this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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Amazon thought it could compete with Steam because it was so much larger than Valve, but Prime Gaming's former VP admits that 'gamers already had the solution to their problems' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/pcgaming
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I did not realize they were trying to compete in the first place.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah you are totally right, we shouldn't think of corporations as friends.

There is however a difference and that is that Valve is a private company while others like Amazon are publicly traded and therefore even more profit-orientated. As long as Valve makes enough profit to be able to cope with a couple bad years it is doing alright.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago

This is the key thing. Publicly traded companies effectively have no head. They are driven by the legal mandate to pursue the profit motive for faceless and litigious investors. Yes the ceo/chairman of the board usually has a controlling share, but some rando who has one share from Robinhood can sue if they think the company is not operating with their interests in mind.

Small businesses and private companies can also be evil, but at least everyone who owns the company knows each other. They may decide to take a loss if they think it would make them look better to the public in the long run. Public companies cannot. They are expected to gobble up as much profit as they can. And when they can’t make more profit they are gobbled up by other more vigorous companies that are owned by the same investors. It’s a sick game that is eating the world and humanity to death.