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Gabe Newell, founder of Bellevue’s Valve, buys $70.8M Florida mansion
(www.seattletimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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It's AI, babe.
AI is not the reason Gabe doesn't want to subsidize hardware as others do with their consoles. Buying mansions and yachts is.
Why would we want a subsidized Steam Machine?
Subsidization pretty much requires that the hardware be locked down and walled-gardened so the subsidy they put into it eventually pays off. The Steam Machine, currently, lets you install whatever OS you want and use it like a regular PC without locking you into the Steam ecosystem at all.
"Okay, so they should make a locked-down subsidized one and an unlocked full price one" someone might ask. That's extra development and support work they have to put into it, and it would only be a matter of time before someone jailbreaks the subsidized one to work like the unlocked one.
Plus, you can make any capable PC a "Steam Machine" since they also give away Steam OS. My DIY Steam Machine runs Bazzite, but I was close to putting SteamOS on it. The only thing that made me choose Bazzite was that pretty much all of the patches and special module to support this former AMD crypto-mining card were already baked into Bazzite.
For this to be true, you'd need to have some data that a significant portion of Steam Deck (to name the hardware that's out for years) users wipe SteamOS and not use it for Steam.
I don't have that information, but I almost bought a Deck to use in such a manner. Figured it would be easier to carry around than my laptop since I pretty much just move from a docking station in my office to the docking station in my den (my org is BYOD since pretty much everything is through Citrix). Ultimately decided to just buy a smaller laptop (yay X1 Carbon).
Honestly, it just sounds like you're mad at GabeN for having money.
Then don't make such a claim.
No, I'm not. Just pointing out that others are subsidizing hardware cost and that the money to do so would be there but it was decided to sell a "Beginner's Gaming PC... At an Enthusiast Price" as Giant Bomb described the SM in their review.
I don't mind if you want to throw Gabe in with the AI trash bubble