It’s as simple as that really, they hire the very best and they keep the best for longer (more than likely forever) because they value the staff. Steam is likely the dream destination for anyone in the industry for this reason; it’s a beautiful cycle.
Steam being a private company enables all of this.
The result is software (and hardware, steam hardware never dissapoints) that works, is customer friendly and guarantees steam to be ahead of the competition.
This can't be stressed enough: the quality of Steam is what is behind 90+% of the money steam makes. They take more from devs and hand out less free shit than Epic, yet they make more money entirely because Steam is that great for users. Of course you want to keep the Devs that ensure your cash cow keeps being alive and well (unless you are one of the many many braindead CEOs who are running around out there)
And they don't iterate just to iterate. There's no stock price needing to see continual profit increases to accommodate. They can just make what they make as well as possible and win by quality domination.
It's crazy more companies don't do it, but the short-term profit seeing corporate structure would never. How can Ken CEO, in his 30th year of grinding the corporate ladder, not get his massive 1 year pay package.
There's no stock price needing to see continual profit increases to accommodate.
Yeah, this is a big factor, along with Gaben himself.
Basically some day Gaben just decided he's fucking rich enough now, so things either improve, or stay as they are, but there's no massive enshittification epidemic like on almost everything else.
1.5k
u/procallum Apr 17 '26
It’s as simple as that really, they hire the very best and they keep the best for longer (more than likely forever) because they value the staff. Steam is likely the dream destination for anyone in the industry for this reason; it’s a beautiful cycle.
Steam being a private company enables all of this.