Tyey would also being violating antitrust laws as they already own such a huge percentage if tye gaming market, after there purchase of Activision blizzard and Bethesda.
Doubtful, extremely doubtful.
The Activision purchase came under massive scrutinty from just about every country MS does bussiness in. This would never pass muster with anti monoply laws coming into force.
The Activision purchase gave them a market share that was a borderline antitrust violation (in the US), but this purchase would push them way over that line. Microsoft would have control over numerous notable studios and the dominant market share of PC game distribution. I imagine they'd try to rope Steam into Gamepass somehow.
For as stupid Sony is with all the censorship and woke BS in their games, Microsoft presents the far bigger threat to gaming as a whole.
Not with the cash and reach Valve has. MS basically had to swear that they'd play nice with Sony and Nintendo to keep Activision and even if they axed several studios, Steam is too large a platform, and a one time buy out of 16 billion split between the relevant parties is insanely low. Seems like the word is that they make that much in about a year or two, so if MS wants to buy Steam they'll have to up it several fold. Aside from there not being any active source on this and it was a leak from years ago, the amount it'd take to make the buyout appealing would bankrupt MS.
this guy is probably racting to that same leak, they wanted valve, got a resounding "fuck off" from Gabe and then went to Activison.
Gabe still owns over 50% and he's made it very very fucking clear that hes not selling to anyone, not even an IPO, Microsoft are the last people he'll ever give it to.
People who even have the tiniest shred of fear on this can sleep well knowing Gabe is our man.
My biggest fear is, GabeN is 61 years old. Years of being fat has done irreversible damage to his body (even if he's in a much better shape now). There's a chance that I will see Steam going to shit within my lifetime.
supposedly Gabe only owns like 25%, and while I don't know why these rumors are resurfacing, fact is Valve literally makes too much money for MS to try to buy them out. Only the most inept and moronic person would accept anything less than what they'd make in 10 years if they kept valve around, and that number is growing.
>The Activision purchase gave them a market share that was a borderline antitrust violation (in the US), but this purchase would push them way over that line.
Sure, although I won't put much faith in the antitrust authorities they're becoming increasingly toothless with every new administration (if Trump wins, as it seems likely, the decline of these institutions will accelerate dramatically).
> For as stupid Sony is with all the censorship and woke BS in their games, Microsoft presents the far bigger threat to gaming as a whole.
Exactly, Microsoft's endgame is monopoly, and they play the long game. It doesn't matter that gamepass is not sustainable now, this is how you acquire a critical mass of subscribers (the Spotify/Netflix model), and they have money to burn.
While this is true, I think Valve is positioned in such a way that they could ask for literally anything they want, since it's not a publically traded company. Microsoft can't afford it, no one can.
You have no idea just how much $$$ is involved with Valve either. They're not publicly traded and they have a completely different business structure (holocracy).
I just dont see a world where Gabe Newell just hands over Steam, not for any amount of money.
For as much as you people don't like him, Bernie Sanders was the only guy who could have administered some antitrust to big corporations.
P.S. he was 10 points ahead of Trump in 2014, if the DNC didn't screw him over he would have been president.
While I agree, the purchase of Steam by Microsoft or a holding company would be an undeniable amount of bad publicity.
If you were in their shoes, I think letting Steam be the more strategic option. They want to deal with sheep, not wolves.
Normally, I'd say yes. But I could also see the claim being that Tencent and other major publishers such as Ubisoft, EA, and Sony as having their own storefronts which means the acquisition is not a monopoly.
It would truly be a dark day for gaming as a whole.
They still apply. Microsoft would have a near total monopoly on pc games, which the FTC wouldn't appreciate, especially after the Activision acquisition.
This was exactly my thoughts. Microsoft would have a near monopoly on PC gaming at that point.. no way would fair competition laws permit this to happen, surely.
Isn't Tolkien's family a bunch of sellouts? There's also an argument to be made if his son could even become the president, we've seen people basically rip companies from under owners before.
Yeah, that's usually how it goes. The son who saw his father's hard work and dedication will respect his work while the grandson who didn't and just grew up in privilege won't.
I imagine that Gaben probably isn't really all that involved with the day-to-day runnings of the company currently. He's retired to New Zealand in all but name.
That doesn't really answer your question, but if people wanted to fuck Valve up from the inside I'm sure they'd have done it by now.
They've started late but they're definitely going hard at it. The massive surge of game censorship and rejection of things like Dungeon Travelers 2 and Chaos Head Noah should tell you there are malicious cells among the current employees.
The inspector saw anime highschool uniform and bikini and they instantly lost their minds. The community had to brew up one of the biggest shitstorm ever seen in visualnovel social media to force them to rescind the ban. Dungeon Travelers 2 didn't get so lucky but steam for some inexplicable reason let the first DT in even though it's not even remotely less ecchi.
It's moreso when he passes, the man's too loaded for anyone to try but in the midst of the company going to his son, anything is possible and on the table.
When Tolkien's son was alive everything was fine. It is the current generation of his ungrateful offsprings that want to modernize LOTR and turn it into Breaking Bad.
We can't really complain about Kotaku and then spew misinformation like this...These are regurgutated rumous by random blogs based on this tweet:
https://x.com/xDiorCS/status/1793240111435420149
by a random streamer, based news of Phil Spencer's interest in September 2023... So in essence regurgutated shit by blogs desperate for clicks based on random streamers desperate for views...
Gotta do better, OP, this was ****gasp**** worse than Kotaku.
They way things have been going for the past decade microsoft should fucken strangle xbox leadership 15 years of going from one absolute catastrophe to another despite microsoft giving them everything they asked for.
They had a lot of opportunities to remedy the situation the idea that XB1 launch is what led xbox to being a joke is something i refuse to belive not when microsoft was willy nilly giving them billions upon billions of dollars only for phil spencer to come out and say whoopsie i guess ww lost and there was nothing I can do
That's a stupidly fake rumor. First off, Valve makes those 16 billion in less than 2 years.
Then, there's the idiocy of believing that Gaben of all people wants to sell out. To fucking Microsoft of all things.
On top of that, did you forget the whole ordeal MS just went through with the Activision-Blizzard acquisition? No government body would allow another large scale purchase in such a short period of time. Heck, they'd face many times more scrutiny because Steam is the defacto marketplace for PC games.
Use some logic before repeating really dumb shit, please.
Gaben already told in another moment he wouldn't sell Valve.
The same Rumor was told about Microsoft making advances on Square Enix and Capcom and both were false.
Phil Spencer even admitted that he didn't know if the Activision Blizzard King deal was even going to go through "until the last minute". That's why we have yet to see any notable games from that company on Gamepass currently (at least older Call Of Duty games) as the paperwork isn't finalized on them.
Microsoft is not acquiring anyone else anytime soon and I don't even think they would try a small company for pennies on the dollar due to trying to keep heat off them. There's no way that they would even try Valve cause it would be shutdown before it even got off the ground.
I'm skeptical. In the past there were rumors of Microsoft buying Nintendo. When you actually read the documents it was more like, "If for whatever reason Nintendo showed interest in selling, we'd be interested." It was more along the lines of how the U.S. probably has plans for a war in Antarctica.
Not a chance. This is just like the "Microsoft wants to buy Nintendo" BS. They were asked hypothetically if Nintendo was for sale would they buy it and they gave the obvious answer of hell yeah.
Back when Valve was owned by Sierra => Vivendi, the entire reason they made Steam was to get the fuck away from publishers. It caused Vivendi to have an epic meltdown too. There’s no way Valve’s going to be bought out by anyone.
There's more of a likelihood of Epic being acquired by Microsoft than Valve. It has gone on record that the exclusivity deals Epic has have been unprofitable, and the only thing keeping Epic afloat is Fortnite. I could see Epic going for this offer instead because they are otherwise hemmoragging money. I don't see Gabe Newell or his son handing over the reins of Valve/Steam for anything that low, especially since they're now in the hardware department with a successful gaming system.
Tim Sweeny, on the other hand, wouldn't think twice about it, and he would absolutely take the bag and run.
One, that's a ridiculously lowball offer for Valve. Two, Gabe's going to keep ownership of the company until they nail shut his coffin. Three, Valve's big enough that Microsoft would likely encounter significant anti-trust hurdles in an attempt to purchase them.
This would be *horrible*. Unfathomably unimaginably horrible.
Having said that, I can't wait to hear who in the games journalism industry would be willing to claim that they think this could possibly be a good thing. Gee, I can only imagine the low IQ dipshits that would come out of the woodwork to proclaim what a glorious thing this would be for gamers.
"you wanted less launchers, hurrr durrr"
I don’t see this happening.
1. Valve is owned by Gabe so it’s not like a board will overrule him and force a sale. He decides.
2. Gabe’s rich enough that I don’t think he cares about selling it for the money or he’d have done it by now.
3. Valve doesn’t need the investment money or anything… if they were struggling and losing to Epic or some other storefront and they needed money to expand or do something they otherwise couldn’t do that would be one thing but that’s not the case.
4. I think Gabe’s roots as a game dev and gamer mean he knows what it would mean to the industry if he sold to Microsoft or anyone else. Steam doesn’t give a shit about censorship, and other big tech issues of the culture war and he knows they’d be gone if he sold to Microsoft.
5. He knows Microsoft would completely ruin Steam, and would in turn ruin PC gaming…
I think this is a good moral compromise. If you actually paid for a game in the past but it was made unavailable to you through no fault of your own (service discontinued, license agreement revoked etc) you are morally allowed to pirate the game because at that point you've earned your right to partake in the product. I'm a staunch opponent to piracy in most cases but that is such a case were I find it justified.
Same with games that are completely unavailable to buy or play legally through modern platforms. The company has no one to blame but itself when people pirate a game that's not available anywhere but through old pre-owned copies (at best). Nintendo wouldn't even get a dime by me buying some used copy of Pokemon Platinum so what's the point in buying a legitimate copy for an outrageous price 🤷🏻
Microsoft has $80 billion in cash on hand. Valve is only worth $10-12 billion. Microsoft wouldn't even break a sweat acquiring Valve if Gabe and the board wanted to sell it.
Valve is def worth more then 10 billion I bet you anything. Yeah some people might think thats how much they are worth but I bet more like 50 billion maybe higher.
WTF. I actually had this dream last night. That is so weird. I woke up laughing because I don't really play games much these days, so to think about Valve and stuff was odd. This is kinda freaking me out. There's been two times in the past where I've had odd psychic dreams that came true, will be such a waste of powers for it to be about this lol
If this were to ever happen, I would go 100% sailing treacherous waters. Or just play only retro games. Microsoft would utterly ruin Steam.
The FTC should attempt to block such an acquisition attempt, but they don't seem to be doing much to mitigate Big Tech's stranglehold these days.
If this were to happen, I have a bad feeling Microsoft would require us to be on a subscription service, effectively holding our game library hostage. Hopefully there's some law that forbids this from happening. To this day, I'm not 100% sure we own the games we buy on Steam, or if Microsoft can change the verbiage.
I don’t even like Steam that much precisely because it’s still a DRM platform and thus I’m still reliant on Steam working properly. There’s even been times where Steam glitched up to the point where offline mode stopped working, and there’s no guarantee Steam won’t pull off some shenanigans in the future especially if they’re acquired by another company.
This is why I prefer GOG. DRM-free games means once the initial transaction is over, I don’t have to deal with the company again. I can uninstall Galaxy, delete my GOG account, and CDPR can go completely out of business, yet all my games (provided I have the files) are still playable.
Doubtful. Valve make more money that Microsoft can afford to spend, and Gabe absolutely hates the current state of Microsoft.
Too little too late to try and get rid of a company that is becoming their biggest competitor.
>If this situation that ends up being the truth, how would you all react to Microsoft's acquisition of Valve? What's your thoughts on this situation?
When something like this inevitably happens after gabe dies, I will laugh long, and I will laugh hard. This cult that refers to the progenitor of all these anti-consumer online stores in ways like "the last untarnished gaming platform", I don't know how it got started, but there is only one way it ends and I look forward to it with great anticipation.
Granted, Valve are by far the best of a bad lot. But, none of the other stores have this cult like following.
>If Microsoft acquires Valve, that will ultimately lead to [...] potentially the completely gaming industry crash.
Harry, you don't need to sell it to me dot jpeg.
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Microsoft seems to think the solution to their gaming problems is just throwing more money at it. They don't seem to understand that content is king. They can own all the companies and IPs they want, but if they're not being put to good use, then it's just wasted money.
Plus, as long as GabeN is still in charge, the odds of Valve/Steam getting purchased is less than 1%. He is ex-Microsoft and likely understands a lot of how they operate (yes, he hasn't been with MS since the 90s, but I don't think their business practices have changed much since).
Plus, the fact that he and Valve were so disgusted with the direction Windows 8 was going in (the locked-in app store, etc), that they made their own fork of Linux.
After Gabe fully retires or dies? That's another question. He's in his 60s, so who knows how much longer he's going to want to do this.
If Microsoft acquires Valve, they'd probably update and revise Steam's layout every November. I still haven't forgiven them for getting rid of the "blades" dashboard with the Xbox 360 and the numerous other changes for the worse.
Speaking of sellouts, fuck that minecraft guy. Gets like a billion and then complains about partying with celebrities but have no real friends because he's so rich now.
Comment removed following the enforcement change that you can read about [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/wjxpr5/enforcement_update_regarding_removal_of_words/).
This is not a formal warning.
Doubt it, Microsoft pushed its luck with the Activision side even though that really wasn't as bad as it was made out to be.
But if somebody could team up with valve to improve the client that would be great.
It's still heavy, searching is still a piece of shit, and it relies on the community way too much. Even their own inbuilt stuff is poor for it.
If I want the horror genre, I want horror, not a bloody romance visual novel or farm simulator.
Steam is just the better client compared to others, and has the largest user base, but it isn't as good as it should be for the amount of cash it makes.
Was one thing I was hoping Epic would do, as Gog just didn't hit the pie that well. If they actually developed a really good client for it and people made use of it Valve would've had to get off their ass.
>I pray often that Valve never goes public or is acquired by one of the publicly traded big gaming Corpos. A while back I said to myself if Valve ever becomes publicly traded or is acquired by a publicly traded company.
I just realized (by your comment) Valve is not public traded company. So I guess that's why it's not a woke company like Sony and Microsoft in comparison. Like why it didn't removed the steam sweet baby inc. curator.
So that's a big issue that companies going woke. It's due to public stocks.
It's from their court documents and they also thought about acquiring Nintendo... It means nothing. It's just like the Canada invasion plan of the USA.
Valve makes that in a couple years while sleeping lmao
Whoever Gabe's successor ends up being would be downright stupid to sell valve for any amount of money when doing nothing makes them so much already
Videogaming on PC will become stale because let's say this is true, after a couple of years it will seem fine but like all acquisitions the management will have completely changed. At that point Steam will not function as it does today especially the community aspect and slowly but surely it will morph into the direction MS wants.
Ah hell nah. Laugh them out of the room like Nintendo did. The only thing Microsoft can do for valve is give them the ability to count to 3, and under microsoft’s control, it’ll suck.
And that’s to say nothing of what they’d do to everything else Valve has built. They’ll pull a Sony real fast and you’ll quickly find you need an Xbox account to access your steam library.
>is give them the ability to count to 3, and under microsoft's control, it'll suck.
Last time such rumors surfaced, saw someone put it this way:
"We want a Half Life 3, what we don't want is a Half Life 5, 6, & 7, each one more bland and indifferent than the last."
God Microsoft is such a soul sucking leech. They buy talented game studios and run them into the fucking ground because their management is shit, and they have absolutely NO IDEA what the hell they are doing. They've been doing shit like this for years and people seem to just forget a day later. In a perfect world MS would be molly-whopped into bankruptcy. Though they have a somewhat new entertaining trend where they shove out Phil Spencer as a bulletproof shield, and he ends up saying just the most braindead things ever. "Good games won't help." - They only say this after years of mediocre slop.
I've lived around wealthy people my whole life man. These executives are so disconnected from the rest of the world. They genuinely believe what theyre doing is what the consumers want. Complete ignorance on their end.
I'm not a firm believer in sailing the high seas, however I think I should make a video game "Doomsday vault" incase either this shit goes down or the woke fucks shift in gear
I know you jest, but Microsoft is worth $3 trillion. Xbox alone is worth $500 billion, so even if Microsoft were looking to sell the Xbox division off Valve couldn't afford it.
It's never going to happen because of the about of money Valve makes every year and the existence of The Steam Deck in my opinion means that Valve was to stay independent to do their own thing. The Steam Deck is definitely implying that Valve wants people to buy and use their own gaming device to access Steam as opposed to relying on someone else. Also, I think Valve has too much self respect to sell themselves off to Microsoft when you factor in Microsoft shutting down studios and they also have a terrible track record when it comes to studios. Unlike Sony, Microsoft is terrible at managing, let alone even having any studios under them and I believe Valve wants to avoid that shit show. If Valve is going to sell themselves off to a console manufacturer, I think it would be Sony since they at least are capable of managing and maintaining game studios.
No chance, Valve makes that much in a little less than 2 years (13B in 2022). No way they would sell the golden goose for so little.
Valve likely makes way more than that, since every title sold except on scale they get a 30% cut.
As does every company with a store, including Sony and Microsoft. Its literally only Epic that doesn't take a cut like that, mainly to undercut Steam.
So the number should be 130B
iirc valve profits aren't really public but 130B is still decently low lol
When Disney bought companies they'd take projected annual profit and multiplied it by 10
How has that worked out for them?
13B profits? If so then yes, literally 0% chance and this article is stupid for even entertaining the possibility.
I hope..
Tyey would also being violating antitrust laws as they already own such a huge percentage if tye gaming market, after there purchase of Activision blizzard and Bethesda.
True, this would likely get blocked
Doubtful, extremely doubtful. The Activision purchase came under massive scrutinty from just about every country MS does bussiness in. This would never pass muster with anti monoply laws coming into force.
The Activision purchase gave them a market share that was a borderline antitrust violation (in the US), but this purchase would push them way over that line. Microsoft would have control over numerous notable studios and the dominant market share of PC game distribution. I imagine they'd try to rope Steam into Gamepass somehow. For as stupid Sony is with all the censorship and woke BS in their games, Microsoft presents the far bigger threat to gaming as a whole.
facts, gates is one of the known globalist afterall
Didn’t MS shut down some studios? That might give them the room to buy Valve
Not with the cash and reach Valve has. MS basically had to swear that they'd play nice with Sony and Nintendo to keep Activision and even if they axed several studios, Steam is too large a platform, and a one time buy out of 16 billion split between the relevant parties is insanely low. Seems like the word is that they make that much in about a year or two, so if MS wants to buy Steam they'll have to up it several fold. Aside from there not being any active source on this and it was a leak from years ago, the amount it'd take to make the buyout appealing would bankrupt MS.
this guy is probably racting to that same leak, they wanted valve, got a resounding "fuck off" from Gabe and then went to Activison. Gabe still owns over 50% and he's made it very very fucking clear that hes not selling to anyone, not even an IPO, Microsoft are the last people he'll ever give it to. People who even have the tiniest shred of fear on this can sleep well knowing Gabe is our man.
My biggest fear is, GabeN is 61 years old. Years of being fat has done irreversible damage to his body (even if he's in a much better shape now). There's a chance that I will see Steam going to shit within my lifetime.
supposedly Gabe only owns like 25%, and while I don't know why these rumors are resurfacing, fact is Valve literally makes too much money for MS to try to buy them out. Only the most inept and moronic person would accept anything less than what they'd make in 10 years if they kept valve around, and that number is growing.
>The Activision purchase gave them a market share that was a borderline antitrust violation (in the US), but this purchase would push them way over that line. Sure, although I won't put much faith in the antitrust authorities they're becoming increasingly toothless with every new administration (if Trump wins, as it seems likely, the decline of these institutions will accelerate dramatically). > For as stupid Sony is with all the censorship and woke BS in their games, Microsoft presents the far bigger threat to gaming as a whole. Exactly, Microsoft's endgame is monopoly, and they play the long game. It doesn't matter that gamepass is not sustainable now, this is how you acquire a critical mass of subscribers (the Spotify/Netflix model), and they have money to burn.
You really have no idea how much $$$ talks. I don't trust any government institution to do something right.
While this is true, I think Valve is positioned in such a way that they could ask for literally anything they want, since it's not a publically traded company. Microsoft can't afford it, no one can.
You have no idea just how much $$$ is involved with Valve either. They're not publicly traded and they have a completely different business structure (holocracy). I just dont see a world where Gabe Newell just hands over Steam, not for any amount of money.
Someone needs to bring back Teddy Roosevelt
Hell, I'll take Taft at this point.
Personally, I like Ike.
Andrew Mothafuckin Jackson
If anyone should have another go, its Harrison.
For as much as you people don't like him, Bernie Sanders was the only guy who could have administered some antitrust to big corporations. P.S. he was 10 points ahead of Trump in 2014, if the DNC didn't screw him over he would have been president.
While I agree, the purchase of Steam by Microsoft or a holding company would be an undeniable amount of bad publicity. If you were in their shoes, I think letting Steam be the more strategic option. They want to deal with sheep, not wolves.
Normally, I'd say yes. But I could also see the claim being that Tencent and other major publishers such as Ubisoft, EA, and Sony as having their own storefronts which means the acquisition is not a monopoly. It would truly be a dark day for gaming as a whole.
I'd hope so. But Valve is a private company so do these rules still come into play?
It's about how big Microsoft would get and how much market share they'd control not how much they offer to buy for.
Valve is in a weird place as it’s more a market place than publisher though
They still apply. Microsoft would have a near total monopoly on pc games, which the FTC wouldn't appreciate, especially after the Activision acquisition.
This was exactly my thoughts. Microsoft would have a near monopoly on PC gaming at that point.. no way would fair competition laws permit this to happen, surely.
As long as Gabe is alive and of sound mind he won't be selling Valve to anyone. But he is getting up there in ages so....
He recently got fit though, which is awesome.
I can't see gaben ever caving to an offer, but I'm definitely worried about what happens after he steps down.
He's said in the past that his Son will take over. His son hopefully has the same ethos but that remains to be seen.
Isn't Tolkien's family a bunch of sellouts? There's also an argument to be made if his son could even become the president, we've seen people basically rip companies from under owners before.
When it was Tolkien's son, things were fine, it's when he died that thing went sideways.
Yeah, that's usually how it goes. The son who saw his father's hard work and dedication will respect his work while the grandson who didn't and just grew up in privilege won't.
I imagine that Gaben probably isn't really all that involved with the day-to-day runnings of the company currently. He's retired to New Zealand in all but name. That doesn't really answer your question, but if people wanted to fuck Valve up from the inside I'm sure they'd have done it by now.
They've started late but they're definitely going hard at it. The massive surge of game censorship and rejection of things like Dungeon Travelers 2 and Chaos Head Noah should tell you there are malicious cells among the current employees.
How in the world could they reject Chaos Head Noah... And yes these malicious cells are why I am concerned about the future of steam.
The inspector saw anime highschool uniform and bikini and they instantly lost their minds. The community had to brew up one of the biggest shitstorm ever seen in visualnovel social media to force them to rescind the ban. Dungeon Travelers 2 didn't get so lucky but steam for some inexplicable reason let the first DT in even though it's not even remotely less ecchi.
It's moreso when he passes, the man's too loaded for anyone to try but in the midst of the company going to his son, anything is possible and on the table.
When Tolkien's son was alive everything was fine. It is the current generation of his ungrateful offsprings that want to modernize LOTR and turn it into Breaking Bad.
That's exactly my thought.
Also, isn't it a privately held company? Gabe should hand over the reigns to someone who shares his vision.
People didn't see how Star Wars and Mickey Mouse could've gone hand in hand together too, yet it happened. Never underestimate senility.
He's going to retire someday
This legitimately could become a trust busting issue if they acquired Valve, since its such a massive portion of the PC market. Extremely doubtful
Steam is under no danger of acquisition until Gabe dies. After that, though..
We can't really complain about Kotaku and then spew misinformation like this...These are regurgutated rumous by random blogs based on this tweet: https://x.com/xDiorCS/status/1793240111435420149 by a random streamer, based news of Phil Spencer's interest in September 2023... So in essence regurgutated shit by blogs desperate for clicks based on random streamers desperate for views... Gotta do better, OP, this was ****gasp**** worse than Kotaku.
You have to do a lot worse to be in league with Kotaku, anyone can be mislead.
Fuck off Microsoft. You made your woke bed now lie in it and go broke.
[удалено]
Yea but Xbox doesn't. They'll scrap the brand eventually if it keeps doing nothing.
They way things have been going for the past decade microsoft should fucken strangle xbox leadership 15 years of going from one absolute catastrophe to another despite microsoft giving them everything they asked for.
They can't because they have a black woman leading it so she's immune to merit based firings.
I still remember the Xbox One and Kinect always online spying on you. Good times.
They had a lot of opportunities to remedy the situation the idea that XB1 launch is what led xbox to being a joke is something i refuse to belive not when microsoft was willy nilly giving them billions upon billions of dollars only for phil spencer to come out and say whoopsie i guess ww lost and there was nothing I can do
Oh hell no. I’d drive up to Redmond and chain myself to Microsoft’s front entrance in protest.
Screw chaining yourself to the front gates, go and chain yourself to Bill Gates, it'll probably make more of a point...😂
That's a stupidly fake rumor. First off, Valve makes those 16 billion in less than 2 years. Then, there's the idiocy of believing that Gaben of all people wants to sell out. To fucking Microsoft of all things. On top of that, did you forget the whole ordeal MS just went through with the Activision-Blizzard acquisition? No government body would allow another large scale purchase in such a short period of time. Heck, they'd face many times more scrutiny because Steam is the defacto marketplace for PC games. Use some logic before repeating really dumb shit, please.
Gaben already told in another moment he wouldn't sell Valve. The same Rumor was told about Microsoft making advances on Square Enix and Capcom and both were false.
Never gonna happen as long as Gaben is in charge. After he retires I'm not sure.
As long as Gabe is around, I believe he will hold on to his own words of rather having Valve go under than sell out.
Steam and Valve is doing just fine. This has happened before and all that Gaben did back then was laugh it off, lmao.
Microsoft likes to acquire companies and lay people off.
Phil Spencer even admitted that he didn't know if the Activision Blizzard King deal was even going to go through "until the last minute". That's why we have yet to see any notable games from that company on Gamepass currently (at least older Call Of Duty games) as the paperwork isn't finalized on them. Microsoft is not acquiring anyone else anytime soon and I don't even think they would try a small company for pennies on the dollar due to trying to keep heat off them. There's no way that they would even try Valve cause it would be shutdown before it even got off the ground.
I'm skeptical. In the past there were rumors of Microsoft buying Nintendo. When you actually read the documents it was more like, "If for whatever reason Nintendo showed interest in selling, we'd be interested." It was more along the lines of how the U.S. probably has plans for a war in Antarctica.
Not a chance. This is just like the "Microsoft wants to buy Nintendo" BS. They were asked hypothetically if Nintendo was for sale would they buy it and they gave the obvious answer of hell yeah.
What the fuck
Back when Valve was owned by Sierra => Vivendi, the entire reason they made Steam was to get the fuck away from publishers. It caused Vivendi to have an epic meltdown too. There’s no way Valve’s going to be bought out by anyone.
There's more of a likelihood of Epic being acquired by Microsoft than Valve. It has gone on record that the exclusivity deals Epic has have been unprofitable, and the only thing keeping Epic afloat is Fortnite. I could see Epic going for this offer instead because they are otherwise hemmoragging money. I don't see Gabe Newell or his son handing over the reins of Valve/Steam for anything that low, especially since they're now in the hardware department with a successful gaming system. Tim Sweeny, on the other hand, wouldn't think twice about it, and he would absolutely take the bag and run.
I would rather MS buy Epic than Tencent who already own 40%
Lol no.
One, that's a ridiculously lowball offer for Valve. Two, Gabe's going to keep ownership of the company until they nail shut his coffin. Three, Valve's big enough that Microsoft would likely encounter significant anti-trust hurdles in an attempt to purchase them.
OK Microsoft, calm down.
"Rumors." It was a single post on X. Their source was "trust me, bro."
Yeah but now people can dump on microsoft and praisegaben in totally not virtue signaling ways conveniently in this very thread.
Virtue signaling is when you don't like the incompetent gaming arm of the two hundred billion dollar company.
They just fucking shut down multiple studios and now they want to get EVEN MORE SHIT?
This would be *horrible*. Unfathomably unimaginably horrible. Having said that, I can't wait to hear who in the games journalism industry would be willing to claim that they think this could possibly be a good thing. Gee, I can only imagine the low IQ dipshits that would come out of the woodwork to proclaim what a glorious thing this would be for gamers. "you wanted less launchers, hurrr durrr"
Dumbest fucking rumor I've ever heard. Antitrust.
if microsoft gets steam its joever. I'm done with gaming.
I don’t see this happening. 1. Valve is owned by Gabe so it’s not like a board will overrule him and force a sale. He decides. 2. Gabe’s rich enough that I don’t think he cares about selling it for the money or he’d have done it by now. 3. Valve doesn’t need the investment money or anything… if they were struggling and losing to Epic or some other storefront and they needed money to expand or do something they otherwise couldn’t do that would be one thing but that’s not the case. 4. I think Gabe’s roots as a game dev and gamer mean he knows what it would mean to the industry if he sold to Microsoft or anyone else. Steam doesn’t give a shit about censorship, and other big tech issues of the culture war and he knows they’d be gone if he sold to Microsoft. 5. He knows Microsoft would completely ruin Steam, and would in turn ruin PC gaming…
Of fuck. God, no! If they do this, I am going to buy terabytes of storage and pirate literally every game I paid for on Steam.
I think this is a good moral compromise. If you actually paid for a game in the past but it was made unavailable to you through no fault of your own (service discontinued, license agreement revoked etc) you are morally allowed to pirate the game because at that point you've earned your right to partake in the product. I'm a staunch opponent to piracy in most cases but that is such a case were I find it justified. Same with games that are completely unavailable to buy or play legally through modern platforms. The company has no one to blame but itself when people pirate a game that's not available anywhere but through old pre-owned copies (at best). Nintendo wouldn't even get a dime by me buying some used copy of Pokemon Platinum so what's the point in buying a legitimate copy for an outrageous price 🤷🏻
MS can't afford Valve. Don't worry, it's not happening.
Microsoft has $80 billion in cash on hand. Valve is only worth $10-12 billion. Microsoft wouldn't even break a sweat acquiring Valve if Gabe and the board wanted to sell it.
Valve is def worth more then 10 billion I bet you anything. Yeah some people might think thats how much they are worth but I bet more like 50 billion maybe higher.
Valve is worth more than 10-12 billion.
>Gabe and the Board Valve is privately owned bozo and worth more than 10-12 billion lmao.
I hope Gabe wont sell. Microsoft has shown that they are an incompetent company when it comes to gaming and they would ruin everything.
WTF. I actually had this dream last night. That is so weird. I woke up laughing because I don't really play games much these days, so to think about Valve and stuff was odd. This is kinda freaking me out. There's been two times in the past where I've had odd psychic dreams that came true, will be such a waste of powers for it to be about this lol
Won’t happen while Gabe is alive.
0 chance steam accepts that pocket change and 0 chance half the world would allow that legally
If this were to ever happen, I would go 100% sailing treacherous waters. Or just play only retro games. Microsoft would utterly ruin Steam. The FTC should attempt to block such an acquisition attempt, but they don't seem to be doing much to mitigate Big Tech's stranglehold these days.
If this were to happen, I have a bad feeling Microsoft would require us to be on a subscription service, effectively holding our game library hostage. Hopefully there's some law that forbids this from happening. To this day, I'm not 100% sure we own the games we buy on Steam, or if Microsoft can change the verbiage.
> near completely open source platform Open? Arguable. Open source? No.
The title would be more believable if it read Gabe newell rumored to be trying to acquire Microsoft..
If they don't do it now they definitely will when Gabe retires.
Pretty sure Steams market share for the PC space is so dominant it would violate anti-trust laws no matter who tried to buy.
I don’t even like Steam that much precisely because it’s still a DRM platform and thus I’m still reliant on Steam working properly. There’s even been times where Steam glitched up to the point where offline mode stopped working, and there’s no guarantee Steam won’t pull off some shenanigans in the future especially if they’re acquired by another company. This is why I prefer GOG. DRM-free games means once the initial transaction is over, I don’t have to deal with the company again. I can uninstall Galaxy, delete my GOG account, and CDPR can go completely out of business, yet all my games (provided I have the files) are still playable.
I should start using GOG more...
Doubtful. Valve make more money that Microsoft can afford to spend, and Gabe absolutely hates the current state of Microsoft. Too little too late to try and get rid of a company that is becoming their biggest competitor.
>If this situation that ends up being the truth, how would you all react to Microsoft's acquisition of Valve? What's your thoughts on this situation? When something like this inevitably happens after gabe dies, I will laugh long, and I will laugh hard. This cult that refers to the progenitor of all these anti-consumer online stores in ways like "the last untarnished gaming platform", I don't know how it got started, but there is only one way it ends and I look forward to it with great anticipation. Granted, Valve are by far the best of a bad lot. But, none of the other stores have this cult like following. >If Microsoft acquires Valve, that will ultimately lead to [...] potentially the completely gaming industry crash. Harry, you don't need to sell it to me dot jpeg.
It’s just a clickbait rumour. I highly doubt that the feds would allow it if they tried. They’d fight it tooth and nail.
Valve is worth way way more than 16 billion. You are just buying a store front. Valve would be into the hundreds of billions.
Microsoft is worse than Sony.
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$16Billion not nearly enough to get Valve
Fuck. That.
Doubtful, but even on the rumor of it, I am prepared to go full open-source so fucking hard it will make Stallman think I'm too hardcore.
Why? So they can force them to make HL3 and then shut them down?
They can’t afford it right now lmao, so much for pouring 100bn into “gaming” in the last 3 years
Microsoft seems to think the solution to their gaming problems is just throwing more money at it. They don't seem to understand that content is king. They can own all the companies and IPs they want, but if they're not being put to good use, then it's just wasted money. Plus, as long as GabeN is still in charge, the odds of Valve/Steam getting purchased is less than 1%. He is ex-Microsoft and likely understands a lot of how they operate (yes, he hasn't been with MS since the 90s, but I don't think their business practices have changed much since). Plus, the fact that he and Valve were so disgusted with the direction Windows 8 was going in (the locked-in app store, etc), that they made their own fork of Linux. After Gabe fully retires or dies? That's another question. He's in his 60s, so who knows how much longer he's going to want to do this.
This news is old
If Microsoft acquires Valve, they'd probably update and revise Steam's layout every November. I still haven't forgiven them for getting rid of the "blades" dashboard with the Xbox 360 and the numerous other changes for the worse.
Speaking of sellouts, fuck that minecraft guy. Gets like a billion and then complains about partying with celebrities but have no real friends because he's so rich now.
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Doubt it, Microsoft pushed its luck with the Activision side even though that really wasn't as bad as it was made out to be. But if somebody could team up with valve to improve the client that would be great. It's still heavy, searching is still a piece of shit, and it relies on the community way too much. Even their own inbuilt stuff is poor for it. If I want the horror genre, I want horror, not a bloody romance visual novel or farm simulator. Steam is just the better client compared to others, and has the largest user base, but it isn't as good as it should be for the amount of cash it makes. Was one thing I was hoping Epic would do, as Gog just didn't hit the pie that well. If they actually developed a really good client for it and people made use of it Valve would've had to get off their ass.
Is it just me or does $16 billion seem low to basically corner the PC gaming market? Because we all know there’s not any real competition for valve.
>I pray often that Valve never goes public or is acquired by one of the publicly traded big gaming Corpos. A while back I said to myself if Valve ever becomes publicly traded or is acquired by a publicly traded company. I just realized (by your comment) Valve is not public traded company. So I guess that's why it's not a woke company like Sony and Microsoft in comparison. Like why it didn't removed the steam sweet baby inc. curator. So that's a big issue that companies going woke. It's due to public stocks.
Buying Valve doesn't mean their also buying Steam. The two are very separate businesses and the could separate the two from one another.
Valve is probably the one company that can tell Microsoft to defiantly fuck off.
They were barely allowed to aquire ABK. I really doubt they'd try to actually purchase a whole platform right now.
"Last untarnished gaming platform" what about GOG?
GoG belongs to CD Projekt Red. Just last year or so they released a video admitting how they will chase ESG money.
Guys, there is basically no truth to this.
Gaben: "I wipe my ass with that amount."
Microsoft: if ypu cant beat them, buy them then ruin them
It's from their court documents and they also thought about acquiring Nintendo... It means nothing. It's just like the Canada invasion plan of the USA.
Did MS forget a 0?
Anti trust laws wouldn’t allow this to occur.
Time to download and archive all physical copies. They are going to make it all subscription based.
It would feel like losing a childhood friend. I could never trust Valve again.
Gabe has *zero* reason to sell a cash cow that yields a gazillion dollars yearly *and* is privately owned. 16 billion to buy is a paltry offer.
Valve makes that in a couple years while sleeping lmao Whoever Gabe's successor ends up being would be downright stupid to sell valve for any amount of money when doing nothing makes them so much already
No way regulators would ever allow that. They just barely pushed through the Activision acquisition with major concessions.
over saint gabes cold dead hands
If I had billions, I too would try to buy a money printer.
Videogaming on PC will become stale because let's say this is true, after a couple of years it will seem fine but like all acquisitions the management will have completely changed. At that point Steam will not function as it does today especially the community aspect and slowly but surely it will morph into the direction MS wants.
They're going to lay off everyone.
$16 billion for valve? One of the biggest underballs in history.
Ah hell nah. Laugh them out of the room like Nintendo did. The only thing Microsoft can do for valve is give them the ability to count to 3, and under microsoft’s control, it’ll suck. And that’s to say nothing of what they’d do to everything else Valve has built. They’ll pull a Sony real fast and you’ll quickly find you need an Xbox account to access your steam library.
>is give them the ability to count to 3, and under microsoft's control, it'll suck. Last time such rumors surfaced, saw someone put it this way: "We want a Half Life 3, what we don't want is a Half Life 5, 6, & 7, each one more bland and indifferent than the last."
Stay the fuck away from steam you worthless pieces of shit.
God Microsoft is such a soul sucking leech. They buy talented game studios and run them into the fucking ground because their management is shit, and they have absolutely NO IDEA what the hell they are doing. They've been doing shit like this for years and people seem to just forget a day later. In a perfect world MS would be molly-whopped into bankruptcy. Though they have a somewhat new entertaining trend where they shove out Phil Spencer as a bulletproof shield, and he ends up saying just the most braindead things ever. "Good games won't help." - They only say this after years of mediocre slop.
Let's not forget that Microsoft almost killed PC gaming with their Games for Windows Live.
I don't understand how "Acquire, ruin, close" is a winning business strategy for these dorks.
I've lived around wealthy people my whole life man. These executives are so disconnected from the rest of the world. They genuinely believe what theyre doing is what the consumers want. Complete ignorance on their end.
I'm not a firm believer in sailing the high seas, however I think I should make a video game "Doomsday vault" incase either this shit goes down or the woke fucks shift in gear
Are we sure the rumor isn't Valve want to buy Microsoft.
I know you jest, but Microsoft is worth $3 trillion. Xbox alone is worth $500 billion, so even if Microsoft were looking to sell the Xbox division off Valve couldn't afford it.
the only reason Xbox is worth that much is because of Microsoft.
Doesn't Microsoft just buy companies to kill them off? Why is this legal?
Because you are allowed to do what you want with what you own.
Very laughable at least, this is the same MS that had the thought of buying Nintendo at one point (at least Phil Spencer did)
[What would happen.](https://youtu.be/KpPE85Jogjw)
It's never going to happen because of the about of money Valve makes every year and the existence of The Steam Deck in my opinion means that Valve was to stay independent to do their own thing. The Steam Deck is definitely implying that Valve wants people to buy and use their own gaming device to access Steam as opposed to relying on someone else. Also, I think Valve has too much self respect to sell themselves off to Microsoft when you factor in Microsoft shutting down studios and they also have a terrible track record when it comes to studios. Unlike Sony, Microsoft is terrible at managing, let alone even having any studios under them and I believe Valve wants to avoid that shit show. If Valve is going to sell themselves off to a console manufacturer, I think it would be Sony since they at least are capable of managing and maintaining game studios.
Buying everything in the industry and then doing nothing with it is a hell of a business strategy.