So just to be clear I’m pulling this out if my ass, but I’m gonna go and say they main trick to be rich is to be born rich. The lack of morality is just a side-effect of your parents being capitalist vampires. Being a psychopath in itself doesn’t give you a business edge.
Comment on GameStop selling 500+ stores because of "woke".
Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org 2 days ago
Dang it. Why can’t more wealthy people just be chill and not psychopaths. I get that statistically, they are more likely to succeed due to lack of morality. But damn.
It would be cool if somebody nice acquired the businesses.
luciole@beehaw.org 2 days ago
JokeDeity@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Tons of research says you’re wrong. Psychopaths and other people with mental issues that diminish their ability to have empathy are absolutely more successful in business than their counterparts. Because capitalism is could, cruel, and uncaring about anyone or anything.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I personally know a few kids born into families for the sole purpose of their parents getting more pocket money from the government and they made millionaire by their 30s and are all nice. Stop equating america to rest of the world, thanks.
luciole@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Nope, social inequality and class warfare is not just a US thing. Congrats for having rich friends though I guess. Also please stop equating the US with North, Central and South America, thanks
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Wow its as if there are more countries than usa and more forms of capitalism than the fucked up one usa citizens allow themselves to be governed by.
thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
You’ll never be a billionaire if you’re a nice person.
You’ll always lose money caring for stupid shit like paying fair wages to employees, respecting laws and paying taxes.
cdf12345@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Counterpoint: Steam
I’m thinking it’s more that public companies have a legal obligation to provide increasing value to their shareholders, so stay private, don’t be a dick. Grow at a reasonable pace. Avoid enshitification.
bob_lemon@feddit.org 2 days ago
Steam is partially funded by underage gambling. They know about this. They could literally shut it down within hours.
They’re better than most, but that is a major moral failure they don’t get nearly enough flak for.
JokeDeity@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I’m truly failing to think of any major game publisher not making money from children gambling. Nintendo does it, so do Sony and Microsoft. Unless it’s an indie publisher with a small handful of games, basically every single company is guilty of this.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Sure it would be nice if measures were put in place to stop underage gambling but basically everything with not guranteed rewards and rng is underage gambling. Pokemon cards. Literal gambling kids can do irl. Lootboxes in other games. Mojang running literal real money casinos in minecraft. As an underage I just sold valve “evil lootboxes” and used it to buy games I could’t have otherwise.
Kichae@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I don’t know where gamers’ hard-on for Valve comes from. They’re a monopolist software developer whose biggest product is a middle-man DRM platform masquerading as a game library utility. Their whole schtick is increasing the cost of your games, and limiting your right to access those games how, when, and where you want. Yet somehow, they’re the darling of the gaming scene.
It’s fucking bizarre.
gk99@beehaw.org 2 days ago
They’re a monopoly because they’re the best in town and it isn’t close. Steam has a(n easily circumventable and long, long-beaten) DRM available, but it’s hardly the selling point of the platform nor a requirement. Steam provides automatic game updates, social and community help features, a built-in mod uploader/downloader, image hosting and a screenshot button, cloud saves, excellent network implementation (holy shit I do not miss the days of trying to get Gamespy and GFWL to let me connect to my friends), the Community Market and cross-game trading, built-in control remapping support, Twitch-style drops and giveaways from livestreams, recommendation features like Discovery Queue to find new and interesting titles, a community reviews and tags system that while imperfect is definitely the best I’ve seen thus far, an in-game overlay that has semi-recently gained some excellent features like game recording and the ability to pin a clock or notepad on top of the game, and one of the most recent updates reworked family sharing so that any five accounts can basically just merge their libraries and all play each other’s games at the same time, an extremely convenient feature that far and away beats out consoles’ digital sharing or traditional “pass the disc” borrowing.
Additionally, huge proponents of non-Windows gaming. Initially trying to do Mac ports, but moving onto perpetually pushing Linux as Apple continued to not care about gaming at all until like five minutes ago when they started paying Capcom and Ubisoft for ports.
spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
It’s really not bizarre at all. You wanna know why game enthusiasts like valve? Take the list the other guy gave you and find a store that has close to half of the features steam offers. Add in great hardware support (my controller and my deck are some of the best experiences I’ve had), and a healthy dose of actually making Linux gaming viable for the average person, and it’s obvious AF why game enthusiasts like valve.
Even if they can’t count to 3.
savvywolf@pawb.social 2 days ago
Compared to other platforms, they have a lot of good features and generally act in the public interest.
In regards to their DRM system, honestly some people are going to add DRM to their games no matter what. I’d much rather they use Valve’s system than some insecure third party spyware.
People have also mentioned their 30% cut which honestly seems pretty normal for an online storefront. It’s especially fair when you consider the fact that they provide marketing, hosting and payment processing for you. Not to mention things like achievements, matchmaking and workshop support if you want it.
There’s also the fact that a lot of the anti-monopoly folks tend to be Linux and/or foss advocates, and Valve has been pumping a lot of resources into open source projects.
Honestly, in the Linux space, the only reason Valve has a monopoly is because the other players just aren’t making any effort to compete.
Tl;dr Valve uses their market position for good (in general) and Steam is a good product.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Compared to ubisoft, ea, amazon, basically every big developer the ultra evil crimes against humanity valve is doing are minor. Thanks to valve “mandatory, evil forced upon lootboxes” I’ve been able to buy a few free full priced games just by playing cs and tf2 and not opening any of them. Its not valves fault other companies do it worse and there are very few games with lootboxes that are not yearly rerelease scams.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 days ago
Counter-Point: Valve literally is the developer that made lootboxes ubiquitous in gaming.
Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Steam not only profits wildly from underage gambling, but by being close to a monopoly. They take 30% from every game sold, which is more than they need. They can take that much due to their de-facto storefront existance.
Steam delivers amazing services, pcgaming would not be where it is without valve, but even with their radical work policies and good wages for their workers they still have quite a bit of problems.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I agree there are problems that could be fixed but they are far from evil.