Rant: Valve's new Steam Deck screws speak volumes about their ethos.

helenslunch@feddit.nl to Gaming@beehaw.org – 802 points –

In case you're out of the loop, the old Steam Deck had Philips screws that screwed into self-tapping plastic holes. This lead to occasional stripped threads and often stripped screwheads.

Valve absolutely did not have to change their screws, and its probably actually against their best interests. While other companies around the world are constantly in search of new ways to screw their own consumers, Valve goes out of their way to update their screws to make them easier to install/remove by changing to torx screws and added metal threads in the backplate. Those who know anything about mechanical engineering know this is not an insignificant amount of effort they put into it.

This is a small change that makes a huge impact, and speaks volumes about the ethos of the company. It says:

  1. We want to make our devices last longer, and be easier to repair.

  2. If you want to buy the cheaper tier and save yourself a few bucks by installing whatever SSD you want, go right ahead.

  3. We trust you to make decisions for yourself.

  4. Most importantly, we respect you, the consumer, and want you to fully own and control the devices we sell.

Valve is by no means perfect, and there's plenty more they could be doing, but they've earned my respect and my patronage and I won't buy games from anywhere else. I will buy whatever future products they sell, even if I don't think I'll use them regularly.

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Valve is possibly the closest thing to a non-evil company in the world today.

This is why Gabe is my billionaire of choice in the forthcoming billionaire mercenary wars.

When the corporation wars start over the remaining arable land and drinkable water, I'll be joining the Steam Corps

Maybe this is going to be the real Half Life 3. You thought it was scary in VR? Get ready for IRL.

I had to stop playing Half Life Alyx when it got to the dark flashlight bit with zombies jumping out at you. Nearly gave me a heart attack. Definitely couldn’t handle it IRL. edit: autocorrect

Yeah I definitely took breaks and actually just never went back after a certain point. Not because it was too intense directly, but one of my breaks, I just never went back.

Same. I was planning to but never did and that was years ago. Hoping to set up the old vive again soon.

One of the benefits of not going public, I guess

But it only works as long as the replacement for Gabe Newell has the exact same ethos about the business. Changing hands always risks changing how things function at a company. Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years, it's very likely that a replacement will want to "shake things up."

When Newell retires/passes, things will change. Time will tell if it will be for the better or the worse.

Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years

Supposedly he's doing this with his son. Only time will tell though.

Not exactly. Of course Gabe could be replaced by some idiot who fucks everything up, but if Valve doesn't become publicly traded it will continue to be in the best interest of whoever ends up owning it to continue doing things this way. Gabe doesn't do good things just because. He does it because happy customers means more money in the long run.

Publicly traded companies on the other hand need to extract as much money as quickly as possible and have no regards to what will happen to it a few months later. So even if Gabe dies, all Valve needs is a leader interested in what's best for itself.

How much time do we have?

Well he's 61, and the average life expectancy for males in the US is 73ish. He is well-to-do, so he likely has better access to healthcare than most, meaning he will be one of those who lives past 73. I'd suspect we have twenty years at best, but more likely about 10 years if he retires at a "reasonable" age.

Unfortunately gabe is also overweight and hence has the health risks associated with being overweight. So him only living till the average age has a higher possibility.

Private companies owned by institutional investors are no better.

The real difference is the the founder still own the company.

When GabeN dies, shit gonna hit the fan.

It's my understanding that Gabe's son is being prepped to take over when the time comes. Hopefully he shares his father's values.

Dear God. Because Nepotism has worked out so well so many times in the past. /s

Just shut down the company now, Gabe.

From an interview with his son:

"If it's one thing I'd like to see Valve do, it's push it with more their ideas," he said. "The people there are the smartest I've ever met, the hardest working, the most inspiring. The culture at Valve is a very good one but they've kind of found this point where they're a working machine. And that's good, but I think they should reach out and do something scary. Do something that they don't know what the outcome is going to be.

"They make incredibly smart decisions, but sometimes you have to do something stupid. Sometimes you have to have a stupid crazy idea and say 'fuck it', go with it. Valve has a mindbogglingly enormous amount of resources at their back, and I hope they find the courage to throw it at something new. I want to see them push the envelope again."

Yeah this chucklefuck is going to break shit day one, guaranteed.

Eh, it sounds more like he wants then to go back to the roots and developer a groundbreaking game, like Portal, or HL2, again. Which doesn't sound like a bad thing. To do something groundbreaking it probably helps if you dare to do something that is scary.

They literally already did that with the SteamDeck, it's absolutely groundbreaking. They created a whole new product category, but it took years of planning and patience and watching the market. It happened with prototypes like the Steam Controller, the Steam Link, and the original vision for Steam Boxes, as well as the nearly decade of work they've done on Proton to get Windows games to run well in Linux. It didn't happen with a "stupid crazy idea" that they said "fuck it, go with it." It started with a smart idea, well executed, over a long period of time, with many bumps in the road on the way to success.

Steam Boxes were originally announced in 2012, this is the result of a full decade of work.

Yeah, you are correct, and that's why I think he was talking about games specifically. That's a grade A assumption from me though (and a bit of hopium?)

People here are so scared of bad things happening that they can't even imagine that something good might happen.

@SnotFlickerman @Cavemanfreak

And one hell of a lot of work, too! Reimplementing the Windows APIs that Wine didn't already have, and then optimizing those implementations enough to be not only sufficient for some of the most performance-sensitive software under the sun but *faster than actual Windows*, is no small feat.

I wonder how much of Newell's past at Microsoft helped with that? He helped produce the first three versions of Windows.

While Windows works wildly differently these days and the last one he worked on was Windows 3.0 (maybe 3.1?) and a massive amount of stuff has changed in how Operating Systems work since then.

However, I do wonder if his familiarity with the old systems helped at all.

So SteamDeck, Valve Index and pushing back against the short-term money maker that was NFTs until half a year or so, among other things, aren't scary enough projects when you're "just" a game developer and distributor?

I love their approach to Hardware and Linux but have we collectively forgotten that Valve had a huge part in pushing loot boxes and underage gambling? Far from being the least evil company, but still a net win for consumers and I appreciate that they exist.

And you wanna know why? :)

::: spoiler divulgâche It's because they're not public. So investors can't ruin everything like they always do. :::

More specifically “private equity” investors who are gradually looting the US economy.

Yeh, you say that. But you know they finished Half Life 4 about 2 years ago and are holding it back on purpose

Mostly because they have to wait for Half-Life 3 in order not to confuse the customers.