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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • These products are experimental and usually sold at or near cost not to make money but to prove to the market there is a need and a demand.

    Well, no… I think it’s more akin to the concept of “loss-leaders”. Get people in the door and while they’re there, they’ll buy a game or two. Which is where their real profits come from.

    In the end, it’s still just a business strategy intended to result in profits for Valve.

    However, that being said, the fact that they don’t have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits and keep that stock price up at (literally) all costs, allows them to operate the way they do.

    But don’t get it twisted, they are a for-profit corporation, and their ultimate goal is making money. They’re just not as shitty about it.

    The bar is REALLY fucking low these days.






  • The problem is, they’re not actually learning about anything real, they’re learning about one specific outcome of rent seeking in the modern world that they only noticed because of their profession. By giving this very narrow and specific concept a cute name, and making that shit popular or whatever has literally prevented young people from understanding these important economic concepts on any real level.

    So yeah I’m glad that a small portion of terminally online tech nerds have finally discovered a major form of rent seeking in their industry and identified it as a problem. But then they just stop there as if it exists in a vacuum. I just wish they’d read some actual books (or hell, if you don’t want to turn off the screen, audio books?) about the subject rather than just repeat some clever term over and over.

    That’s my problem. I guess it’s nitpicky. But I do believe there are people who will now never learn another single thing about economic concepts that affect their lives because they’re not even aware that this “newly discovered phenomenon” is just one small aspect of a much larger problem that is endemic to all of capitalism. They just think it’s this quirky thing that only affects tech.