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
Valve is estimated to make $16.2 billion from Steam alone in 2025 [0], and CS:GO loot boxes only netted them ~1bn in 2023 [1] (and CS:GO player count is only slightly higher now compared to 2023, so I expected the income number is similar).

Why don't they just take a 6% pay cut and make sure there is nothing to criticize them about :/

[0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-mak...

[1]: https://csgocasetracker.com/blog/2023-Year-Review

>>nialv7+6o3
To be fair, they may have just wrecked the CS lootbox economy permanently.

>>jimbob+Up3
They need to keep wrecking it. Skins should just be fixed cost items.

>>ceedan+ws3
Disagreed. Games like Fortnite and League of Legends went down this road and ended up at even more unfathomable $500 microtransactions. The only issue with skin trading is that people will take it more seriously than it is, which is a problem with all cosmetic systems.

>>bigyab+kJ3
There are huge gambling cultures around skins. All kinds of theft and scamming. There is no "only issue". There are tons of issues