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"

• ggppjj@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  The steam deck is making them money, that was a product developed by fucking around.

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Because making money was always the intention. That’s my point.

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    • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It seems that you can only think of value in terms of making a profit. But there is also great value in making something to see what is possible, regardless of profit. If you can’t see that, you’ll never make something innovative.

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      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        This conversation is enlightening to me. See I just always assumed business people understood how engineering works, but were being obtuse to keep us on track or were just looking at the financial spreadsheets. But no it seems some people genuinely don’t understand that sometimes you spend a lot of time on things whether or not it goes anywhere because if you don’t you don’t develop any products or solutions.

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      • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        This person is an idiot and can only think of one possibility. They are ignoring the fact that fucking around on the job can have implications like increasing skills. I made the mistake of replying to this person with an anecdote of mine which I am sure will be deconstructed by them like they were there. Point is, boss allowed us to goof off with pet programming projects and that resulted in me experimenting with code I wouldn’t have had the chance otherwise and making a breakthrough, which I then realized how to implement that. So I wasn’t fucking around to make money, but the fucking around gave me the knowledge and skills to them apply that indirectly. But hey this person is determined to infect the thread with their single minded theory that doesn’t make a shit to the actual conversation.

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      • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        It seems that you can only think of value in terms of making a profit.

        Wrong. I do all kinds of things with no intention of monetary profit. Those things do not involve my business.

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