Crazy rumour suggests Microsoft are preparing $16 billion offer for Valve

Almost certainly fake, but what a horrible thought.

Microsoft wanted to buy Nintendo and Valve before. It was in the leaked documents. And I'm sure Microsoft makes suggestions all the time, we just don't hear about it usually. We mostly hear about deals that happen.

Besides that, I can't imagine that a competitor could buy a competitor. That would be illegal in most cuntries. Unlike Activision, which was not a competitor to Microsoft.
Yeah, I think all indications have been that Microsoft is getting out of the video game business. Or, if they were planning on staying in, why would they close a bunch of studios, including successful ones like Hi-Fi Rush's Tango games.

As long as valve say no then they can offer all they like. That is the advantage of not being a publicly traded company!

according to unverifiable rumours. ... The leak comes from an unknown and unreliable source in the gaming industry.

But continues to write an entire article about it. I wouldn't be shocked if the rumor was set by the person who writes the article itself. Edit: Which itself is only a few paragraphs, but filled with ads, links and images on the entire page.

Also wouldn't that pull in major antitrust violation cases especially in the EU?
- I don't wanna jinx it, but there is no way that this deal would go through
I'ts not about integrity, it's about clicks. It doesn't matter if you read the headline, only if you clicked.

That.... weirdly... seems like a lowball given the recent success of the steam deck

Looking at the sales estimates, the numbers appear pretty modest compared to the other gaming devices. They’re probably under 5m units sold since early 2022.
- EA is worth several times that and they don't have the #1 PC games platform or any hardware
  
  Valve should at least be in the same ballpark

Good Lord, no. Please no.

Valve is way more valuable than Activision-Blizzard-King.

This is an AI generated article and has no basis in reality.

Even if it was real, pretty sure Gaben would just laugh in their faces
- Even if valve were to sell themselves, They would not sell to them.
- Microsoft: How about $16b?
  
  Gaben: The best I can do is a couple thousand skins and crates
- Doesn't his ex wife own half of his shares now though?
Oh thank miscellaneous diety. For fucks sake everything Microsoft touches turns to shit, especially when it comes to game platforms.

Considering Valve is one of the biggest backers of Linux that would be horrible (ofc it's ai generated nonsense).

The "source" otherwise does nothing but give away cosmetic in-game items if you subscribe and tag a friend on X.

that seems wildly cheap lol, to kill linux gaming alone is probably worth them 50 billion or more, ignoring money printing from steam store itself

$16B for Valve ? Clown offer 🤡

So they can burn it to the ground?

Tinfoil Hat Time:

Linux Gaming, while increasingly viable, isn't currently a threat to MS. There are enough reasons people will stick with Windows. But Valve are doing a good job of showing that it's possible, that Microsoft's hold on PC gaming isn't absolute and that an increasing number of games are playable on Linux too (with the right tools). Wine and co. have been around for a while, but they never enjoyed the spotlight of a major videogame platform investing time and manpower into developing a dedicated gaming compatibility engine.

I don't think MS would intentionally run it into the ground. They'd probably try to squeeze it for money, which might end up doing so anyway.

I also don't think they're really worried about Linux gaming. But I also doubt they'd leave Proton untouched entirely. Whether they'd kneecap it, whether they'd enshittify it, whether they'd work on interfacing it with their proprietary stuff in an attempt to put it ahead of any competition and tip potential Linux Gaming developments in favour of using their engine to more easily target both platforms at once, I doubt they could resist doing something to squeeze money from it.

Maybe the very idea that they're challenging Microsoft's supremacy is unpleasant to them. Maybe their analytics show enough of a trend to concern them. Maybe they just want to make sure they have a piece of the pie if it ever becomes worth something.

Or maybe the whole thing is baseless bullshit made up for attention and site traffic.

Well... good thing I've been buying what I can through GOG... but this is terrible news, especially with the way Microsoft has been shutting down gaming studios recently.

Edit: meh, this just sounds like clickbait:

The leak comes from an unknown and unreliable source in the gaming industry.

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard faced regulatory challenges, making the merger with Valve unlikely.

Plus they are bleeding money from all the acquisitions and haven't seen the return they expected in game pass subs. The cost cutting isn't done and it would be very surprising for them to try to dump more money into new storefronts when they are still trying to make their own business model profitable (to their expectations).
It's an AI generated "article", on a site that exclusively feeds headlines into AI to write "articles".

So even if the original headline was - in the now-unknown wording - something rooted in reality, the generative shitcode has now turned both the headline and the content into utter derangement.

Do you think Gabe would even raise an eyebrow for such a pocket money offer? Or would he actually find enough effort to laugh at it?

Gabe used to work for Microsoft, I can't imagine he's eager to repeat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabe_Newell

"He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000."

.....they can't even handle everything with Activision Blizzard. Jesus christ.

Lol I would quit gaming

Imagine a timeline where this happens.

What if there was an open source Steam clone, where everything is federated, and you could add repos like on KDE Discover, GNOME Software or F-DROID's Android client?

This would be awesome.
- It would be!
  
  The big issue would be getting game developers onboard. The service valve provides is both to developers and to consumers.
  The appeal to developers is that they can toss the game on steam and valve will manage putting it in front of players and getting them to buy it, and all the associated payment processing that entails.
  Developers like steam because it has all the users and does a good job of "based on your games, buy these too".
  Users like it because it has all the games, installation is inevitably trivial, and it does a good job offering them games they could plausibly like, often on sale, and there's a feeling of platform security: valve won't screw you over.
  
  Any new distribution system will have a tough time breaking in. Just look at the difficulties epic has had despite giving away games constantly and offering extremely generous developer revenue shares.
  Valve aimed to make steam $30-60 dollars more convenient than piracy, and that seems to extend to other forms of free as well.
  
  First step is figuring out secure decentralized credit card payments. 😊

In 2022, Blizzard was valued at $60B and had a gross profit of $5.4B. Valve almost certainly had a gross profit more than that (Microsoft estimated $6.5B in 2021). $16B would be such a laughably low figure for the company, especially since Microsoft bought Blizzard at $70B (market cap of $74B around the same time). Not to mention how low-risk Valve's profit is.

If this happens I'm inciting riots.

I was okay with them getting Blizzard because, well, how much worse could Blizzard actually get with the merger?

But this? I sincerely hope this never happens. Valve isn’t the complete shit-show that Blizzard has been. Valve actually understands its customers and seemingly, mostly, respects them. Please for all things good in this universe, keep it that way.

As long as Gaben runs Valve, I can see him just laughing and saying no to whatever offer Microsoft gives

On the plus side is HL3 will be released.

On the negative side is everything else about that situation and HL3 will be a rushed shit-show of a cash grab.

LOL valve probably makes 16B in a few quarters

whoever made this up didn't think it through

Please don't

They will buy it, then shut it down. Then people will finally buy games at the .... window games store?

I’m a little surprised it’s that low. I mean, considering their cloud and hardware divisions they’d be getting, shouldn’t Valve pay a bit more than $16m to buy Microsoft?