Karl Quackenbush
Is Valve's lawyer a cartoon duck? That sounds like the name of a cartoon duck.
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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I’m not happy that I know the thumbnail is a pic from Subverse.
Maybe Quackenbush's approach could've saved Valve some headaches along the way.
Oh so their suggestion is that Valve should have bowed to conservative censorship even earlier? What a waste of an article
Visa and Mastercard, suck it! You do NOT get to decide how I spend MY money. Got it?
"I don't want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do." — J.P. Morgan
I imagine gaben hiring a lawyer to be creative and clever to outsmart the puritan censorship control of valve and steam. Then the lawyer taking time to think about it, giving up, and coming at gaben with that as legal advice, resulting in gaben being furious that the lawyer failed and passed that failure as default to what the opposition is trying to strongarm you to do as official advice.
Mastercard+visa: suck my cock and lick my over-ripe anus
Gaben: hey fuck you
Gaben: hires lawyer to try to not have to do that
Gaben: lawyer, I'm not doing that. What are my options?
Lawyer: huh, i am a potato and therefore have no real thought. i hereby legally suggest you suck their cock and lick their over-ripe anus. That'll be $3,000,000. Thanks.
Gaben: what the fuck do i pay you for if that's your opinion?
Gabe Newell cursing at a lawyer is exactly what I needed to read to start the day. What a wonderful human! 🥰
Tag as adult and move on.
Wasn't there an issue with credit card processors threatening them?
Valve could probably just start their own bank at this point.
Steam Bank? Steam Vault? Oh Steam Treasury! Steam Financial Alliance, i would immediately dump the parasites i have now.
I always figured they could just charge the card for a "gift card" for that amount... Which then immediately gets used for the "adult themed" game. Or at least allow the games to be sold on the store only with gift cards.
That does sound like a payment processor!
Financial censorship is a useful tool for people who want stuff censored.
It's their most effective tool at this point.
I'd say it's their most effective direct tool.
But if you count indirect tools, I think the propaganda out there is more effective. There are school districts where somebody on the school board encountered a bit of propaganda, and then before you know it, the school district is choosing on its own to censor their own libraries of things like LGBTQ+ materials.
No can do. Governments will ask them for age verification. Valve will instead swiftly remove anything with kinky dialogue and move on. True story by the way. Happened in Germany and no, it had nothing to do with protecting customers on Steam's side because the age verification process authorities asked for protects your identity. Valve simply didn't want to deal with it. To be fair it was a bullshit demand anyway but Sony didn't seem to have any problems implementing it so this is a Valve thing.
The article is literally just the title?
At least it wasn't a deceptive or clickbait title. Let's give it some credit
I don't know what you read, if it was actually truncated for you, but there is an entire article. It's just that the article's actual content is "Did you know Steam has porn? Here's a few porn-related Steam anecdotes." The part specifically mentioned in the title, though, is just like you said, it has no more information than is in the title.
I think they are saying that more information on that topic is in the linked non-free Bloomberg article.
Newell ripped into general counsel Karl Quackenbush when the lawyer advocated for more hands-on moderation on Steam. "What the f--- do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?" Newell reportedly interjected.
Presumably he pays the legal professional for their legal opinion. Doesn't mean he has to listen, but usually you should listen to your lawyers.
True but there's very liitle context here. It could have made more sense in the conversation if it was meant like "I pay you to fight for our position, not roll over to threats."
If a position is legally untenable it's a lawyer's job to say so, though. We really don't have enough context here.
Sometimes a lawyer has nothing to fight with. The law and constitution are sometimes clear and any judge will disbar a lawyer who tries to waste the courts time on this issue (this never happens because lawyers won't risk it when things are that obvious - and usually it isn't). If you don't like it pay a lobbiest not a lawyer.
The law and constitution are sometimes clear and any judge will disbar a lawyer who tries to waste the courts time on this issue
I've heard about this once in my lifetime, and it made the news because it was so usual...
They basically have to improve their filtration on pornography content. That’s my guess.