worldfoodgood

I don't think you understand how discourse works?

I made no demands and I made no assertions about entitlements. That reply to me was a strawman.

I made two statements: 1) I suggested people have multiple criteria for selecting a workplace, not just culture. 2) I suggested people should have the ability to voice their input over their work. (Note, that's a weaker claim than "people should have input over their work". Just that they should feel like they are able to voice their input.)

Neither of those two things are demands nor entitlements, and the latter I would assume would be pretty non-controversial unless you believe that bosses should have absolute and complete control over every facet of a worker's job. (I guess I work in tech, where it's pretty widely accepted that people have autonomy to make some decisions on their own about how and what work is achieved.)

That's all I was saying. Valve is way ahead of most of the rest of everyone else. But they are still shady.

We should be ok with pointing at the shady parts of things we like and going, "It would be better if it were not so shady."

Valve is good in many ways! Valve would be better if it didn't profit from getting kids to gamble on skins!

I look at neither for reviews. Steam Reviews are often bombed to hell for things like, "Game has woman. Woke." or "Game has racism." or other culture war nonsense. Or the very common, "Creator I follow on Youtube liked/disliked this game, so I left a similar review" or "Creator I dislike liked/disliked this game, so I left the opposite review". Or, the worst of all, "Game uses Unity/Unreal/Godot/Something Else, automatic dislike".

Ultimately, reviews of games tend to be pretty useless because people who play games have very little understanding of a) what makes games fun, and b) the complexity involved in making the games.

I have creators I follow whose tastes are closest to my own, and I watch their content for reviews, then go to the store that makes the best offer.

Of course now it does, but it was bootstrapped off the back of commercial success. The parent poster was suggesting Epic could only finance a game store off the commercial success of Fortnite. Which seemed to be the exact same path Valve took, so I was curious to explore why the parent felt they were different.

That's a weird structuring of the concern. How about letting all developers enjoy the fruits of their work?

Sorta. The animal welfare laws say that getting images out of food production facilities are terrorism. Which suggests that an authoritarian regime could/would deploy a lot more of the state power against them.

And I think "understanding your food sources is terrorism" has impacts too people should be worried about. (To be clear, they ARE less acute than ICE concerns, of course).

> You are not entitled to any item in your list of demands.

Can you point to the word entitled in my posts? Or are you putting words in my mouth?

Can you point to any demands? Or are you arguing against something I didn't say?

I don't understand. You think Steam exists without Half Life and Counterstrike?

> HN is 'social media', btw.

Sure is! If you read the thread before posting in the thread, you'd see that it's come up already.

What nonsense. A decision about workplace should be a combination of factors -- workplace culture, products you can work on, compensation, skill fit, alignment with your interests, etc.

You should feel empowered to have a voice in the products of your labor. And you should feel empowered to have a voice in the culture that produces those products.

Ok!

Happier is a fine place to be. They are both still too high. Not everything has to be binary -- I can think Valve is offering some utility and also think that Valve is charging too much for that utility.

The fact that Gabe has a billion dollars worth of yachts probably suggests that maybe, just maaaaaybe, that 30% could be lower and Steam could still provide you the same level of marketing support and player base.

Valve makes a significant amount of their money from the gambling they've attached to their games, and profits immensely from the culture of farming loot boxes to gamble on for skins and such.

They also take an absurd cut of developer income and saddle devs with costs that they don't always want. (Selling on Steam? Valve takes 30% and forces you to moderate the forums on your listing page that you cannot opt out of.)

They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities.

Valve has done some cool stuff, but let's not lionize them too much. They are probably better than an average company, for sure, but it's important to remember that they are also sketchy in some very gross ways as well.