Or imagine the worst case. Gabe is the world’s greatest prankster. He’s a true internet troll for the ages. He’s spent decades getting millions and millions of people dependent on his game hosting. He’s got hardware. He stands astride the game industry like a colossus. But the key is that Valve is still a private corporation. In theory, Gabe could do whatever he wants with it. Including, finally committing the last stage of his ultimate prank. One day…he just flips the off switch. Steam never enshittifies. It just shuts off forever without warning.
And thus, with one stroke, his master chess move concluded (to reasons comprehensible only to Gabe), he just shuts it off and walks away. His last words in public are, “it turns out, I was the greatest gamer of all the whole time…”
This is why I’ve been buying games on GOG that I have on Steam.
Backups in case Gabe or a successor goes off the deep end
I don’t have any fear that Gabe will tank steam.
But I will fear what happens after him
Same
Or imagine the worst case. Gabe is the world’s greatest prankster. He’s a true internet troll for the ages. He’s spent decades getting millions and millions of people dependent on his game hosting. He’s got hardware. He stands astride the game industry like a colossus. But the key is that Valve is still a private corporation. In theory, Gabe could do whatever he wants with it. Including, finally committing the last stage of his ultimate prank. One day…he just flips the off switch. Steam never enshittifies. It just shuts off forever without warning.
And thus, with one stroke, his master chess move concluded (to reasons comprehensible only to Gabe), he just shuts it off and walks away. His last words in public are, “it turns out, I was the greatest gamer of all the whole time…”