Is Gabe Newell a hardcore anarchist?
Is Gabe Newell a hardcore anarchist?
From the notoriously flat structure of Valve to the support of free software to the extremely laissez faire way of running steam to the main Dota tournament being named "The International"... Is Gabe Newell a card carrying Anarchist?
That's not anarchy, that's libertarianism. And to answer your question, at least going on People Make Games's investigation of Valve's culture, he does seem to be very libertarian.
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there was cliques and entourageous. That’s not anarchy.
Isn't that basically one of the key features of anarchy? There may not be an official structure, but people are allowed to form groups and associate based on their values and goals. The fact that this ends up feeling like high school is a pretty big black mark against anarchy in my book.
Though a corporation being anarchist is kinda absurd.
Sounds like a key feature of humans tbh
And potentially one day extinguishing the broad availability of Linux to replace it with steam os.
I think that is a huuuuuge stretch.
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He's a billionaire who owns a company that has pulled some shady (and illegal) anti-consumer bullshit in the past, I'd say it's pretty unlikely that he's a anarchist - more likely, the flat management structure and use of FOSS software is simply profitable.
not the good kind
he literally bought one of those new zealand prepper bunkers
Nope.
He's a hardcore capitalist, albeit one who happens to support free software (probably because he believes in it, but also because it means a bigger user base for his platform and $$$)
He's significantly more likeable than most of the other CEO billionaires but when you look at his peers that isnt too hard.
This pretty much sums it all up. Gabe seems like a nice guy, but definetly not an anarchist.
He may be a libertarian but he's definitely a capitalist. Anarchism is inherently anti-capitalist.
Fair point, but we also live in a capitalist system. If Gabe really wanted the money he'd go public. Considering how much they're giving Epic, Valve would instantly become gigantic. He'd become billionaire-er. He could have locked down the Steam Deck. He could have done a lot of things. I'm saying he's had a lot of choices he made during his lifetime, and he seemed to pick oddly open ones.
If Gabe really wanted the money he’d go public
Not necessarily. Going public means he would then have shareholders to answer to. Or maybe he's betting on steam going up in value, maybe taking steam public is his retirement plan. Who knows.
He could have locked down the Steam Deck.
Ehh, sure maybe, but there's probably no financial benefit in doing so. He saved a lot of time and money going with Linux instead of building their own OS from scratch. And because Valve went the open source route, they're free to re-use a ton of open source work, including code licensed under GPL.
And look at Google's Android, much of Android is open source, surely you don't think Larry Page and Sergey Brin are anarchists too?
And you're ignoring the predatory nature of a lot of valve's business. One of the most obvious examples is the CSGO skin cases. Valve is making massive amounts of money off of getting children hooked on gambling.
I'm gonna say probably not, if he were Valve would be full-on employee owned. I will say he seems a little less uh... warped than most prominent billionaires, but that's not exactly a high bar to clear. Overall he seems like an okay guy but I don't know him and have no way of telling whether he's secretly a dick or something.
No.
I do think Valve not being publicly traded allows them to be different in some ways such as the flat structure ("enshittification" as defined by Doctrow doesn't apply to Valve because there are no shareholders to please) but there's nothing "left" politically about Valve. Some of it I think is just not having to look good to shareholders allowing Valve to make actual good business decisions.
Valve's support of free software is because during the Windows 8 era Newell gained the fear that Microsoft would phase out Win32 in favor of UWP, cutting into Steam's business big-time. Microsoft definitely isn't going to pull that now that Windows Phone and the Start Screen concept both died and they've stated they no longer see UWP alone as the future, but I do think Valve administration still thinks it's best for their business to not rely on Microsoft's whims.
No.
He's a capitalist and a billionaire.
You cannot be a capitalist and an anarchist.