zlacker

>>evolve+(OP)
Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact.

The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.

>>adverb+H53
Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"

>>levoca+Yb3
People complain about the gambling/loot box stuff, and yeah there's legit ethical concerns there.

But overall Valve just seems straightforwardly less shitty towards the consumer than other major companies in their space, by a long shot.

>>Tulliu+2d3
The major reason is they are a private company with good business. The don't have a need to keep adding to shareholder value ie stock price instead just need to generate a yearly income. We have reached a point where the shareholders are a companies real customers and that is who they all try to attract.Everytthing else a company does is just to attract shareholders

>>xbmcus+EA3
It’s definitely more than just private ownership. In fact I’d say that’s the least part of it.

Look at all the horror stories about businesses that were bought by PE firms; those are all privately held too.

>>useful+oC3
Private ownership is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to have a business which has a healthy relationship with its customers. You also need the owners to be people of reasonably good character who understand that the best way to run a business is a win-win approach on both sides, not people who see nothing wrong with extracting maximum profit from the business no matter whom it hurts. The PE horror stories you hear are cases where the owners are in the latter group.

>>bigstr+2D3
You hypothesis then is that there is not a _single_ public company that has a healthy relationship with its company? Not one, in the entire global public space?

When does this relationship with customers happen? Is it at the IPO? When they file the paperwork? When they contemplate going public for the first time? Or is it that any founder who might one day decide to contemplate going public was doomed to unhealthy customer relations from birth?

The obvious next thing we in society should do is abolish public equity as a concept as a customer protection mechanism?

>>kasey_+q74
It's not instant (well, sometimes it is), more of a slow but inexorable push down a hill. Some public companies are farther along the path than others, but if the company continues to exist and profit it's inevitable. For example, there are no S&P 500 companies with healthy customer relationships.