• Grimy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    69
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    I’ve never seen a billionaire get defended like Gaben.

    He literally owns a billion dollars worth of yatchs yet I’ve seen his simp squad compare him to Jesus, lmao.

    • ntma@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      18 minutes ago

      He’s one of the good ones, a real credit to his kind.

    • RoosterBoy@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      69
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      1 day ago

      Because his billions were earned from offering an actually decent service beholden to the customers rather than the shareholders, something not many other billionaires seem capable of. Yeah, nobody needs a billion dollars but literally everyone else in the gaming industry would rather shoot themselves in the foot to make a penny now rather than… Just simply not do that and make a dollar later.

      • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 hours ago

        You cannot possibly earn a billion dollars. That money is the excess labor value of Valve workers. In the context of how our society is currently structured Gaben certainly isn’t the worst of them, but he’s still a member of the parasite class.

        • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 minutes ago

          Most of Valve’s money comes from taking a 30% cut of all sales through the Steam store, which is a lot of money. They’re not abusing their market position as much as they could (e.g. if you buy a Steam key from anywhere else, like a key in a physical box at a physical store, or another online key retailer like Humble Bundle, Valve gets no money, as the publisher can generate as many Steam keys as they want for free), but it’s the surplus value of the labour of employees of other companies that Gabe Newell accumulates.

          • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            39 minutes ago

            I’ve heard that, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that the relationship Gaben has with Valve workers is inherently parasitic. He may be a “good boss,” but he’s still their boss, has ownership of all their work, and could fire them at will.

            • tmyakal@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              16 minutes ago

              Also worth noting that most of Gabe’s (and Valve’s) value is not based on anyone at Valve’s work, but instead based on taking a cut from every dev that sells on Steam. Valve is effectively a landlord renting out digital real estate. The fact that they’re able to make obscene amounts of money suggests to me that maybe rents are too damn high.

          • Moah@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            29 minutes ago

            Hmm it was at some point, and then there were reports it’s not that amazing if you’re not part of the “in” crowd.

        • RoosterBoy@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          6 hours ago

          Every other game company does that, too, ON TOP of all the other shit they do.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        23 hours ago

        literally everyone else in the gaming industry would rather shoot themselves in the foot to make a penny now rather than… Just simply not do that and make a dollar later.

        Ah, the shortsighted joy of publicly traded companies.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      24 hours ago

      You are apparently unaware of the literal tens of thousands of youtube/twitter/media people who basically did/do nothing other than promote Elon and everything he does.

      Elon Musk Can Multitask Better Than You.

      Elon’s new Hyperloop will revolutionize transit in America!

      Tesla’s stock price will be $42,690 per share in 5 years, here’s why.

      Its about a million times more obnoxious than people pointing out that Gabe actually knows what he’s talking about.

      You can go outside and strike up a conversation with any random person, and they will almost certainly know who Elon is, and most people will still think he is some kind of genius real life Tony Stark.

      You can go outside and strike up a random convo with any random person about Gabe, and chances are 98% of people will have no idea who you are talking about, unless you are at some kind of nerd/geek type outing like a video game convention, and even then, people under 20 - 25 are not likely to know who he is.

      EDIT: Yeah, I am actually fairly confident that for you to make a statement like that, you probably, unironically, need to touch grass.

      I fail to see any way you could have that opinion other than that basically all you do is argue on video game forums / discords / twitch / whatever, and that you just have almost 0 contact with real life human beings, or online spaces that do not revolve around video games.