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
There's a little known alternative: Steward-ownership [1]. It's the kind of structure used by Novo Nordisk, Bosch or Patagonia.

LLM summary: "Steward-ownership is a model where a company’s control stays with long-term stewards (founders, employees, or a mission-aligned foundation) while profits are limited and the company cannot be sold for private gain. The goal is to protect the mission permanently."

The key, if I understand properly, is that these company cannot be sold (not even by the founders), so there is no "shareholder value" per se to maximize. It is also probably not a good way for founders to maximize their net worth, which is probably why it's not more popular...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward-ownership

>>Xixi+oF4
One of the issues with founders is that they get really into one specific idea and sink the company, rather then to switch strategy.

>>panick+0L4
As opposed to shareholders, who ravenously seek to maximize short term profits and sink the company.

>>idiots+gp5
That's why there are no publicly-traded companies more than a decade or two old. Oh, wait...

>>arcfou+Ou5
The comment you replied to was just pointing out that, like how a founder-held company can get stuck pursuing the founder's obsession, a stock market held company can also single-mindedly pursue quarterly gains to the detriment of long-term health.

There are old companies in either model.

>>delect+zF5
It didn't say can. It stated it rather definitively, which I wanted to point out the absurdity of.