From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Valve is also a privately held company, unlike most (all?) of the other big players. Therefore they don’t have the ever present drive and threat of “the line must always go up” to contend with. Valve can do whatever the fuck they feel like, however the fuck they feel like, and as long as they’re bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on and keep Gabe Newell in Acapulco shirts and Cheetos, or whatever his jam is, there’s nothing anybody can do about it.
They can gamble and release a VR headset or two, and if it’s not a huge success, who cares? There are no shareholders breathing down their necks. They can support the Linux community and if it pisses of Microsoft, or whoever, so what? They want to wait 16+ years before getting around to releasing the sequel to their flagship franchise? There is no boardroom pushing them to slap it together and shove it out the door before Christmas, so they can just do that. Etc.
All true, but Gabe is old and the de facto leader. What happens when he goes? Do employees have stake in the company to make sure the way things work don’t change? Will a new leader want to “shake things up” to be able to “claim ownership” over what is happening at the company? (This is something many many managers do, and it’s bad management, but it’s so so common)
There’s still ripe opportunity for things to go south here.
Gabe is 61. Looking at the presidential candidates for the upcoming US election and it even looks young.