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The new owner of GOG discusses taking on Steam, the devil of DRM, and following in Nightdive's footsteps
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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They absolutely do care about linux... sure, they are profit motivated. But they saw microsoft building their own store, and they saw a future where MS builds a gated garden, and linux was a way for them to preserve their existence.
Newell talked openly about this entire topic at LinuxCon years ago. It’s been 12 years and they’ve been true to their word.
The amount they’ve contributed upstream is insane, and the money they’ve provided to Linux-ecosystem contractors is also insane.
They’re profit motivated, 100%, but at least they’ve done so while being a good citizen in the FOSS movement (bar the Steam Client itself). SUSE, Canonical etc are all for-profit orgs that help push FOSS forward.
Profitability and Free and Open Source Software aren’t mutually exclusive.
I can't understand the amount of energy people spend defending Valve.
I get it, you like video games (so do I) and steam is a convenient platform for transactions.
But, in the end it's just another dirty capitalist business that only cares about one thing: MAKING MONEY. They literally invented gambling for kids, got watch the coffeezila video about it and they take 30% of any game sold while having sub 300 employees. It's pretty much the most profitable business per employee in the US.
They do not care about video games, about linux, about the fact that their home country is turning into a fascist state, and most of all, they don't give a fuck about all the gamers that keeps posting about how great they are. They would change they business model to sell bbq sauce tomorrow if the believe they could make more money out of it. And each time someone points that out, even here, it gets downvoted lol.
Valve uses my money to make the Linux FOSS stack better for everyone, including me. GOG doesn't.
Buying on Steam instead of GOG serves my personal interests.
I don't think the point was supposed to be that Valve is good.
I think it was supposed to be that it is possible for a profit-motivated company to do something that legitimately benefits the rest of us even though the motivation was their profit goals.
Maybe more of the credit for that should go to the original creators of the FOSS licenses than to Gabe Newell, but it's still nice that it happened either way.
Linux is where it is because companies that care about making money contribute money to make it better. The same goes for projects like Blender. Linux became immensely more usable for the average user because Valve wanted to ensure that they'll be able to continue making absurd amounts of money in the future regardless of what Microsoft decides to do. The licensing of open source software ensures us that we don't even have to trust them to not pivot to BBQ sauce tomorrow, because the work they've already done will continue to serve us.
I personally have no problem with a profit motive on its face, and the above is why. If you want an easy underhand toss for something to criticize Valve for, it's that their motive for profit encourages them to continue to exploit a loophole in our gambling laws to create a generation of underage addicts. They can simultaneously be the company responsible for breaking down walled gardens and creating a better personal computing tomorrow; and also the company profiting off of child gambling addiction that governments are too slow or too unwilling to do anything about.
Stating facts is not defending. The fact is, if valve didn't invest into the linux ecosystem, gamers would be force to suck MS's dick. Which is far arguable amoung the worst corporation in world. I dont think there has been any cases where valve resorted to anti-competition practices.
Yes, their fees are high. But thats the cost to be publish on their store. They know you aint going anywhere else because they dominate the market. And they didnt get there by manhandling the competition, just the first to provide a product people want, and did it so long that they became ubiquitous, and no other storefront can compete. Gog has the most promise, but they havent even bother with a linux client...
So how about you get off your ass and make a storefront to compete with them?
There has actually been a case going around about Valve forcing price parity despite their official ToS not saying so, with emails from employees to devs as evidence.
I'll admit I didn't read into it though, at most watched a (seemingly pro-Epic) video on it. None of the devs I follow ever complained, but I also can't think of any offering lower prices on other stores (besides Steam key vendors)
One email from 10+ years ago, and from it's wording the author likely misspoke
They're doing a shitty job at enforcement if your claim is true.