• M500@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      126
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Just run the company in a way where you don’t really care about maximizing profit. As long as you’re not at a loss and are liked, you will be successful.

      Valve could probably be much more profitable at the expense of being a bigger dick, but Gabe is chill.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      50
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Valve is far from a typical company. While technically not, they operate pretty much like a worker owned cooperative. Have a look at their employee handbook: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications

      (and Igalia, the company presenting in OP is really a worker owned cooperative).

    • angrymouse@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      If you remove stock market as a whole, maybe capitalism can work a little in a soc democracy, with stock market is impossible

      • cynar@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        A stock market can still work. The ultra high speed market we have now is a problem. Ultra fast trading encourages fast, short term thinking.

        A stock market with an update once per day could work better. It would take all the fast impulse trading out of the market, while still allowing price adaptation. When runs and crashes take weeks to play out, it’s a lot easier for cooler heads and logic to prevail. This, in turn would favour the sort of traders favouring long term stable investments.

        • trougnouf@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          The price updates whenever someone buys or sells, so doing that once a day may be a bit difficult to implement. Forbidding day-trading / imposing a minimum holding time on the other hand may be easier.

          • cynar@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            A queue type setup could likely work fine. Buyers and sellers could list their offers/requirements as a range. A round robin double blind auction matches buyers and sellers. The new price is calculated, based on this, and a new queue is opened.

            Forbidding the various high profit rent seeking would be a little like trying to block a sieve. There are so many variants and workarounds, that closing them all would be difficult. It would also be a lot more vulnerable to being watered down, or declawed completely.

            If once per day is too coarse, it could even work at once per hour. The key is it leaves time for people to think rather than reacting from gut instinct and high speed computer programs.

            • trougnouf@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Sounds nice, but I guess the first step is to take control away from the likes of Citadel / Kenneth Griffin since they take advantage of all that information and they already get to bid against every order placed in real time.

              I think our government should definitely get on that. In the meantime forbidding this kind of play aka taxing the living shit out of day-trading (like the current short-term/long-term gain system but actually painful in the very short term) should be pretty simple to implement.

              • cynar@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                I definitely agree with the need for short term fixes. Unfortunately, I suspect the core issues are inherent to the current system. Then again that applies to a lot of things at that level, and perfect is the greatest enemy of good.

    • roguetrick@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      36
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      Valve is the prime example of rent seeking behavior. It’s a private company that collects economic rents on a market thanks to that market being the biggest. They’re a private company and their only goal is to preserve those rents. They do that by fostering goodwill. They’re everything I hate about capitalism, but I don’t hate them for doing it.

      • cynar@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        34
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        They are also a good example of positive middleman behaviour. While they take their cut, the value they provide to both sides is huge.

        They are also in a position where they are still easily replaceable. Their dominance is from doing it well, not because they have an absolute lock in.

        Part of why this works is because they don’t have to prioritise short term profit over long term. Most companies like this get brought up and pumped dry. Valve seems to be the exception.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        22
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I don’t think Steam is rent-seeking because:

        • no cost to maintaining an account
        • no cost for keys if you sell stuff outside the Steam store
        • no cost for downloads
        • no cost for improvements to games

        Valve’s customers are publishers and devs, and they’re charging a finder’s fee for connecting customers to the games. To me, that’s not rent seeking, that’s a direct exchange of money for a service. If you don’t think the service is valuable or think you can do better, then generate keys and sell them elsewhere and you won’t need to pay Valve a cut.

        Valve is capitalism done right imo. You only pay when you receive a service, and only when you profit from the service. Steam also has a fantastic refund policy as well, which is surprisingly rare in the digital goods market.

      • teolan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Unlike every other company in their position they’re not complete assholes to consumers :

        • steam deck not locked down at all and reparable
        • steam and valve games support Linux very well
        • they don’t sign exclusivity deals for games to only be on steam

        Most companies in their position would lock their users in, they don’t. That doesn’t mean they can’t be abusive though. 30% of game revenue is huge!

        • Tau@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          At least gamedevs can generate keys and sell them on other sites to get a bigger cut

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think you can do that on EGS or GOG. So they ask 30%, but only if they actually helped make the sale. If you drove the revenue yourself, they’re happy to distribute the game for free on their platform.

            That’s about the least scumbag model I can think of.

            • Tau@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              1 year ago

              Yes, but his way you get the advantages of having it on Steam while bypassing the 30% cut of Valve.

              My point was that, while Valve does take a big cut, it doesn’t stop gamedevs from bypassing it

        • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          The 30% value exists because thats what console devs charge developers for ages. Valve is essentially just matching that.

          • teolan@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I think the epic store is much lower.

            Ultimately the 30% is as high as Steam estimates they can charge before they have to fear companies leaving their platform and bypassing steam altogether. Honestly I’m surprised it has not happened yet. 30% is super high, and users are not at all locked down like they are in the console market.

            • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Epics is much lower because theyre trying to entice devs, but they are the anomally in the sea of pricing.

              Epics trying to win market by enticing devs instead of working on features for the consumer, thats their market plan. Epic wasnt the only platform to have lower than 30% cut. Discord sold games at 10% cut, itchio is similar. Devs essentially debate of the baked in features of the platform and its audience is worth the 30% cut(the existing community, game review system, steams controller api, steam workshop, steamvr). Even just the client. ESPECIALLY to Linux users, on a consumer POV, ask yourself about ease getting to use the native client. Valve offers steam natively, and does a lot of work making the consumer end (and developer end too) easier on linux. EGS for example doesnt even run natively on linux, and requires a 3rd party launcher to run. People tend to take for granted all the things Valve has done for both the consumer and Developer.

              Discord massively failed to get users, and devs saw little market in it. Epic takes advatage of their position using unreal engine, and offers some devs money upfront for exclusivity, something certain audiences on PC absolutely hate.

              Users use steam because it simply offers them the best user experience. There are a ton of people who just buys their games directly from valve and not a 3rd party site. To a consumer, money’s not necessarily the problem on their end, and they dont see the 30% hit that developers take. Something good for the developer is not necessarily good for the consumer and vice versa, and many people make that mistake and conflate that to be the same thing when it isnt.

    • patatahooligan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      Well, Valve is privately-owned company and it’s investing a lot of money into the free software ecosystem right now. Yes it’s capitalism but very different in principles to the rest of the market.