Am I just deceived? I think I might love him?
I’d give all the billionaires the same choice:
(a) Give away everything except, say, 25 million.
(b) Guillotine.
Does that include the Kelley Blue Book of my boats or are we talking purely liquid (heh) assets?
Oh, everything.
Got a $20m yacht? Sell it. Oh, youcre forced to sell it for $50k because nobody will give you more? That’s just the free market, clearly it’s only worth $50k.
Paid $75m to build your house? Well someone is offering you $175k and you’d better take it.
And you own a company worth $100m? No you don’t, it was already taken from you and turned into a worker-owned co-op.
After all the sales and seizures, you’ve got $23.1m in cash, and just 1m more in the bank? OK, dude, we cool.
At that point, would you need to sell those assets? If the issue is your net worth, and your assets aren’t worth much, then your net worth is low.
I sure hope Gabe goes for that or my cheeks will be red.
Only if they’re underwater.
This is my problem. If the wealth stacked up real fast maybe I would crack 100 mil but man I would so do the myspace guy thing.
The Sovereign Fund for Humanity’s Poor. Even if the wealth is stacking up that fast all anyone has to do is set up a trust fund with that name, the goal of using said wealth to fund every single human with a trust fund that will eliminate poverty in their life, and a board of directors that MUST contain two fiduciaries but only one from any given major Megalopolis, as well as three data analysts from OxFam. Once that’s setup, all you have to do is setup automatic deposits of every single penny above $100,000,000 and every other rich person can do the same. This causes everyone to see that every other ultra rich person is just greedier than literal dragons.
well yeah if every rich person does it but keep in mind the board, fiduciaries, and data analysts are not necessarily free.
Their salaries would be baked in. They get $1,000,000 per year. This is so that each is a position that is given to the highest scoring person in Ethics that just graduated, whenever a position is available
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
The enemy of progress is perfection
If he continues to be a billionaire, yes.
Amassing that level of wealth is not an accident, it’s by choice.
I agree with this sentiment, but given a choice, I believe Gabe would make the right one and spend his wealth to lose billionaire status.
His supposed exploitation was not by his own design, but rather by luck - the sheer benefit of riding a privately owned and benevelontly steered surfboard on top of the waves of a collapsing capitalist society.
Basically, there’s a meme about all other companies shooting themselves in the foot so Gabe always benefits, and part of that is in the way those companies fucked and manipulated their control of capital and markets. Gabe benefits just by being one of the few that can afford to participate in that system others rigged.
So he simply rigs it the least, and wins by providing the platform with the least greedy problems. Far far less than he could given his position.
IMHO, despite all controversies, Steams cut of profits from providing equal access to game visibility despite creator, nationality, background, etc, has legitimately opened the door for nearly anyone to be successful on their platform. For all the tools and services they provide, they ask for literally the smallest cut compared to any other publishing platform.
Gabe could destroy that to his benefit on a whim, and instead he over designs it to make it possible for nearly anyone to try game dev if they do the work needed to develop for them.
To hold so much capital simply for providing some form of equality to access the same in a system that overwhelming benefits others with more resources is in no way greedy imo. It’s being the person with the only fire extinguisher who knows how to use it in a burning building: popular.
A man who owns a billion dollars worth of megayatchts is not doing everything he can to ethically spend/donate his wealth. Yes, lots of his wealth is tied up in Valve stock and he can’t sell that without losing voting rights and making Valve stop being what it is, but he’s rolling in other assets and cash, too
Valve doesn’t have stocks
It doesn’t have publicly-traded shares because it’s a private company, but it’s still correct to say someone has stock in a private
companycorporation (which isn’t relevant as Valve is unincorporated) that they own part or all of. Like with physical objects, they don’t stop existing just because they’re not for sale to the public. It’s an easy mistake to make, though, as the vast majority of the time people talk about stocks and shares it’s in the context of buying and selling publicly-traded stock.
The dispicableness of billionaires is measured by their actions not their worth. And despite being of high worth, Gabes actions are unquestionably not greedy. He’s doing almost everything he can to minimize his wealth in favor of equality to access Steam as a game dev.
If he wanted to, he could charge far more than $100 to develop for them, and buy several more yachts.
But he hasn’t.
Which makes his platform more popular. And in turn brings him even more cash to buy more yachts.
His yachts aren’t indicative of his greed, but his benevolence in the face of it.
Show me a single other company the size of Valve that has chosen to forgo profit over access to something like Steam to make money yourself. That’s basically non existent in the year 2025 aside from Valve. I’m not going to judge Gabe as a bad person for profiting from that. He could be profiting much much more and is choosing access for nearly everyone else instead.
Which makes his platform more popular. And in turn brings him even more cash to buy more yachts.
Realising that ratfucking your customers and suppliers at every opportunity makes them less willing to do business with you in the future, and therefore you’ll potentially make more money by not doing that, so then not doing that, is exactly what a greedy person would do if they weren’t also a moron. Gabe Newell is certainly not a moron. Lots of other billionaires are, or have other empathy-limiting conditions that mean they don’t realise people won’t want to do repeat business with them if they got screwed over the last time.
There’s obviously a majority of billionaires that are much less ethical than Newell, but one superyatcht ought to be enough for anyone, and anyone buying a second one instead of putting the money directly to good causes is not benevolent.
I see granting access for anyone to make games for Steam as a good cause.
The opportunity cost for what profit could be made by closing that is multitudes of yachts worth.
Just because you do not value this as a good cause does not mean it is not.
Does Gabe have more yachts than are needed? Yes. But again, you can’t just say he’s greedy because he has them. That’s being incredibly biased.
Instead, how about you tell me what actions of his has made him greedy that don’t involve his assets?
I can name hundreds of ways Musk should be drawn and quartered based on his actions that have nothing to do with his wealth, but rather his actual documented choices.
What choices / actions / or anything of actual greed has Gabe done that you can point to?
It’s like saying anything with a swastika on it is for Nazis without realizing Hindus have been using a right oriented Swastika to represent good fortune for hundreds of years.
Gabe Newall has done the following with his 11 Billion fortune:
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Co-founded “The Heart of Racing” car racing team that raises money for Children’s charity.
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Donates heavily to the Seattle Children’s Hospital and several others around the world.
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Founded Foundry10, a non profit education company that helps neuro divergent kids learn through new methods of education
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Started InkFish to expand the scientific study of our oceans and is now the second highest individual donor towards marine research on the planet.
https://80.lv/articles/gabe-newell-reportedly-plans-to-invest-usd300-million-to-marine-research
That’s why he has those yachts.
Same reason Hindus have their swastikas.
Their actions speak louder than the symbols they use suggest. Even when those symbols are Yachts.
He has 11 Billion. Everyone else even close to his level of market control has several magnitudes more. Why does he have so little when he owns a virtual monopoly on digital distribution?
Because he’s not in it for maximizing his bank account.
The billion dollars in superyatchts is just the personally-owned luxury kind that billionaries like to hoard, not marine research boats that he has funded. Him giving away some of his money doesn’t mean that he’s not also frivilously spent more money than most people could hope to see in a lifetime.
Fundamentally, I don’t think we’re going to agree here, as I fundamentally believe that there’s an amount of money beyond which there are no ethical grounds for keeping it, and it’s much lower than $11 billion. Newell has kept money above that threshold instead of giving everything he made beyond that threshold away (even illiquid stuff like part of his stake in Valve could, in principle, be given to a charity so the profit from Steam went straight into the charity), and I and plenty of other people would see that as greedy. Others might say that the fact that he’s given anything away that he wasn’t legally required to means that he’s not greedy. These are subjective ethical opinions, so even though they can’t be reconciled, it’s not a big deal. Different people think different things are wrong.
The reason I’ve been replying at all is that some of the things you’ve stated to be facts are untrue, not that I’m trying to convince you that all billionaires are unethical.
What have I said that isn’t true?
https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/billionaire-gabe-newell-oceanco-gigayacht-leviathan-1237360429/
The 364-foot Leviathan was designed for billionaire gaming visionary Gabe Newell, who acquired the Dutch shipyard this past April.
Leviathan is the latest addition to Newell’s Inkfish fleet and will be used to further scientific research in the marine sector. Occupying the place of the standard beach club is a fully equipped dive center, laboratory, and a hospital. There’s even a 3-D printing workshop where the crew can create spare or replacement parts. “Yachts have great potential to serve as platforms for scientific research,” adds Newell. “It’s about recognizing that you’re part of a broader community and ensuring the yacht’s presence adds value to the communities around it.”
You are just continuing to make assumptions based entirely on the assets he owns instead of his behaviour.
Something I keep pointing out, and is why I have also been responding.
I am completely on your side and feel that anyone with over a billion is an ethical and moral burden. However, I’m also wise enough to recognize that as a goal to strive towards not a destination to judge against. So I’m not going to chastise those actively working towards that goal, even if they are a billionaire.
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But he loves us, no?
Billionaires aren’t your friends. Corporations aren’t your friends.
But they can be an adversary or friendly.
Not everything is black and white.
It’s just a question when we’ll eat Valve
He has 6 yachts from kiddie gambling…
Which gambling websites does Valve run?
CS2, for one
How can I gamble real money in CS2 and withdraw my winnings?
I think the commenter is talking about the steam marketplace featuring a lot of CS assets which people do buy and sell for real money.
What I’m talking about is that there isn’t a way to “withdraw” your money like the illegal sites let you. So no, there isn’t a way to gamble through Steam.
In fact, Steam does what they have the power to do in reporting those sites and getting them taken down.
Oh sorry, I always thought there was a way to withdraw money from your steam wallet to your bank account.
I haven’t used steam in a few years though, and haven’t interacted with the marketplace in longer than that, so wouldn’t really know!
There are third party sites where you can sell skins for money.
Why? He takes a 30% cut from every game sale just because his platform has a dominant grasp on gamers.
I don’t understand how people can hate taxes (which go on to pay for schools and roads) but not the way larger cut that digital storefronts charge.
There’s an argument to be made that it’s too high of a cut, especially these days. A lot of this money has funded great improvements to the gaming ecosystem and many open source projects. The major competing storefronts/launchers do not come even slightly close to the feature set that Steam provides, but they have tried attracting users through exclusivity deals. It’s very telling that some successful competitors (like itch or gog) actually offer some unique benefits and aren’t attached to some incredibly controversial corporations…
Valve isn’t free from criticism and their role as a monopolist should definitely be scrutinized, especially as companies often radically change for the worse in behaviour and culture, but a lot of this critical attention was instigated by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney who can frankly gargle my nuts.
I don’t want to love him. I just feel like I’d never find anyone better, if I left, you know?
Is this one of those “the ogre has fallen I love with the princess” farquaad meme situations
Probably? I’m not even the fucking princess tho?
Hey cutie. twirls hair
I hate misused taxes.
Gabe at least gives us 95% greatness back (5% being gambling)
He has an 111m superyacht, he is not giving you anything my friend, I’m sorry.
Proton, nice return policies, the best launcher, disclosure of BS like ML, other launchers, kernel level anticheat. Just a few.
Relative to his wealth? No. Relative to others? A lot.
The ability to play almost 100% of my games on my preferred OS is definitely something.
Pff, I wish my overall taxation was only 30%.
Devs can just generate keys and sell elsewhere to avoid the 30% cut.
Look, he can be a rich guy and a leader. 1 billion is a decent line in the sand of “sorry, you own too much”. He’s certainly not as nakedly evil as most the rest of his ilk.
I can agree with that. Still, has he ever been naked that you know of? Cuz… I’d like to really solidify my stance…?
There’s Steam Marketplace and loot boxes that stain his image for negatives. He could’ve not done that had had one less mega yacht.
That’s real life for you, with all those pesky shades of grey
You’re saying Gabe’s a pleasure dom, if I’m picking up what you’re putting down?
Considering the role of steam, yeah if you squint at it right
Idealizing billionaires is cringe. Eat them all. Just because he’s not a complete asshole like all the other parasites doesn’t make him a good person. He’s still a parasite.
Being a billionaire is immoral in all cases
FINE.
How does it work with someone like Taylor Swift, who According to Forbes, Swift is the first musician to reach 10-figure status solely based on songwriting and performances rather than brand deals, makeup lines, or business ventures?
You can argue they should be more charitable, but that really can’t be required. You could also say taxes should be higher past a certain point, but they currently aren’t and that’s not any individual’s fault.
Also, I’m using Taylor swift as an example, but I mean more generally a person that captures worldwide attention for their art.
I believe a moral person would not horde such obscene wealth while people are struggling and starving unnecessarily. Were not talking about just being “well off” - It’s more money than a person could need in countless lifetimes. So yes, I think she should be charitable. Edit: Or taxed.
in all cases
I have no problem with people who contribute a lot of value to society being proportionally rewarded. However, having a net worth in the billions is just plain ludicrous, especially since the billionaires aren’t the ones creating all the value, they’re just controlling it. For example, did Gabe invent everything that makes Valve as successful as it is, or was most of it designed and developed by engineers who are paid a fraction of what he is paid? Even if most of Valve’s IP started with Gabe and other engineers were doing the grunt work to “make it so”, that still shouldn’t mean that society allows this one man to control billions worth of our societal resources.
If I am not mistaken, Steam is one of the highest paid companies in the world, if not the. Perhaps still not fair relative to contribution, yet exemplary compared to the rest.
I do believe that Gabe is one of the better/more benevolent winners of an inherently unfair and now definitely broken system.
That means that gamers have been ripped off for decades.
Valve encourages and keeps the system broken just as much as Microsoft or Nintendo does. They all try really hard not to compete.
They do have high salaries, but it’s also a ridiculously small company for the money they make. Gaben is still making money hand over fist, and the employees making big money are all on the admin team.
Steam could charge a 5% fee and give the rest to developers. The services and salaries would still stay the same. It would give Gaben enough money to cover his billion dollar boats fleets maintenance cost, just not enough to buy himself a new yacht every two years.
steam charges the industry standard…if they lowered it, and their market share naturally increased even further they would be even more open to some kind of anti-monopoly lawsuit (which are very often put forward by less effective companies, who just want the monopoly themselves. ie. Epic)
Every company in a soft monopoly charges the industry standard, that is how soft monopolies work.
They all stop charging what it’s worth and pick a number together that equals maximum profits.
No, they wouldn’t.
Anti-trust law exists to prevent companies from overcharging consumers, something they can do when they don’t have competition.
Valve keeping their prices far higher than costs is something that can open them up to anti-trust scrutiny. Competitively lowering their prices while still maintaining profitability cannot, as that is the exact goal of anti-trust laws in the first place.
It’s also fucking wild that gamers hate Tim Sweeney so much. What has he used his fortune to do? Build a reasonably priced and powerful third party game engine that makes it easy for indie developers to build games, spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to break up Apple and Google’s walled garden 30% bullshit, launched a PC store to try and do the same with Steam, and bought tens of thousands of acres of US land to preserve for nature conservation. Oh what a moustache twirling monster!
look into the history of anti-trust laws actual application across US history, just like everything else around our government…it’s a tool for whoever holds power to either ratfuck funds or otherwise manipulate markets, for personal gain/at the direction of some other company.
sweeney is on record as saying he just wants the monopoly for himself, and engages in far more manipulative/anticonsumer behavior than steam does, like buying exclusivity deals
some monopolies form because all the competition is just incompetent
It doesn’t matter how the monopoly forms, Gaben is still one of the rat fucks profiting from it. He wouldn’t have been able to spend a billion dollars on boats if he wasn’t.
Whatever arguments you think you have, ask yourself first if they apply to Musk or Bezos. They probably do.
A billionaire who gives away 99% of their wealth to the poorest, first and exclusively, isn’t a billionaire, and still has enough money (maybe more!) for the rest of time.
In my opinion if anyone has billions of dollars and hasn’t given a majority of it away to charity or those in need, that person is on some level at least somewhat an evil person.
Sure, much of it would be tied up in stocks and stuff that legally can’t be sold for specific purposes or timeframes, but if you have net worth in the billions and any stocks that could be sold for cash and then donated it should be. Or if you have an annual income that’s much more than you need to live an extremely comfortable life and then you just spend and invest the excess instead of donate.
Securities tax, payable in shares of the security. 1% of all stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments transferred to the IRS annually, to be auctioned slowly over time. The first $10 million held by a natural person may be exempted from this requirement. No exemptions for artificial “persons”.
He’s just another fat dragon who got rich exploiting people through ownership of capital.
Then he got children hooked on gambling because one billion wasn’t enough.He deserves to be locked up like the rest of them.
He is not fa… he is definitely not a dragon!
Fuck him too
That’s what I’m saying: how do I make this happen!?
“Billionaire” is a convenient modern buzzword. It used to be “millionaire”. The classic joke from Austin Powers where Dr. Evil demands money is a good example. It’s just inflation.
Plus, a lot of “billionaires” are only considers such because they own shares in their corporations. It’s a “theoretically if they could find a way to sell all of those shares at the current price without tanking the market value of those shares in the process, they could get $X billion from that”.
If there were a theoretical global revolution, on of the the first steps of eating the rich is to seize and nationalize those businesses. Later, land reform will seize the extra mansions they own. They will still be left with adequate personal property to live quite comfortably. Finally, the justice system will need to evaluate what labor laws (or other laws) they may have been violating for years and using their wealth to get away with.
Start with the biggest fish and watch as the rest start to downsize voluntarily and cut deals to avoid jail.
I don’t expect to see any of this in my lifetime. Not in any major country, and certainly not globally.
We don’t have to eat them all, but we do have to take their money.
