When we eat the billionaires, we should spare Gabe Newell? No?

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ivanafterall@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩

Am I just deceived? I think I might love him?

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jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ 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.

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Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ 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.

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jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Give him the ability to divest his wealth first.

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4grams@awful.systems ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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…

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- thermal_shock@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Love your wallet though
  
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daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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Cooper8@feddit.online ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Offer him the option to transition Valve to a workers cooperative. Boom, he would no longer be a billionaire.

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sircac@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Just universal wealth redistribution, there is no way a human may ever deserve to accumulate so many resources…

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Vetis@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There is a finite amount of money in this world. For one person to have more means others have less. There is no going around that simple fact.

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Klear@quokk.au ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Valve invented or normalised a ton of crap that’s plaguing modern gaming: game launchers, always online DRM, microtransactions, achivements, lootboxes…

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- paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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- DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  whats wrong with game achivments?
  
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  - Klear@quokk.au ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
    
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  - Suburbanl3g3nd@lemmings.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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
    
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- halvar@lemy.lol ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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melfie@lemy.lol ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- Angelevo@feddit.nl ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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  - Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
    
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  - masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That means that gamers have been ripped off for decades.
    
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DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- OldChicoAle@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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?
  
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PunnyName@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If he continues to be a billionaire, yes.

Amassing that level of wealth is not an accident, it’s by choice.

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- EightBitBlood@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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  - AnyOldName3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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
    
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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  But he loves us, no?
  
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  - deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    He could love people more distributing his billions instead of hoarding them.
    
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spykee@lemmings.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Valve gives you a taste of gambling.
Every billionaire out there has become a billionaire by being a fucking idiot. No exceptions.

pcgamer.com/…/valves-reported-profit-per-head-fro…

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actionjbone@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’d make all the billionaires the same choice:

(a) Give away everything except, say, 25 million.

(b) Guillotine.

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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Does that include the Kelley Blue Book of my boats or are we talking purely liquid (heh) assets?
  
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  - actionjbone@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
    
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  - elephantium@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Only if they’re underwater.
    
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- HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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  - AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
    
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JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Billionaires aren’t your friends. Corporations aren’t your friends.

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- Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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
  
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BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We don’t have to eat them all, but we do have to take their money.

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halvar@lemy.lol ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Valve innovated a package manager, a store, strict DRM, and gambling / third party cosmetic markets.
  
  Very recently they built the Proton compatibility layer.
  
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- BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The worst thing he does that we know of seems to be trying to collect the fastest iteration of every type of vehicle.
  
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  - Jacob_Mandarin@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well no. Valve is involved in a lot of actual gambling with csgo etc. How they are ignoring and willfully profiting from all of the skin casinos etc. is my biggest problem with them. Despite that they are still one of the best big companies i know of.
    
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  - Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    And collusion with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.
    
    He charges 30% like the rest of them, he isn’t trying to compete.
    
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amzd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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- anyhow2503@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.
  
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- caoimhinr@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Devs can just generate keys and sell elsewhere to avoid the 30% cut.
  
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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I don’t want to love him. I just feel like I’d never find anyone better, if I left, you know?
  
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  - amzd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Is this one of those “the ogre has fallen I love with the princess” farquaad meme situations
    
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- 30p87@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I hate misused taxes.
  
  Gabe at least gives us 95% greatness back (5% being gambling)
  
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  - amzd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    He has an 111m superyacht, he is not giving you anything my friend, I’m sorry.
    
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- rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Pff, I wish my overall taxation was only 30%.
  
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Aequitas@feddit.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  He spent a billion dollars on boats.
  
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LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  He is not fa… he is definitely not a dragon!
  
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NewDark@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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…?
  
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  - BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
    
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  - AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s real life for you, with all those pesky shades of grey
    
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DrFistington@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Take all of his assets, let him live. Then take all of his assets again 5 years later

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- halvar@lemy.lol ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  since he would have gotten rich again by the right people attracting wealth obviously
  
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dontsayaword@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Being a billionaire is immoral in all cases

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- ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
  
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  - dontsayaword@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.
    
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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  FINE.
  
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xpey@piefed.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Fuck him too

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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s what I’m saying: how do I make this happen!?
  
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  - snooggums@piefed.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Maybe a few dates to wine and dine him?
    
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Mr_Fish@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
He’s low on the list for sure

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PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
No lol.

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- ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  To whom!?
  
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  - PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The working class
    
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Suburbanl3g3nd@lemmings.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If one bad apple truly should the bunch, yes. Yes you have to eat him too

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- BradleyUffner@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  We can give him the honor of being eaten last.
  
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  - deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’ll give him time to stop being a billionaire before it’s too late.
    
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Wilco@lemmy.zip ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sorry, but they must all be eaten. There should be no billionaires.

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