| ▲ | Hendrikto 4 days ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments Because they have been consistently good citizens for more than 2 decades. They built a reputation. Something other companies are eager to piss away at the first opportunity to sell out or squeeze their customers. It’s not surprising that Valve is successful and trusted with this approach. What is surprising is that it is apparently so incredibly hard for other companies to understand this very simple fact. 1. Build a good product. 2. Consistently act in good faith. 3. Profit. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | sarchertech 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Which is a great way to run a business that you care about owning for a long time. But as a consumer you have to think about what happens when leadership changes—PE buys them and starts reputation mining. It takes a while to burn through the good will and for a few years you can make a lot more money off of that than you can continuing thing as usual. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | xandrius 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Still a for-profit company, wouldn't bet on this, even though I'd love it to be like this (that companies who have been doing good will continue to do good instead of increasing their profits). Been burnt too many times. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | jerf 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The dominant business school philosophy in the West is that 1. any reputation you have with your customers is a monetary asset and 2. therefore you should sell it for profit because it's greater than the long term expected monetary value according to a simple time-value of money calculation, especially because of the lag before your customers figure out you've sold them out. #1 on its own isn't so bad, you should indeed treat reputation as a valuable asset, but the way their style of logic invariably jumps to "and therefore you should sell, sell, sell it!" is the source of the problems we see. Especially because they're likely to jump jobs before the consequences occur. We really ought to have a culture of looking askance at executives and decision makers who never spend more than 2 years at a job, rather than celebrating them. If they've never had to live with the effects of their decisions they're really just a fresh-out-of-college person with 10 instances of the same two years of experience. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | pjmlp 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I bet those are the same folks that believed on the "Do no evil" marketing, or Microsoft <3 FOSS. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | Thaxll 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
30% cut and the shit they do with CS ( fomo, gambling ect .. ) they're not a good citizen. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||