this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Stock market shareholders want constant growth from their investments. Enough of them also only care about short term growth, even at the cost of long term.
Valve, being privately owned, only answers to its own shareholders, no-one can just buy in and start demanding more profit seeking. They have collectively decided that slow but reliable growth is better. This results in them not actively pumping their customer base for ever more profit. They have no intention of killing their golden goose.
Which is Newell controlled…. Privately owned means nothing, it’s actually worse since they can’t be audited so you don’t know the specifics.
Both line pockets. The difference is the focus. The shareholders for valve have been invited. You can't just decide to buy a bit of valve, then tell them what to do. Publicly traded shares mean that the people investing are often only interested in the value and dividends, anything that boosts that is good. If the company dies from it then who cares, they'll jump ship and invest elsewhere.
Valve's current mentality is that keeping the customers happy keeps the money flowing. It has now reached the point where compounding effects make up for the short term reduction in dividends.
Customers are happy, share holders are happy, and no-one can barge in, demanding a piece of the pie.
Customers are far from happy, they want sequels to their games, they want a better store, they want new IPs from valve.
Sure if you bury your head in the sand everyone’s happy, but don’t ignore everyone else’s opinion since you think Gabe Newell is any different than Musk.
Also, not to mention the cut they take from every sale for doing nothing, they’ve been caught in internal emails saying they could charge 7% and still be profitable, but every just accepts 30% and gets mad at others for pushing for cheaper cuts. The hypocrisy of defending Valve and Newell is just hilarious from people.
Ok, and how many of those points would be improved by going public?
People want sequels because they trust value to to them justice, not roll out stale cookie cutter versions like FIFA etc.
Would investors demand that valve take a smaller cut, or would they demand they take a bigger one in future?
Would they cut support for older games?
Would they add ads to the overlays?
Would you then be able to get "Steam Premium" for an ad free experience?
Please let me know what bit of steam's business model would be improved by them constantly chasing a higher profit every quarter?
Pardon? Thats literally what they are doing by hoarding their wealth instead of investing it in products and changes.
And what’s all this goalpost moving about public companies?