Post #3294220

2026-06-03 10:53 UTC

I’m inclined a little to agree with you, but it’s not like he made his money because Gabe refused to be run by anyone. He pays his employees really well. My dad’s friend still is working at Valve after going there 20 some odd years ago. He rakes in money like no ones business. But they are all benefitting from the work they have done. Secondly, nobody knows how charitable he is in his private life. The fact that he’s so private about it, inclines me to believe he’s probably a decent guy, who just doesn’t like the spotlight. He may be a billionaire, but how many billionaires have their employees love them like at Valve? Lastly, most of his money is tied up in shares of the company, as he is 50%+ owner. He may use that to leverage cash loans, but he’s also just smart. He doesn’t really do that all that much, except when he’s buying his research yachts. And those shares are only accessible by the workers, as it’s a private company. Why? Because the money belongs to the laborers who produce the goods. Now, I’m willing to change my view if there’s ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn’t happened yet. Bezos, Musk, Gates, Trump, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Ellison, Dell, Huang, the Waltons, Blomberg, Thiel. There’s so many worse people out there. I do agree wealth is bad, but what the aforementioned are doing is significantly worse.

Replies (2)

@Doomsider@lemmy.world 2026-06-03 16:28

So much wrong with this. Gabe pays his extremely small workforce very well while keeping the lions share for himself. At 300-400 employees getting paid 300k on average, that is only around one hundred million in total payroll compared to 17 billion in revenue. Gabe is in no way a good guy here. He could afford to pay his workers a cool million a piece and his payroll would still be a fraction of revenue. Wild conjecture about how much Gabe is trickling down his wealth has got to be one of the lamest excuses I have ever seen. There is no such thing a good billionaire despite your wish Gabe is. We already determined Gabe is not giving the money to the people who do the work, he is giving them a small fraction, less than 1%. If you think for a second Gabe is not taking advantage of every tax loop hole his high paid accountants can find you are fucking crazy. He is definitely doing everything he can to avoid paying taxes. Gabe has a monopoly. He has not used this to increasingly provide cheaper services like a corporation in competition would. Steam’s cut should have went down over time if there was good competition. I personally think anything above 10% for a digital platform is crazy.

Open ##3294219
@Chozo@fedia.io 2026-06-03 11:23

Now, I'm willing to change my view if there's ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn't happened yet. What about exploiting child gambling? Valve's value, and thusly Gabe's value, skyrocketed after introducing lootboxes to TF2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. He can be as charitable as he fucking wants, but he still defends lootboxes while taking little to no efforts to ensure that children aren't gambling on his platform. He's had... how many years to fix this problem now? Too many. He's not fixed the problem, and continues to reap the rewards in the meantime. As far as I'm concerned, he's just as much of a piece of shit as any other billionaire. The only difference is that he makes toys that a lot of us really, really like; toys that we apparently like so much so that we're willing to handwave child gambling as long as it doesn't get in the way of making it moderately convenient to download DRM-infested games.

Open ##3295306