Valve's "hands-off" approach extends far beyond CS:GO gambling. They have the same willful negligence toward moderating their own official group chats.

For weeks, the official Steam Deck group chat has been flooded with racist slurs and hate speech. I and many others reported the individuals responsible, yet weeks passed with zero action taken.

Frustrated, I opened a formal support ticket. I detailed the offenses, provided evidence, and explained why a basic filtering system or active moderation is necessary for their own official spaces. Valve's response? They closed my ticket without taking any action at all. They have confirmed, through inaction, that providing a non-toxic environment in their official communities is not a priority.

This experience has made me lose a significant amount of respect for Valve. I will now be actively purchasing my games elsewhere in protest.

Hmmm. Everyone takes Steam refunds for granted now. But until late 2015 they refused to do refunds for any kind of game purchase, even if the game was literally unplayable by buyers - until they were dragged through the courts by the ACCC and fined, with similar legal demands happening from the EU around the same time.

Dunno if I'd call that, "never abused their power to the disadvantage of customers".

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/australia-fines-valve-over-steam-refunds

If Valve would want to do that, they could have done so years ago. To the contrary, there are more stores where you can buy games online then ever before (Epic, Windows Store, GOG, Itch.io, Fanatical, Humble and so on, with steam keys and without), and i haven't heard of a single aqcuisition by Valve yet.

What competition lol

My apologies, this community is generally memey/jokey in tone, and I was going with that. /gen

I’m also firing off dumb comments at like 2 am where I am, lol. Please do not take my short soundbites (text bites?) seriously.

On a more serious note, one billion dollars is a legitimately unfathomable amount of wealth and, by extension, unilateral power. That’s a dangerous thing for any one person to hold, regardless of how kind their heart is since it means the use of that power is dependent on the whims of one person.

Corporations are also, by their nature, driven by a profit motive. A corporation can do non-evil, customer-friendly things but that can also change very quickly. It’s important to differentiate between beneficial behavior and altruism.

Also, I typically don’t expect people to read my unsolicited soapboxing rants under a green text meme lol.

Also also, I am quite appreciative of the benefits of Valve’s efforts. I just don’t assume they’re purely doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Nor do I expect/demand them to.