this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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The cause of enshittification is essentially the shareholder pressure for endless and exponential growth that comes from public ownership.
Valve is a privately held company, and as long as it remains that way it doesn't have those perverse incentives.
Gabe will never allow Valve to go public as long as he is in control, but after he is gone who knows.
Epic Games is also a private company... and they're the posterchild for "fuck the consumer, we want a monopoly."
It might have something to do with Epic being partly owned by Tencent and Disney, but it more likely comes down to the philosophies of their CEOs. Gabe came from a corporate shithole and runs with the diametrically-opposed view that good service = loyal customers = profit. Sweeney, not so much.
Considering the majority of stakeholders in Epic are all public companies, I disagree with this notion. Tim Sweeney owns a bit over 40%, the rest is held by:
Tencent Sony Disney Kirkbi (Lego)
Not very private, I say.
I doubt Epic would give out the number of free games they do if they were public. Investors hate anything that takes more than a quarter to give returns.