Comment on When the Steam Deck was still just an idea, Valve says some staff were like, "I just want that for me" and "the point wasn't even to make a product out of it"

• Phen@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Some projects will end up being a waste of resources, but others end up printing a ton of money.

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Sure, but anything that “The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it” is 100% definitely a waste of resources. So either they’re intentionally throwing money in the garbage or the intent absolutely was to make a product out of it…

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    • NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Found the Buisness major

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      • SoJB@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        That user legitimately spends all day posting pedantic BS lmao, this is hilarious.

        Literally the archetype of le Reddit neckbeard to a tee

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    • john117@lemmy.jmsquared.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      this is how I know you’ve never created anything, lol. lots of times, you fail at making something, but you learn from those failures.

      who knows what other projects they threw money at and failed, the only one I can think of rn were the steam machines.

      I’m sure they learned from those mistakes, tried again, and here we are with the steam deck

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      • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        this is how I know you’ve never created anything

        So I suppose you spend millions funding engineers to create products as personal toys with no intention of selling any of them?

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    • Jrockwar@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It’s not a waste of resources if you learn something. Think of this as research rather than product development. You can try many things (from VR, to miniaturised computers, to cloud gaming, controllers with wonky form factors…) to see what results in a good experience. You don’t need to get anywhere near a full fledged product to understand those things, so the waste of resources isn’t massive anyway.

      I’d bet at the moment people decided “this is useful, I even want this for me, so let’s turn it into a product” the steam deck looked more like a screen, a gamepad and a raspberry pi all taped together or jammed into a 3d printed prototype chassis.

      If people have spare capacity to work on these projects, the material cost at such a point can be under <5k which is peanuts for a company like Valve.

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    • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Do you really, truly believe that everything that’s never been done before is a 100% sure bet to invest time and money into?

      Do you really have no idea of how complex, untested, but potentially viable ideas come to fruition, come to be found out as coherent and workable vs incoherent and non workable?

      … You are aware that matchsticks were essentially invented by the scattershot approach of a man who just had the time, funding, and materials to just basically randomly test a whole bunch of chemical compounds, and he just happened to accidentally drag a stick covered in concoction #38 or whatever against a hearth, whereupon it burst into flame?

      … Do you think the Wright Brothers, or any other early experiments of developing flying machines… or all those involved in early rocketry… do you think all of those people were 100% sure that each of their designs would work?

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      • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        do you think all of those people were 100% sure that each of their designs would work?

        I’m sure 0% of them did but 100% of them were researching to find products to sell.

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    • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Good thing you weren’t working at steam, huh.

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      • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Is there a point you’d like to make or did you just come to here lob personal attacks?

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• ggppjj@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.

  They have infinite money forever.

  Gabe Newell runs a biotech company as well.

  A couple million on a blue-sky product development pipeline is an incidental cost for the most part.

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.

    You say this as if all the money goes into to pockets of the devs and engineers to fuck off an do whatever they want. I ask again how this explains why Valve would throw money away.

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    • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      … What?

      It… it goes into the company.

      theverge.com/…/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-p…

      They run an absurdly profitable business.

      They make approximately $15 million in profit per each of the roughly 360 employees.

      That’s after wages.

      Nobody knows exactly what an average Valve salary is (they’re a private company, they have no obligation to disclose that), but they almost certainly just continue to accumulate a stupendous amount of money, which they can then throw at any ideas that require all kinds of potential material or licensing or technical costs.

      The employees are not making $15 million dollars a year. Probably more like 1/10 to 1/100 of that.

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      • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        It… it goes into the company.

        How does fucking around researching and developing products for their team members benefit the company?

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    • ggppjj@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I don’t know how you read that from what I said, or how I could have “said this as if” anything. It’s a fact that stands alone.

      Do you think that devs and engineers pay for prototypes themselves?

      Whatever bud, enjoy being convinced you’re right so hard that you get mad at other people I guess. I guess the end result of the steam machine project or the steam controller or the index or the vive or the steam deck and multiple people at Valve describing that’s how it works are just not real because how they came to exist at all don’t make sense to you.

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      • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I don’t know how you read that from what I said

        I didn’t. I read that from the OP.

        Do you think that devs and engineers pay for prototypes themselves?

        If it’s intended for no reason other than personal consumption? Abso-fucking-lutely? Does your company pay you to fuck around with your hobbies at home?

        Whatever bud, enjoy being convinced you’re right so hard that you get mad at other people I guess.

        Please point out what I said that led you to believe I was “mad” at anyone. Other than the other people lobbing personal insults at me.

        I guess the end result of… the steam deck and multiple people at Valve describing that’s how it works are just not real because how they came to exist at all don’t make sense to you.

        What they did is real. What they said is not.

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• sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  When you have a stable business with a guaranteed source of huge amounts of revenue, that all you have to do is basically maintain at a very low cost…

  Most other revenue can be thrown at whatever, in how ever long it takes to do well and properly timeframe.

  Actual innovation requires a series of creative ideas that are explored thoroughly, without overwhelming pressure or influence on decision making, or timetables.

  Valve’s position allows them to do this.

  Lots of those things go no where, but a good number of them work out, and basically revolutionize the industry, more than making up for the projects that do not work out.

  As a certain wise old man once said:

  “These things, they take time.”

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