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paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Even if Valve’s offering sucked, I still have not seen anyone point out a business practice I would call anticompetitive. They are not buying up studios or publishers, or even paying for timed exclusivity. I have not seen any hint that they are colluding with competitors on prices or fees. I haven’t seen then accused of stealing IP or poaching personnel. They readily welcome Microsoft and Sony to release games on Steam, and they have released their own games on consoles including the Switch. They let you install Windows or whatever else on the Deck, if you want to for some reason.

Billionaires should not exist, and Gabe Newell is no exception. He should be taxed more. I don’t love one company having so much control of this space. But I also don’t want to have a dozen different crappy launchers from different companies to deal with. There are a lot of benefits to the user to having everything centralized in one place.

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hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
How do we tax Gabe that much without necessarily watering down his share in the company and ensuring that outside investors enshittify it in the process? Genuine question.

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- paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Taxing those outside investors too
  
  Taxing Valve as a corporation more, making them less profitable and less attractive to said investors.
  
  I’m not even convinced this would be an issue at all really. Remember Valve is not publicly traded. I suspect Gabe would hold on to controlling ownership as long as it was profitable, and remember that taxes are usually on profits.
  
  Even if outside investors move in and enshittify, the moment they start doing anticompetitive you hit them with antitrust suits. Not to mention the industry can also be regulated even before all this: a lot of governments are cracking down on lootboxes already.
  
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  - hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    I don’t think this would solve the problem. Even if all of the outside investors are restricted to less than $1 billion in capital each, pooling their funds would easily be able to outweigh Gabe if he’s subject to the same restriction.
    
    If we increase taxes on all companies across the board, the overall appeal of each individual corporation would likely stay about the same. In fact, since Steam is so profitable that might make them more appealing as an investment in a world where corporate taxes are much higher.
    
    Corporate taxes are usually on profits, but in order to tax Gabe enough for him to no longer be a billionaire the vast majority of those taxes would have to come out of Gabe’s ownership in Valve. I’m not sure why you don’t think this would be an issue.
    
    This seems pretty unrealistic/idealistic. I guess we are already positing an unrealistic world where billionaries are taxed out of existence, so imagining functioning regulation and antitrust suits isn’t that much more of a stretch. Still, that does seem to support my point that without significant other societal change taxing Gabe so much that he’s no longer a billionaire would likely significantly worsen Valve as a company.
    
    I’m certainly not against taxing billionaires out of existence, but I still think that the question of what that would mean for corporate ownership is a difficult/complex one, and I don’t think your answers here really take that complexity into account.
    
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    paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Taxing billionaires is not some new and untested concept. In the US throughout the 1900’s the highest income tax brackets were often in the 70%'s, reaching into the 90%'s at times, and we did not see what you are suggesting.
    
    Increasing the taxes on Gabe Newell’s profits from owning Valve would not suddenly cause him to lose money, just to gain less money. If corporate taxes and income taxes were increased across the board, then it is not as if he would benefit from selling Valve stock to invest elsewhere, and Valve would not be a more or less attractive place to invest relative to other options either. I am not sure why you think this would cause Gabe Newell to back out or investors to jump in. Heck, these rates have all changed pretty frequently within Valve’s existence and have not had a significant impact.
    
    Also just to say, there is also the matter of jurisdiction as he lives in New Zealand while Valve is a US based company.
    
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  - architect@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I don’t want to fucking tax them! Fuck that! Do you see who runs this government?!?! Fuck that shit!
    
    Redistribute that fucking wealth right back to us immediately! Don’t let those greedy government pigs take it! I’d rather valve have it!
    
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CoyoteFacts@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

I also don’t want to have a dozen different crappy launchers from different companies to deal with. There are a lot of benefits to the user to having everything centralized in one place.

I wonder if there’s a future where every game marketplace uses open standards/APIs that 3rd-party launchers (like Heroic) can consume for downloading games, checking DRM status, tracking achievements, friends, and so on. DRM is probably the hardest part of that, though maybe there could be closed-source blobs downloadable to enable a store’s DRM. It’s obviously not in the interest of companies solely focused on profit and dark patterns, but I wonder if Steam would ever consider using its weight to do it anyway.

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Zagorath@quokk.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Being anticompetitive is far from the only way a company can be shitty.

Steam had to be sued by the Australian government into following the law regarding refunds for faulty products.

They have always been at the forefront of shitty gambling mechanics in video games, with their random loot boxes and tradeable skins.

And until recently, the hyper-consumerist FOKO-inducing structure of Steam sales was pretty awful.

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