Am I just deceived? I think I might love him?
I’d make all the billionaires the same choice:
(a) Give away everything except, say, 25 million.
(b) Guillotine.
When we eat the billionaires, we should spare Gabe Newell? No?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by ivanafterall@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Does that include the Kelley Blue Book of my boats or are we talking purely liquid (heh) assets?
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Oh, everything.
Got a $20m yacht? Sell it. Oh, youcre forced to sell it for $50k because nobody will give you more? That’s just the free market, clearly it’s only worth $50k.
Paid $75m to build your house? Well someone is offering you $175k and you’d better take it.
And you own a company worth $100m? No you don’t, it was already taken from you and turned into a worker-owned co-op.
After all the sales and seizures, you’ve got $23.1m in cash, and just 1m more in the bank? OK, dude, we cool.
elephantium@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Only if they’re underwater.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
This is my problem. If the wealth stacked up real fast maybe I would crack 100 mil but man I would so do the myspace guy thing.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The Sovereign Fund for Humanity’s Poor. Even if the wealth is stacking up that fast all anyone has to do is set up a trust fund with that name, the goal of using said wealth to fund every single human with a trust fund that will eliminate poverty in their life, and a board of directors that MUST contain two fiduciaries but only one from any given major Megalopolis, as well as three data analysts from OxFam. Once that’s setup, all you have to do is setup automatic deposits of every single penny above $100,000,000 and every other rich person can do the same.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If he continues to be a billionaire, yes.
Amassing that level of wealth is not an accident, it’s by choice.
EightBitBlood@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I agree with this sentiment, but given a choice, I believe Gabe would make the right one and spend his wealth to lose billionaire status.
His supposed exploitation was not by his own design, but rather by luck - the sheer benefit of riding a privately owned and benevelontly steered surfboard on top of a collapsing capitalist society.
Basically, there’s a meme about all other companies shooting themselves in the foot so Gabe always benefits, and part of that is in the way those companies fucked and manipulated their control of capital and markets. Gabe benefits just by being one of the few that can afford to participate in that system others rigged.
So he simply rigs it the least, and wins by providing the platform with the least greedy problems. Far far less than he could given his position.
IMHO, despite all controversies, Steams cut of profits from providing equal access to game visibility despite creator, nationality, background, etc, has legitimately opened the door for nearly anyone to be successful on their platform. For all the tools and services they provide, they ask for literally the smallest cut compared to any other publishing platform.
Gabe could destroy that to his benefit on a whim, and instead he over designs it to make it possible for nearly anyone to try gaem dev if they do the work needed to develop for them.
To hold so much capital simply for providing some form of equality to access the same in a system that overwhelming benefits others with more resources is in no way greedy imo. It’s being the person with the only fire extinguisher who knows how to use it in a burning down building: popular.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A man who owns a billion dollars worth of megayatchts is not doing everything he can to ethically spend/donate his wealth. Yes, lots of his wealth is tied up in Valve stock and he can’t sell that without losing voting rights and making Valve stop being what it is, but he’s rolling in other assets and cash, too
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
But he loves us, no?
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
He could love people more distributing his billions instead of hoarding them.
amzd@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why? He takes a 30% cut from every game sale just because his platform has a dominant grasp on gamers.
I don’t understand how people can hate taxes (which go on to pay for schools and roads) but not the way larger cut that digital storefronts charge.
anyhow2503@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There’s an argument to be made that it’s too high of a cut, especially these days. A lot of this money has funded great improvements to the gaming ecosystem and many open source projects. The major competing storefronts/launchers do not come even slightly close to the feature set that Steam provides, but they have tried attracting users through exclusivity deals. It’s very telling that some successful competitors (like itch or gog) actually offer some unique benefits and aren’t attached to some incredibly controversial corporations…
Valve isn’t free from criticism and their role as a monopolist should definitely be scrutinized, especially as companies often radically change for the worse in behaviour and culture, but a lot of this critical attention was instigated by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney who can frankly gargle my nuts.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t want to love him. I just feel like I’d never find anyone better, if I left, you know?
amzd@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Is this one of those “the ogre has fallen I love with the princess” farquaad meme situations
30p87@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I hate misused taxes.
Gabe at least gives us 95% greatness back (5% being gambling)
amzd@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He has an 111m superyacht, he is not giving you anything my friend, I’m sorry.
rikudou@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
Pff, I wish my overall taxation was only 30%.
caoimhinr@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Devs can just generate keys and sell elsewhere to avoid the 30% cut.
4grams@awful.systems 2 weeks ago
These is. I such thing as a good billionaire. There are billionaires who might be temporarily aligned with you but make no mistake none of them will love you back…
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Love your wallet though
Quexotic@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Looking at you, Mark Cuban
crypt0cler1c@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
He has 6 yachts from kiddie gambling…
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in 3 weeks ago
Valve is in a very unique spot where employees are all paid well because of the low amount of employees they have and the massive income they generate; in their employee reviews you typically don’t really see low salary as a reason to leave.
Grimy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
He spent a billion dollars on boats.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Billionaires aren’t your friends. Corporations aren’t your friends.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
But they can be an adversary or friendly.
Not everything is black and white.
It’s just a question when we’ll eat Valve
Aequitas@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Idealizing billionaires is cringe. Eat them all. Just because he’s not a complete asshole like all the other parasites doesn’t make him a good person. He’s still a parasite.
NewDark@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
Look, he can be a rich guy and a leader. 1 billion is a decent line in the sand of “sorry, you own too much”. He’s certainly not as nakedly evil as most the rest of his ilk.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I can agree with that. Still, has he ever been naked that you know of? Cuz… I’d like to really solidify my stance…?
BurgerBaron@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
There’s Steam Marketplace and loot boxes that stain his image for negatives. He could’ve not done that had had one less mega yacht.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
That’s real life for you, with all those pesky shades of grey
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I usually put it at $10M, and there are specific arguments for this.
The Trinity Study used a standard retirement portfolio and then studied its results using a sliding window starting from 1925. Let’s say you retire at 60 and expect to have another 20 years of life. This time period covers good stock market performance and bad, high inflation and low. It’s a very robust result, and the US and even worldwide economy would have to fundamentally change for it to be invalidated. (You could argue that Trump is driving things in that direction, but that’s a whole other discussion.)
How much of the portfolio can you withdraw each year and be safe?
The study starts with a percentage withdraw rate, which is increased by the rate of inflation each year. It then checks if the portfolio would have run out of money before the person is expected to die. This resulted in the 4% rule where you start withdrawing 4% the first year and then increase by inflation. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll run out of money in a standard retirement period.
If you withdraw 3% or 2%, you won’t run out of money even if you live forever.
So let’s take a 2.5% withdraw rate. This is extremely conservative and should basically last forever. US government bond rates are typically higher than that (but not always), so we’re not even that tied to the stock market on this one. If you had $10M, take 2.5% the first year and increase by inflation each year after, you would perpetually have the purchasing power of $250k/year.
If you have $250k/year, you can live very comfortably anywhere on Earth. This is the part where someone always chimes in “what about the Bay area or New York?”
First, with this plan, you can live anywhere. You’re not tied to an area by a job. Maybe don’t chose high cost of living areas.
OK, let’s say there’s family or something else that’s specifically tying you to those areas. Median income in Manhattan is $106k, and the other burrows are significantly lower. San Fransisco median is $136k. I’m quite certain you can live comfortably on $250k in those areas if you absolutely had to for some reason.
Also, don’t forget that unlike all us working stiffs, you wouldn’t have to put another dime into a 401k or any other retirement plan. Your $10M already covers that. Feel free to spend it all on luxuries.
So that’s the limit. We can increase the $10M based on future inflation, but higher than that is just wanking about how much you have, and there’s no reason society should respect that.
NewDark@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
That’s really well thought out. Thank you for that.
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
In my opinion if anyone has billions of dollars and hasn’t given a majority of it away to charity or those in need, that person is on some level at least somewhat an evil person.
Sure, much of it would be tied up in stocks and stuff that legally can’t be sold for specific purposes or timeframes, but if you have net worth in the billions and any stocks that could be sold for cash and then donated it should be. Or if you have an annual income that’s much more than you need to live an extremely comfortable life and then you just spend and invest the excess instead of donate.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Securities tax, payable in shares of the security. 1% of all stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments transferred to the IRS annually, to be auctioned slowly over time. The first $10 million held by a natural person may be exempted from this requirement. No exemptions for artificial “persons”.
dontsayaword@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Being a billionaire is immoral in all cases
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
FINE.
ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
How does it work with someone like Taylor Swift, who According to Forbes, Swift is the first musician to reach 10-figure status solely based on songwriting and performances rather than brand deals, makeup lines, or business ventures?
You can argue they should be more charitable, but that really can’t be required. You could also say taxes should be higher past a certain point, but they currently aren’t and that’s not any individual’s fault.
Also, I’m using Taylor swift as an example, but I mean more generally a person that captures worldwide attention for their art.
dontsayaword@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I believe a moral person would not horde such obscene wealth while people are struggling and starving unnecessarily. Were not talking about just being “well off” - It’s more money than a person could need in countless lifetimes. So yes, I think she should give it away.
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
in all cases
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A billionaire who gives away 99% of their wealth to the poorest, first and exclusively, isn’t a billionaire, and still has enough money (maybe more!) for the rest of time.
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 2 weeks ago
Not off you have a fleet of yachts
LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
He’s just another fat dragon who got rich exploiting people through ownership of capital. Then he got children hooked on gambling because one billion wasn’t enough.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
He is not fa… he is definitely not a dragon!
DrFistington@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Take all of his assets, let him live. Then take all of his assets again 5 years later
halvar@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
since he would have gotten rich again by the right people attracting wealth obviously
melfie@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
I have no problem with people who contribute a lot of value to society being proportionally rewarded. However, having a net worth in the billions is just plain ludicrous, especially since the billionaires aren’t the ones creating all the value, they’re just controlling it. For example, did Gabe invent everything that makes Valve as successful as it is, or was most of it designed and developed by engineers who are paid a fraction of what he is paid? Even if most of Valve’s IP started with Gabe and other engineers were doing the grunt work to “make it so”, that still shouldn’t mean that society allows this one man to control billions worth of our societal resources.
Angelevo@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
If I am not mistaken, Steam is one of the highest paid companies in the world, if not the. Perhaps still not fair relative to contribution, yet exemplary compared to the rest.
I do believe that Gabe is one of the better/more benevolent winners of an inherently unfair and now definitely broken system.
Grimy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Valve encourages and keeps the system broken just as much as Microsoft or Nintendo does. They all try really hard not to compete.
They do have high salaries, but it’s also a ridiculously small company for the money they make. Gaben is still making money hand over fist, and the employees making big money are all on the admin team.
Steam could charge a 5% fee and give the rest to developers. The services and salaries would still stay the same. It would give Gaben enough money to cover his billion dollar boats fleets maintenance cost, just not enough to buy himself a new yacht every two years.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
That means that gamers have been ripped off for decades.
Cooper8@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
Offer him the option to transition Valve to a workers cooperative. Boom, he would no longer be a billionaire.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
He has that option every day.
ComradePenguin@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
This is really simple. If you have more than a 1000 million dollars. Every day you decide to keep it instead of saving lives and helping people. It will never be moral
paultimate14@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“Billionaire” is a convenient modern buzzword. It used to be “millionaire”. The classic joke from Austin Powers where Dr. Evil demands money is a good example. It’s just inflation.
Plus, a lot of “billionaires” are only considers such because they own shares in their corporations. It’s a “theoretically if they could find a way to sell all of those shares at the current price without tanking the market value of those shares in the process, they could get $X billion from that”.
If there were a theoretical global revolution, on of the the first steps of eating the rich is to seize and nationalize those businesses. Later, land reform will seize the extra mansions they own. They will still be left with adequate personal property to live quite comfortably. Finally, the justice system will need to evaluate what labor laws (or other laws) they may have been violating for years and using their wealth to get away with.
Start with the biggest fish and watch as the rest start to downsize voluntarily and cut deals to avoid jail.
I don’t expect to see any of this in my lifetime. Not in any major country, and certainly not globally.
Hadriscus@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Valve in particular in a private company, so if Gabe own billions in shares, it’s not Valve shares
paultimate14@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In order to be incorporated, a company has to have stock. Private companies still have shares even if they aren’t traded on public exchanges.
It’s possible that Gabe owns 100% of Valve’s stock, but it’s also possible that he’s sold some to other people or entities. Originally when Valve was founded, it was a split between Gabe and Mike Harrington, but Harrington reportedly sold his shares to Gabe when he left.
It’s also very likely that Gabe owns shares in other corporations, even just as personal retirement investments. But that’s not what I was talking about.
xpey@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Fuck him too
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s what I’m saying: how do I make this happen!?
snooggums@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
Maybe a few dates to wine and dine him?
Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He’s low on the list for sure
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
No lol.
practisevoodoo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
He can buy his freedom by using his wealth to finally release hl3
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We can save him for desert.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
If it were to be a revolution he would be given the chance. Just be a director of valve for a normal director salary. If he take it then he would be just another worker.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I personally don’t like the idea of murder, I’d if we-the-people get into power, just pass laws that taxes them, then enforce the law as such. If they resist, jailtime for tax evasion.
For those that are exceedingly cruel with their time as a billionaire, they get tried, judged by a jury of average people, 2/3 is a conviction (as opposed to the unanimity required now), life imprisonment.
Billionaires and their heirs are deprived of political rights.
Easy peaceful transition. Zero bloodshed
I don’t like bloodshed, because once that starts, once we “okay” mob killings, people are gonna attack anyone they don’t like, including small bussiness owners they had a grudge against in the past.
I have empathy, I don’t wanna see the streets filled with blood.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah I don’t think we can force billionaires to do anything without some violence. Have you seen the world and how long the rich have been in power?
OriginalUsername7@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Valve makes tonnes of money from loot boxes or whatever they’re called. Basically a form of gambling.
It just so happens that’s great way of making a shit load of money is making it super easy for people to buy from you. Valves big competitive advantage is just… not fucking that up.
And as someone else said, Gabe doesn’t have to be a billionaire. He could use his phenomenal wealth to build hospitals and help the poor, rather than building his own little private navy.
Valve is doing a lot that will make people like them, but they’re still a huge corporation, and Gabe is still a billionaire.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
We don’t have to eat them all, but we do have to take their money.
halvar@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
As far as I know Valve isn’t one of those companies that employes a hundred thousand minimum-wage slaves, but one that’s gotten big, by actually innovating, which is like the only potentially good aspect of capitalism and seems to not be something most corporations do anymore. Of course were this question to ever become relevant he would have to give up most of his wealth, but it’s not like he is one of those billionaires that eat babies for breakfast.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I’m not eating Elon Musk. That’s like dumpster diving behind a cracker barrel.
Klear@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
Valve invented or normalised a ton of crap that’s plaguing modern gaming: game launchers, always online DRM, microtransactions, achivements, lootboxes…
DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
whats wrong with game achivments?
Klear@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
They’re nothing but a skinner box that’s supposed to keep you playing games for longer. It’s the same type of instant gratification built into most mobile game, but applied to everything else.
Suburbanl3g3nd@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
For me, it’s when people complain that a game/system/platform doesn’t have them. Some games and systems don’t need or want to gamify playing games and that’s okay
paultimate14@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
None of that was invented by Valve. “Normalize” is subjective but I would argue they didn’t do any of that either.
Launchers existed for a long, long time before Steam- part of what made Steam so successful was having a centralized launcher for games from a lot of different companies together. Before then there was usually a separate launcher for each game.
Online DRM has existed for as long as the Internet was ubiquitous enough to get away with it. Offline DRM existed before that. Even back in the 80’s games would ship with all sorts of anti-piracy mechanisms. The only 2 Valve games that ever had DRM were Artifact and DOTA 2, both of which were online multiplayer-only games, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Maple Story is pretty widely considered to be the first game with micro transactions, and they were in the form of loot boxes. By the time Team Fortress came out the concept was already popularized in MMO’s, Facebook games like Farmville, and FIFA.
Achievements aren’t something I really care about, but game had those concepts for years. I remember playing Spyro 2 as a kid and tracking down all the skill points. Sure it doesn’t use the word “achievement” but even today Sony uses the word “Trophy” to mean the same thing.
Corporations aren’t your friend of course, it’s just weird that people think Valve invented these things. And Valve’s implementations are some of the most benign and consumer-friendly cases in the industry.
The launcher i consider a positive - it’s a great way to organize my library, including non-steam games. There’s tons of free features I use all the time, like Remote Play, free Cloud Saves, friend management. It’s great for managing inputs from all sorts of different controllers, managing systems with multiple displays, allowing me to control everything with a controller without having to set it down to use my mouse and keyboard. They have great mod support for the games that use it. There’s tons more features I don’t use. It’s not just a launcher like EA Play or UPlay- it’s a full platform. It’s so useful that I even added GOG Galaxy as a non-steam game.
Any business needs to balance the needs of its stakeholders. Owners, partners, creditors, consumers, employees, governments, etc. Valve is one of the fairest companies left alive in 2025 at balancing all of these entities, and yet in every online discussion about them someone always feels the need to pipe in and be like “well aktually they are secretly very bad!”, just because they don’t have the power to stop other companies from being shitty. They don’t have the bargaining power to tell Sega to get rid of Denuvo on a games from prior generations selling for $20. They don’t have the bargaining power to Ubisoft or Larian to drop their annoying launchers. They don’t have the power to tell other publishers and devs to stop adding pay-to-win mechanics. They don’t have the power to stand up to payment processors that are demanding certain content be removed from the store.
Valve DOES have the power to promote Linux as a legitimately viable operating system for gamers, behind Linux enthusiasts. They have the power to get Microsoft to drop their ridiculous store. They have the power to get Ubisoft to at least add their games to Steam, even if you need a dumb launcher still. They have the power to clearly and consistently label games with DRM in their store so consumers can make informed decisions without spending hours digging through the legalize or EULA’s or doing research on enthusiast forums.
It’s fair to question whether Valve’s 30% cut is justified for every publisher, though we also know that some publishers have been able to make separate deals at times. I’m sure you can find other things that are fair to question. It’s really weird to accuse people of “kissing Gabe’s ass” just for recognizing that Steam is the best platform for a consumer to use right now.
halvar@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
Blaming game launchers on Steam is like blaming streaming becoming unusable on Netflix. They were having success being (probably) the first ones to do it and when other companies saw that they tried to copy their success, only to find out that what made the original product successful was that they were the only ones doing it and that was (unlike the new landscape the companies just created) incredibly useful.
The sad fact of the matter is that while having a one stop shop for anything sounds great, once a solution in a certain field gets successful the other companies trying to achive the same success will fly in like vultures and make it forever impossible to have just one service that unites everything into one neat package.