this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Fuck you Tim Sweeney for making Gabe Newell appear even remotely good by comparison
edit: I'm muting this thread, so much sealioning and astroturfing in here
I don't get this comment. Are you suggesting Gaben is a bad person?
He's a billionaire. You can't be a billionaire and a good person at the same time.
Don't get me wrong Steam is the best digital storefront ever created, but Gabe could be using his money to help poor people instead of buying yachts.
Get off that stupid high horse that you can't be a good Billionaire. It's for sure true in most cases, but not all cases. Give me concrete examples of evil Gabe has done, George Lucas has done, etc
Newell funds marine research, and some of the yachts that he had commissioned are research vessels.
Does he fund it to the point of no longer being a billionaire? No? Then my point stands.
You want Newell to sell Valve to some retirement investment fund? That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a while.
Tell me you don't understand net worth without telling me you don't understand net worth. Do you think being a billionaire means holding a 10,000,000 $100 bills under your materace?
I think you can be a billionaire and a good person at the same time. That is not mutually exclusive, just because most are bad persons. Therefore I do not agree with your argumentation. But I accept your opinion.
See the thing is, he could live very comfortably as a hundred millionaire and help thousands of people with his excess income. Instead he hoards it. Is he actively evil like some other billionaires? No, but merely hoarding that much while others starve disqualifies him from "good person" status.
This criticism applies to every billionaire, not just Gaben.
I'm not sure billionaires actually have billions of dollars just sitting in a bank account.
It's usually assets that contribute to net worth, not actual cash
Whether that is true or not is immaterial to my point.
“It's immaterial to my point whether a person whom I hate has money or doesn't.”
You're going to need more straw than that if you're looking to build a man
I've already gathered that you just want to talk shit regardless of facts, no need to expose yourself further.
I'm not sure that's true.
Let's realistically entertain your point: You say he should sell his assets to get money, so he can give it to the poor, basically (correct me if I'm wrong).
The yacht and other stuff, probably bought with a loan, insured by Steam's value. His real assets is, like, Steam.
I don't know if you already see where this is going, but from clarity: If people would buy parts of that - the parts are called "shares", and the people who buy them "shareholders". That is a public company. Which now has a LEGAL OBLIGATION to make as much money as possible. Meaning all that enshittification coming along with it eventually, too.
You've effectively explained how billionaires justify not paying taxes. Now explain how they can be good people.
I think you have missed the mark with this. It doesn't make sense logically, and seems more like an emotional (understandably so) response.
Not really though
When you're talking about hoarding wealth, the problem isn't just different from hoarding money, it's a deeper and more complicated problem.
Assets in the case of these assholes is ownership. If they just held onto cash, all they could do is buy shit, which isn't really a problem.
What they own is vast amounts of the economy, land, and the labor of people.
They think they own the people as well as the labor and products of that labor. They do to a large extent.
When you start whittling down a tier list of which billionaires are worse than others, and there are layers of shittiness there; it's about their impact and how they wield that wealth as power.
And what in all of this enables a billionaire to be a good person? Or did you miss my initial point that being a billionaire makes it impossible to be a good person? I ask because this is still immaterial to that point.
Bro, are you fucking 12 or something? Your logic is based on a false statement "impossible to be a good person and be very rich". This article is literally about that topic, Tim is shit, Gabe isn't.
Also, don't be a dumb ass and assume you know what's best to spend other people's money on. I can give countless examples of ways to spend a billion dollars that are to the betterment of humanity, but your problem is really with the shit government of the USA (I assume your from the USA, cause tour a dumb ass).
It's the government job to help people, but the US government is doing the opposite. Look how China and other Socialist countries help their citizens and address basic human needs.
I would maybe give you this - Your anger is better suited aimed at the US government, and your anger might be linked to how big money has captured the US government (hence your anger with Billionaires), but trust me, it's not expensive to buy these fucktard politicians, and billionaire interests are a problem - but you really need to jump off these stupid little catch phrases that are not true.
Yeah, that's not how conversation works, my lemmite acquaintance. One isn't required to slavishly pound away at the initial focus of a comment. It's not only acceptable to work tangents and expand on sub-topics, it's expected to some degree or another.
People seem to think that every interaction online is a debate. It isn't. Me? I'm just drifting along, chilling, shooting the shit with other human beings.
In that spirit, why do you think "goodness" is either a singular thing that is the totality of a person, or that there aren't gradations of it? Not all saints are of equal goodness, nor are all villains purely evil. In terms of the human condition, nobody is so completely single faceted that it's useful to apply good/bad paradigms to the entirely of the person unless the entirety of their actions so heavily skew things that good or evil is such a large percentage that it's moot that other aspects exist.
I think we can agree that there's difference between someone like Trump and someone like bezos. Both absolutely horrible people overall, but the degree of horror is not the same.
As such, when you look at the bad of a given person, it has to be taken along with the good.
Now, I think we'd also agree that billionaires as a thing is a net evil so horrid as to need abolishment. But it doesn't preclude individuals from being the same kind of mix that you and I are. See, I know I have the capacity for darkness and evil. I also know that I choose, even when darkness is lapping at the shores of my true self, to do the most good I can. I hope that the opposite is true for you, that your inner goodness is so great that only puddles of evil reside which are easily relegated to meaninglessness.
But people are never so purely good that they're incapable of bad things. The same is true of even the most vile examples of humanity from history. In the worst cases, any good may have been accidental, but still.
The ruling class of the ultra wealthy should indeed be abolished. But it's just silly to pretend that they aren't human, and thus a spectrum of good and bad
Having lots of money earned does not make a person bad. So I just disagree with your reasoning. But it's not like i'm dumb and wouldn't understand where you coming from.
They never said that. So maybe you're disagreeing with their reasoning because you don't know what it is.
They say billionaires are bad because they have a lot of money and don't use it to help people. This isn't even talking about billionaire who engage in actually/actively morally wrong deeds to acquire money.
If you produce a product so excellent that consumers give you 1 billion dollars ($1.000.000.000) in pure profit, there would be no problem if you kept a nest egg to ensure your livelihood and then used the rest to provide aid where it's needed. You would still be a bad person for sitting on it, instead of spreading it to help people that aren't well off. A person can live very well on $300K pretty much anywhere in the world: that means $999,700,000 is not materially improving your life and you are hoarding it for no good reason.
You phrased that better than I did.
The only thing Newell is reported to have spent money on is stuff for himself and maybe the people close to him. He withholds the billions of dollars he owns from poor people he could help but won't. What is the worth in being a leech to society?
Please elaborate on whether marine research falls under ‘stuff for himself’ or ‘the people close to him’.
Oh no, I'm not suggesting it.
I'm outright saying it.
But why?
Normalising digital restrictions management and renting games rather than owning them. He didn't start it. But he sure as hell normalised it.
Holding a near-monopolistic position in PC gaming and taking a one-third cut of most PC games sold, and an up-front fee to be allowed to sell your game in the first place.
And then spending that eye-popping sum of money on multiple yachts rather than, I don't know, maybe improving the world even a little?
Gabes goals are twofold. Make money for himself and those under him and improve the PC game space.
He does both both unapologetically and without secrets or shady shit. Honestly, it's not his responsibility to fix the world. It's ours collectively. He does his small part to improve what he can. He saw a need and he does his best to fill it. And at the same time he pays his workers the highest wages in the entire industry. Most people who work at valve are millionaires.
I believe billionaires need to be taxed out of existence but this one is not the one that we need to hang first
Yes it fucking is. What the hell am I supposed to do other than occasionally turn a blind eye while grannies shoplift 65p packets of biscuits? Which, if my boss is reading this, I obviously would never ever do. He has the means to actually do it.
its the politicians that are enabling this to happen they are supposed to do that, and to keep billionaires in check.
It's not his job to feed the world either. That's our goddamn government's job. He puts money where he wants. That's the system we live under and we can fix that and change it but until we do denigrating this one man out of all the evil billionaires is kind of strange.
He also funds a Marine research facility that maps the ocean floor and gives scientists access to deep sea diving tools and submarines. He donates to charity occasionally, to the tune of hundreds of thousands to millions. What have you done other than complain on the internet?
You need to understand the propaganda machine's in full swing. There are enemies online that pretend to be your allies and they slowly turn your opinions. You're being brainwashed.
Precisely as much as my means allow, which is fuck all. What have you done other than simp for billionaires and sealion on the internet?
Well im fucking women all the time, ive joined my local DSA to find more opportunities to improve my community, I donate to local food banks and charities within the means I can afford. I help out my local community members via volunteer time or just being out there on the street handing out food/cookies. I enrich the lives of my many friends by working on my baking hobby and bringing cookies and cakes and happiness to everyone around me. I work very hard 50 hours a week and I love my job. It's basically a socialist haven and I do my best to bring excellence to that restaurant learning many valuable skills and in turn passing them on to others. I work on myself physically, exercising and strengthening myself should I ever need to stand up and protect my loved ones. I'm even looking into joining a local rifle association and training the skills I might potentially need to use in the future since my country is fucking falling apart. One of the only things keeping me together when I get home is playing a fucking PC game on my Linux install which is only possible to the degree it is because of the efforts of valve and by extension, Gabe Newell.
Also, I'm not derailing the conversation so I don't know how this is sea lioning. And I'm not simping for billionaires. I don't think they should exist. I just think that valve specifically is literally being targeted by large corporations to hurt their image since they have suddenly become a major player in the graphics software and OS space. The FREE DEVELOPMENT of proton and the like is a threat to Microslop's bottom line. And if valve were to go under my immediate happiness would be affected. So yeah fuck you.
Newell funds marine research, and some of the yachts that he had commissioned are research vessels. Are you saying that marine research doesn't improve the world?
Steam basically invented gambling for kids, doesn't employ more then 300 people and takes a huge cut on every games. Why do people keep thinking he's a good guy. It's just another dirty capitalist business that only cares about one thing: money. The amount of free dick sucking they get from gamers is something I just can understand. Meanwhile, studios with thousands of employees, creative people who just want to get paid to work on games, get death threats if players don't like a game.
How the fuck did steam invent gambling for kids? That shit started back in Facebook games.
I know you won't do it but you should watch the coffeezilla video about steam and gambling. BTW you don't own your games on steam.
Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCE9AXCt31c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jhjjVy5Ls