That’s a very specific and bold claim about Valve’s internal finances. Do you have access to their private balance sheets and investment budgets? Unless you do, we’re both just speculating.
Factually speaking: Valve provides a massive, global storefront, handles all payment fraud and chargebacks, provides cloud storage for games, and maintains the entire friend/community network. The 30% is the price for that bundle of services.
Whether that’s a fair price is debatable, but the personal wealth of the CEO is a distraction from that debate.
Brother, go back and read the OP. You cannot claim that 30% is fair while the man camps on an Armada of yachts worth over a billion dollars. This is not a distraction, this is the problem. There’s just no way that makes any sense.
You’re putting words in my mouth. I never called the 30% “fair.” I’ve been trying to steer the conversation toward what a discussion about its fairness should actually be based on: the value of the services Steam provides.
You are fixated on Gabe Newell’s personal wealth as the sole proof that the cut is unjust. That’s an emotional argument about wealth disparity, not a logical analysis of the platform’s costs and value.
Let me be clear: whether a CEO’s personal spending is excessive is a separate moral and political debate. It doesn’t, on its own, determine if the price of a service is justified. The cost of servers, development, support, and the global infrastructure Steam maintains is what’s relevant here.
If you want to argue that the platform itself isn’t worth the cut, make that case. But simply pointing to a yacht and saying “see, it’s unfair” is a non-sequitur. It’s a distraction from the actual economic discussion.
Let me be clear: whether a CEO’s personal spending is excessive is a separate moral and political debate. It doesn’t, on its own, determine if the price of a service is justified.
LEt me be clear: It absolutely does. I can’t think of a better indicator.
Actually, it’s a terrible indicator, because it’s completely disconnected from the service you’re evaluating. Your anger is about wealth inequality and the ethics of extreme capitalism, which is a totally valid topic. But you’re using that anger to answer a different question: ‘What is a fair price for this service?’
But you are insisting on using that separate topic as the only metric for this one. Since we’re fundamentally talking about two different issues and you’re refusing to engage with the point about service value, I don’t see this conversation being productive any longer.
It’s not separate at all. It’s very simple: if it was a good value, he wouldn’t have all of that money. The fact that he’s absurdly wealthy is a direct indicator that it’s a poor value.
The point is a very small percentage of that 30% is being reinvested in the company and the vast majority is going into Gabe’s pocket.
That’s a very specific and bold claim about Valve’s internal finances. Do you have access to their private balance sheets and investment budgets? Unless you do, we’re both just speculating.
Factually speaking: Valve provides a massive, global storefront, handles all payment fraud and chargebacks, provides cloud storage for games, and maintains the entire friend/community network. The 30% is the price for that bundle of services.
Whether that’s a fair price is debatable, but the personal wealth of the CEO is a distraction from that debate.
Brother, go back and read the OP. You cannot claim that 30% is fair while the man camps on an Armada of yachts worth over a billion dollars. This is not a distraction, this is the problem. There’s just no way that makes any sense.
You’re putting words in my mouth. I never called the 30% “fair.” I’ve been trying to steer the conversation toward what a discussion about its fairness should actually be based on: the value of the services Steam provides.
You are fixated on Gabe Newell’s personal wealth as the sole proof that the cut is unjust. That’s an emotional argument about wealth disparity, not a logical analysis of the platform’s costs and value.
Let me be clear: whether a CEO’s personal spending is excessive is a separate moral and political debate. It doesn’t, on its own, determine if the price of a service is justified. The cost of servers, development, support, and the global infrastructure Steam maintains is what’s relevant here.
If you want to argue that the platform itself isn’t worth the cut, make that case. But simply pointing to a yacht and saying “see, it’s unfair” is a non-sequitur. It’s a distraction from the actual economic discussion.
LEt me be clear: It absolutely does. I can’t think of a better indicator.
Actually, it’s a terrible indicator, because it’s completely disconnected from the service you’re evaluating. Your anger is about wealth inequality and the ethics of extreme capitalism, which is a totally valid topic. But you’re using that anger to answer a different question: ‘What is a fair price for this service?’
But you are insisting on using that separate topic as the only metric for this one. Since we’re fundamentally talking about two different issues and you’re refusing to engage with the point about service value, I don’t see this conversation being productive any longer.
It’s not separate at all. It’s very simple: if it was a good value, he wouldn’t have all of that money. The fact that he’s absurdly wealthy is a direct indicator that it’s a poor value.