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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Aeolun 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

You think Gabe will sell to PE? You need someone willing to sell to be able to buy something.

I’m betting that won’t happen, and that the next BDFL is not going to run the thing into the ground fast enough for it to matter to me.

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sarchertech 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

No, but his heirs might.

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gjsman-1000 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Dude, Gabe could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and all it takes is for 0.2% of Steam shares to be given to a secondary person, for any reason, due to a legal order (as he owns only 50.1%) to cause the takeover.

Valve is also facing a class action lawsuit for anticompetitive practices. If they lose, even though they will almost certainly survive, watch the tables flip upside down fast.

	▲	ChoGGi 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I thought valve was a private company with no VC money? How do you know share ratios? I am genuinely asking, as I am curious.
	▲	bigyabai 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That would be very distressing, but the important things (eg. Proton, Gamescope, OpenXR) they built would live on in their legacy. Plus, the PC games industry can survive just fine without Valve - but Valve can't survive without the support of PC gamers. Anyone succeeding Gabe would have to accept that, or squander what little value their shares possess. Products like the Steam Deck or Steam Controller don't need any Valve software to play games. Valve knows a post-Steam world will exist one day, and they're fine with that. From a consumer standpoint, I respect that.

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4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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