this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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Gabe Newell talked about this years ago.
Gabe is one of the CEOs (if we can call him one?) of a gaming company, who truly understands gamers.
It's never a good idea to fall in love with CEOs; a company may sometime "help" their customer, but when strategic partner asks for a slap in the face for the customer... there's no "may", only must.
Steam comes with Denuvo, third party launcher filled with ads and kernel level anticheat. None of these was required by Valve... yet... they still slap their customer in the face per strategic parteners requests.
Also, refund is not something in Gabe's book: it was written in Australia's laws (also EU and other countries) and only after lot of struggles he conceded it.
Toooooo bad he also owns multiple yachts and people just kinda give him a pass for it.
What has him owning yachts and being rich anything to do with the subject I talked about? Why would I be bothered by it?
Nothing, I guess.
I'm a bit confused to why you brought it up then. Sorry if it was a joke or sarcasm and I missed it. Otherwise, I don't care how many yachts he has and don't mind he being rich. That's not a reason to hate someone. Therefore, there is nothing to give it a pass for.
I think it's because people often say Gabe is "one of the good ones (billionaires)", and they saw the original comment as implying that
Him, I'm not sure how someone is a good or bad person for having money. I judge someone by their actions and how much they seem to touch grass. And Gabe seems to not only understand gamers, also his background how all of this came to be makes him more sympathetic versus most other billionaires. He also owns his own platform and is a private company, which adds to the weight.
But most importantly, the actions he does speak to me and I support what he does. We could go into details, but I think it does not matter to do that now at this place...
You can't become a billionaire ethically. It's impossible.
That is your opinion. I do not agree that Gabe got so much money in an unethical way. If it is, then tell me what he is doing or did that is unethical.
It's not him having money, it's him spending on one of the most destructive vehicles (environment-wise) as you can buy. Multiple times. I do like that he has kept Valve private, and that he seems to understand what we gamers actually value. But that doesn't make him a good person or Valve a good company.
Rather him wasting money on boats then spending his wealth on gaining power.
The greatest thing he's done is kept Valve a private company. He's not beholden to shareholders constantly demanding that the line go up at any cost.
Funny how he's still fantastically wealthy. It's almost like treating your employees well and providing a quality product to consumers is a viable path to success, and selling out isn't actually necessary to become rich.
Fuck shareholders. They are make no money out the ass. Why tether themselves to silicon valley douches or whatever.
I 100% pirate games because of price what are people even talking about. Most of the launchers work fine ime. Valve has linux support which is nice