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Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?' (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Valve runs a profitable Launcher that allows them to try expanding into ventures like the Steam Deck and pushing Linux gaming adoption even if it ends in failures. That extra cash is what allows for businesses to expand beyond only one field.

Otherwise a company is just stuck being just a reseller, and I think gaming space currently is better for Steam Deck and how it's pushed more people to try Linux. And even before the Steam Deck work on Proton helped. Having profits makes it easier to absorb failures and put resources towards stuff like Linux that is niche and may never gain a significant enough adoption.

Like epic even with fortnite can't financially justify supporting Linux anticheat for fortnite, so I guess that's what happens if a company is not taking in enough profits. And Epic store is only being kept afloat because of fortnite, and is losing money.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Also, it's worth pointing out that Gabe seems like a decent guy, and Tim Sweeney is a fucking prick. So I think that's a pretty big difference right there too. Valve has earned respect, Epic has not.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Not just the Steam Deck. It or the Index (or IMO even better the Link and the Controller) are certainly more noticable things they did, but big wins to me are stuff like the integrated modding in Steam, or the ease of user reviews.

And for a newer feature that has become somewhat standard across stores but only because Valve startedi t and they had to keep up, refunding without any questions asked.