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That leaked email conveniently assumes the owner of Valve would sell it. I can't think of a reason for Gabe to do that.
For now. But his son is now focused on his own business and it's got nothing to do with gaming. Once Gabe is gone, I doubt Valve will remain privately owned and by the same people.
Other people work at Valve other than Gabe. It's entirely possible there's others in the top management team.
This is the biggest problem with Valve at the moment. They're awesome, but only because of the current leadership. Once these guys retire or die, it's very likely Valve will enshittify like every other business.
Valve needs to be hit by regulators at some point. They just have too much market power.
I wish the decent guys who started companies would leave a directive for the company that must be followed to prevent it from becoming just another shitty piece of garbage like everything else these days has become thanks to the geniuses with business degrees running the world.
Money? Remember when people thought that about Mojang?
Mojang, at least, was not founded by two guys who gave Microsoft the finger on their way out the door at their previous job.
Gaben already refused to sell to EA and made it abundantly clear that we would rather let valve die than go public.
Microsoft also just recently said they'd buy Nintendo if they could.
All this means is that Microsoft is filthy rich and still doesn't know how to make an original quality game studio. They seem to overly rely on buying out studios and IPs that are successful to rake in more money.
spoiler
All of which reeks of an oligigopoly and reminds me of even worse companies like Oracle and AT&T
The funny thing about selling valve, what would it even give for Gabe? He's already filthy rich. What more could one want with more money?
Saying no to selling only makes sense in his position, in my opinion. At least I personally would think so. Because then you still keep what is effectively your creation, and can use it to shape the world.
At some point you really do just have enough money.
Well, the idea is you can do something else with the money instead of it being tied up with that company. You could start another venture if you want to. I'm pretty sure Valve is what he wants to be doing though, so starting a different company isn't really something he'd want to do.
Even if he doesn't want to run it, doesn't mean it has to be sold to another company. It can just keep on being a private company with a new handpicked leader. There's no upside to selling for Gabe. After he passes however... all bets are off.
Yeah where's our antitrust enforcement?
The oligopoly thing has definitely been fucking everything up for decades.
The thought of another company buying Valve, especially one like Microsoft, makes me actually sick. I have spent so much fucking money on my Steam library at this point. If my Steam library gets jacked by some billionaire dickheads it's all over, I'm never paying for anything again.
Yargghh?! Seriously though, I was furious when they bought Mojang and partially enshittified Minecraft.
This is so stupid. Of course they would buy it. Valve won't sell, but let's do the click baits!
They’d buy Sony and Nintendo if those were up to sell. For the right price (I dunno, in the hundreds of dollars according to my bank account), I’d buy them too.
in the hundreds of dollars according to my bank accoun
You decadent bourgeois pig
Yeah 100% this. Why would you not buy Valve? The store is a cash cow and the userbase is huge. They have a lot of good faith with the community too. These must be rage bait articles.
Gaben is one of the few people in tech I trust to resist the money MSFT would be willing to throw at something as successful as valve. I mean - they’re the closest thing to a trustworthy company as you can find these days.
Yeah, I doubt he cares about the money at this point, and he did leave MSFT, so I'm guessing he isn't interested in selling. He also went out of his way to use Linux to stick it to MSFT.
As long as he runs the company, I don't see it happening.
Gabe has been a large proponent of avoiding the kind of consolidation that Microsoft is doing. He saw the writing on the way years ago when Valve released the Steam consoles. I don't think (and certainly hope) that he wouldn't sell.
I like to think Gabe knows all too well the importance of remaining a private business. Publicly traded businesses are the root cause of a lot of problems in the world.
I work for a company that has specifically stated it will never do that and has stuck to those guns for 50+ years
Day 1 of suddenly having the urge to keep an offline and DRM free copy of all my steam games.
I imagine they would immediately drop proton and move the steam deck too some windows bs
It's impossible for me to understand not having enough. M$ is like some megacorp villain that wants to swallow everything
When one company in an industry has nearly endless cash, as Microsoft and Apple do, it is natural that everyone else would be seen as acquisition targets
The difference is Valve is completely privately owned, Microsoft cannot force a sale.
With a publicly traded business, the business must be run in the interests of the shareholders, ie it must pursue profits above all else. Thus a buyer can effectively present "an offer you can't refuse", at least the business can't refuse on behalf of shareholders (maybe the shareholders could vote and refuse). With a private business the owner generally has free reign to run the business as they see fit, they could run it into the ground if they so desired.
So it doesn't matter how much cash Microsoft or whoever have, so long as Gabe doesn't want to sell.
This would be a nightmare
It's a private company that isn't for sale. There was another leak a week ago where they were trying to acquire Nintendo which IS publicly traded, but I think the private shares still control 51%, but that's old info.
Hopefully Gabe doesn't allow that to ever happen
I love Steam (have 2000 or so games on it) but I realize it is only a matter of time before it gets enshittified.
I've tried switching to Linux and didn't succeed. Nevertheless i wouldn't wanna see a Microsoft Deck with Windows 11.
Tons of Windows based gaming handhelds already exist from Asus, Lenovo, Aya, GPD, etc. I'd doubt Microsoft releasing one, hypothetical Valve acquisition or not, would set the world on fire.
Knowing good old M$, though, if they tried it they'd make it some kind of Xbox product.