forever is delusional.
Eventually a for-profit motivated individual will gain control and they will use all their MBA learnings to maximize subscriptions, per play revenue, per download revenue and overall provide a cheaper platform.
There isn't an mba on the planet that doesn't recognize that advertising is highly lucrative and being the company that sells the most pc games means you have metrics no one else has. They'll instantly monetize advertising and the popups we get when we log in today will turn into mandatory non-skippable ads on the free tier to start a game, and they'll add their wrapper on top of games in their store, especially games that do not currently need steam to play today.
It'll only get way worse. Expect everything to be pay to play.. once gaben is gone. They have a monopoly and any leader would think they are too big to fail. No one can just take their games elsewhere... we're locked in. We're committed. We can't escape. They've got us by the balls.
Well thankfully Gabe has lost a ton of weight in recent years. Man is looking absolutely svelte these days. Here's hoping he has many more years of good health.
I'm also guessing he'll hand pick a successor that will carry on his views, instead of dying in office and having some kind of CEO election free-for-all.
Steam is just another profit business. I don't get why people think they're about anything else. They take a huge part of the sells and don't even let you own the games. Owning means you can sell, give or do whatever you want with your games. Oh and "likely to die before 75", lol, says fucking who, the 4chan doctor?
I mean, its possible.
But then again, people have now known the beauty of steam. If this does happen as you say it could, it does open up the possibility for someone to make a Steam_v2.
I have faith that there are enough people who are passionate about Linux that it's possible for Windows to lose some of its dominance in the future. Maybe the enshittification of steam is needed to make that a possibility.
Steam, my Steam library and Proton could disappear. But at least it will have supported a big traction in the ecosystem : Wine, DXVK, Lutris, Heroic Launcher, Bazzite, etc... are all open source projects (so they can't really disappear) that have never moved as fast as they are today.
I think anon has it 100% correct. The instant Gabe is out of the picture, I expect to hear talk about how "you don't understand, we have to fuck out users, won't someone please think of the IPO?!"
Piracy is a service problem. They'll reap what they sow if they change course. I'm not afraid to hoist my sails again when I need to. ;)
What will happen to the Steam Deck? Will they discontinue it and support for existing units, or replace the OS with Windows (causing degraded performance and exposing their users to Microsoft adtech enshittification)? The Steam Deck is a star product of theirs, which hopefully will count for something.
It is funny that people think Valve would sell out instead of becoming the big evil.
As Valve continues developing an OS agnostic platform, they start building into various tools that require a Steam account to play games in order to defend their app store. Maybe they buy Unity and make it a Steam exclusive, maybe they make their own engine that can be played on Windows or Linux.
Integrate Chromecast technology to make a console like multimedia device to compete against XBox and PlayStation. Then, start selling video and integrating streaming access.
Push the Steam Store to become bigger. Sure, you aren't forced to use the Steam Store on most Valve developed hardware, but it is default.
Then, like Google did with Android, pull the tech stack from the open source tools to become wholely integrated with Steam Services.
Can't Gabe do what John Bogle did with Vanguard and transfer ownership to the employees and clients?
I kind of hope gaben has set up something smart for his death. Eg Valve is owned by a trust.
This is not "a prediction" - this is inevitably what's going to happen.
Everyone here who has drank the Valve kool-aid and pretends like they can do no wrong is dangerously short-sighted. Steam's virtual monopoly on PC gaming is a huge issue. You think Epic has a monopoly on the concept of "Store Exclusives?" Fucking spare me. It's a matter of time before Steam locks in its own exclusives, kills Proton, and locks every. single. game. behind always online DRM.
If you want to distribute your new PC game, guess what? You don't get to contract with both GOG and Steam. You don't get to say your game is Linux compatible because it runs well in the Proton compatibility layer. Oh, and if you say "games could run on Linux before Proton!" then you're deluding yourself by remembering a time when games were distributed with their own launcher and weren't packed to the gills with platform specific code so that the game integrates seamlessly with a specific third-party launcher and its DRM tools. You bought a Steamdeck? Cool. The version of Arch it runs is no longer supported. You have to upgrade to "Windows for Steameck." Yes, you have to pay for a fucking Windows license. Yes, it has fewer features than baseline Windows. No, it's not less expensive.
You think what's happening to YouTube is bad? Fucking strap in, boys. Welcome to digital content distribution in the age of unfettered capitalism. I wonder how many of you are gonna eat this shit up, huff lethal quantities of copium, and say it's "not that bad" once it starts happening and you're faced with either standing by your own stated convictions and giving up almost all PC gaming in general or bend the knee so you can get your precious Steam Library back. Probably most of you.
Sucks being old.
Is it just prejudice? Stereotype? Laziness?
You see this happen to everything. It all gets enshittified. These corps that started out for the end user all end up selling out for profits.
It’s not a secret, not a revelation, nothing new.
The direct transfer of power in tech is often to someone that will carry the torch. It's quite rare that a successor is picked that has been at the company for years, but wants to change practically everything about it. For that reason, I can see Gabe passing to a like-minded person that already knows that they are a succession candidate.
But ultimately none of us know Gabe, or what he plans to do. He may have a 100 step plan to secede power, or he might get to 65, say "that'll do" and just sell up and retire to a remote island somewhere. The plans might have been in place for years, or he might not want to consider Valve without him. Hell, he might not even think that Valve should exist without him. It's impossible to guess, so it's not worth worrying about...
Valve doesn't need infinite growth to survive wallstreet. Proton is open source and very popular.
PC gaming is not here to stay. One day, someone, will finally do a cloud /saas streaming solution which works, which solves the latency and fidelity issues and which will be accepted and trusted by the masses.
Hopefully that will be a Valve solution. Not Nvidia, MS, Google or Sony.
From that moment on the client will not matter anymore and you will just stream it to your device and from there cast it to your big screen.
Hopefully I'm full of shit and this will never happen. But I'm afraid I'm not.
I wrote about this a few months ago: https://www.spacebar.news/steam-time-bomb/
That post is pure hysteria. First no one knows when Gabe is going to die, and even if he live very long he may step down due to old age still.
- also worrying so much about something that may happen 14 years later according to op is unnecessary and distorted thinking.
- why assume there is going to be a power vacuum? can't he and his leadership make pans of succession?
- then believing a whole made-up story going down the rabbit hole of the worst case scenario is again unnecessary and distorted thinking. Is okay to think of worst case scenarios but to take them as if they were real is gifting ourselves anxiety for free.
- in any case, the mental exercise of thinking of some undesirable possibilities allow us to take precautions and prepare to the extend that is appropriate and reachable. Which would be the most efficient behavior that thwarts "actual fear" as OP writes it.
I think your fear is justified. Gaben needs a personal trainer
Deep discounts are locked behind a subscription
Someone's been gaming too much.
