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magnax1


				

				

				

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magnax1


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 October 16 02:42:14 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yes, I in fact have downloaded and played several of the games Epic gave away.






The storefront they have is simply not a serious enough draw where, given the choice to buy a game on Steam vs. Epic, to really go for Epic instead.






And Steam has not taken a single action that has made me feel mistreated or punished for loyalty. Its their game to lose, as the user numbers tend to show.




But that's my entire point.




I'm mostly focused on products where they've managed to achieve the 'efficient frontier' on exactly how little quality they can produce such that the average consumer no longer notices or cares, whilst maintaining a similar price point as they've had all along.






Its been done with movies, with cars




Using cars as an example of decline in quality is quite insane. Do you know what sort of advancements in technology cars have made and how little it would cost to make a car from 1990 with modern techniques? I mean, you can kind of seeing it in Russia or China where they sell cars that aren't fit for foreign markets for 10k or so (albeit their production techniques aren't modern, so it's not quite equivalent) but...jeeze...this is a really bad example. I'm really not going to go into detail on all the automotive progress made in just the past 15 years, but it's been massive. You can argue that cars are too expensive because of regulation and have a very good point, but that's not the same thing at all.




(although there are of course luxury brands if you DEMAND quality!), with food, and its ubiquitous with tech.




You're making cost savings sound like some nefarious act. Companies want to lower costs to compete in markets. This is not nefarious.




Who was the primary owner of Amazon shares for the duration of that unprofitable period?






Do yah think the fact that the original founder maintained centralized control for the majority of the company's lifespan might have helped its overall approach to long-term investment? Is that possible?






This is precisely and exactly my argument.




You're changing your argument. Before you said privately owned corporations have an advantage in that they don't have to be profit maximizing (to which I noted, neither do publicly traded corporations) and now you're saying because Bezos owned a large portion (not sure if he was the majority owner or not, but I actually don't think he was) it doesn't count.




Amazon is, however, an example of an enshittified corporation by now. At least their website is. Lots of knockoff products with relatively poor quality control, and the search is less functional, the return policies are less friendly. The review system is manipulated, both by the site and by scammers. I accept this may be due to customer abuse, of course.




Again, if it's shit you can just go to another platform, like you apparently did. I frankly haven't noticed any drop off. In fact, their Amazon knockoff brand is a huge upgrade over a lot of the stuff they sold 15+ years ago when I started using the site.


But again, what's your point? If a corporation does a bad job there are literally a million other options. You're acting like people are getting screwed when they willingly go to Amazon and buy things over their competitors (because Amazon has a massively better product tbh) and furthermore your google point just seems like bullshit to me. Have you tried to use a non-google search Engine? Duckduckgo is absolute trash. So is Bing. Google is the best without question excluding maybe using a good AI to aggregate information for you.




Do you have any examples offhand of a company that was becoming horribly mismanaged and driven into the ground that managed to make a massive turnaround WITHOUT it being taken private by interested parties?




I can't say there are many companies that return from being driven into the ground at all tbh. Most companies do one thing well, reap the reward, can't change when that thing is no longer as profitable as it once was, and then die. That's kind of how the system is supposed to work. I'm really not sure how that's relevant to the idea that companies are just manipulating people into buying shitty products.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Can you explain why other existing players, which are also multi-billion dollar corporations, haven't just gone ahead and copied Valve's model for the Steam store as closely as possible? Why is there no Pepsi to Valve's Coca-Cola in this situation?




I think they have and them some. Weren't some platforms literally giving away titles for free to pull away customers? I don't pay that close attention because I rarely play games (especially modern games) anymore.




There's a qualitative difference between "consumers pinch their nose and choose your product because the alternatives are worse" and "consumers happily fork over money and consider your product the standard to which all others should aspire."




I think your worldview is just plainly wrong. It reminds me of friends who complain about how modern clothes are shitty and don't last but don't buy solid durable clothing. I buy unbranded quality clothes or lightly used well established brands and my clothes last yeaes. They buy trash for the namebrand or because it's cheap and then get mad as if they didn't choose to make that trade off. With basically any product you have a million choices (exceptions were already stared, mainly in government backed monopolies or high barrier to entry markets). I can't really take the "Products are getting enshitified!" meme seriously when I can literally just go on google and find you an equivalent product for basically anything you ask for. Assuming you're in America, that is.




While I'm not quite saying "Steam is indifferent to competitive pressure due to their position," I am saying the Gabe can make decisions without worrying about the next quarter's earnings report. And he's consistently made decisions (including the decision to NOT change certain things) that make the users happier.




You really seem to buy into the "corporations only look at the next quarterly report" meme way too much. Amazon and google were not profitable for like a decade because they just kept reinventing their revenue. There are some cases where investors punish long term thinking (recently Intel) but I would say it's really not the norm, at least in growth industries.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Of course, my point that "public companies will happily capture consumer surplus to maximize profits" is fairly standard economic logic




Yes, but that these companies can just lower quality and raise prices without consequence is in fact not standard economic logic. "If it wasn't for Gabe they'd kill our firstborns etc. etc." does not follow logically from any of your points. If Steam makes a shitty product people will jump ship because there are tons of other options. That's the center of all of this that you don't seem to acknowledge. The companies you listed are popular because people like them. If Chik Fil-A sold a "consumer unfriendly chicken sandwich" (whatever the hell that might be) it probably wouldn't be a very popular store, would it?


There are differences in privately and publicly traded companies, yeah. However, it's just not this simple. Privately owned companies often times are maximally profit seeking and publicly traded companies often aren't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Just take a quick assessment of ANY other comparable industry and see if there's any exceptions to the general rule that publicly-traded companies enshittify their product once they've achieved market dominance.




This seems like a pretty personal feeling that you have and I'm going to require significant evidence (not just feelings, actual economic data of some sort) to accept the claim.


Just a few points here--first of all, market dominance isn't very common. Second, it usually ceases to exist once a company starts making bad products. That's kind of how markets work after all. Exceptions are usually products which aren't very susceptible to market forces like cable/internet companies that own infrastructure with high barriers to entry or government regulation keeping out competitors, which indeed often suck. Valve's business model is basically the opposite of high barrier to entry. It costs almost nothing to run and you just need the money to spin up some servers. Market dominance is completely held together by keeping their customers happy.


Beyond that, the idea that Valve is just magically more kind because its leader is some nerd saint strikes me as unbelievable. Of course different leaders create different results, but guess what, Gabe wants money too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except there are like five other companies champing at the bit to run what is basically a free money printer that Gabe has set up. Valve basically does nothing as a company and gets paid for it because of steam. The only reason it has no real competition is because they know they have to keep their customers happy. This isn't something "Valve is a particularly moral upstanding company" thing, it's a plain market incentives thing. If anything, it might be better if they had some real competition.