Valve and most importantly, the Steam PC store, has found itself in the middle of another conditional love from fans online by not doing anything. Not that this is something new, but it’s funny how it keeps happening almost frequently these days.
But the problem is with everything else going on with the gaming industry right now. Gamers are constantly finding ways to reevaluate the situation with Steam as the pivot point. Turns out, Valve keeps winning by doing nothing.
We are sure this is not the first time you have read something like this. The sentiment that Gabe Newell and his company keep winning by staying put is a very popular meme. It even gets mentioned in the popular meme historian website, Knowyourmeme.
Everyone else keeps shooting themselves in the foot
Joke aside, let’s take a moment to reflect on why Valve is praised so much. It’s not really something that solves the world crisis. Vlave has been criticised by users previously, one example would be the company charging an exorbitant amount of cut from indie publishers on the platform.
But the main difference shines when we look around and compare its demerits with other storefronts or giants in the company. Everyone else is kind of ending up stubbing their foot when it comes to maintaining a friendly face.
Just recently, Epic Games Store, which has been a direct competitor to Steam, humiliated itself by laying off an absurd number of core employees. The CEO, Tim Sweeney, even got called out for laying off an Employee with Terminal Brain Cancer.
In the meantime, if we jump to hardware, Sony just dropped a bomb on their consumers by announcing a significant price increase in PlayStation 5 hardware. This brought the console giant under fire from fans because the PS5 keeps getting price hikes even though it has been over half a decade since it was released.
Gabe Newell just needs to sit tight on his yacht
Xbox, on the other hand, is going through the worst treatment ever from gamers. With the head Phil Spencer finally stepping down after years, and Asha Sharma taking over, there were a lot of worried discussions.
Even though things looked fine at first, it all essentially came tumbling down after everyone got to learn that Asha actually may not have any experience in gaming. Coupled with Microsoft’s constant push towards AI dependency, gamers started speculating over the hardware’s future, and it was not a pretty discussion.
Nintendo might have come out clean from all of these, until a major leaky faucet was discovered by someone. Now the company might be internally scrambling to control marketing plans for everything that has been leaked.
This is not something that is completely new with one of the oldest video game designers. Nintendo has always had a major problem with leaks, and even ex-employees came out to discuss the same, thus becoming the center of online ridicule.
Gamers took to social media this week to declare Valve as the clear winner, although the company did nothing to earn their praise. In the made-up world of console wars, there needs to be constant conflicts, else some gamers won’t get their good night’s sleep. Lucky for Gabe, he just needs to sit tight on his yacht and watch everything around him burn down.
