Valve

The sections about IBM and AT&T in Professor Russel's book have made me think about some of the massive computer companies that exist in the US today. The two companies that immediately come to mind are Google and Valve. Both of these companies have a huge market share in their respective markets, and they both have an incredibly dedicated user base. The latter of the two ,Valve, is in an incredibly interesting position. They exist in a market where they have almost no competition, and they are universally loved. They are essentially a monopoly, but they have a benevolent CEO so no one seems to mind that they are aggregating a lot of power.

They however did not get to this position over night. Valve has had a very slow rise to power. In 1998 they released their first game, Half Life. It was incredibly well received, and it made them a respected name in game the gaming industry. Due to this success in 2004 they released a direct sequel to Half Life, Half Life 2. This game was also critically acclaimed. It won many awards and is widely considered one of the best video games of all time. When Half Life 2 launched Valve decided to bundle it with a piece of software called Steam. This software was required to run the game, and served as a digital storefront for Valve to sell other games. At the time of release all most all computer games were sold on physical media. To purchase a game one had to drive to store purchase the product and drive home to play it. It was the exact same situation as today's home consoles. Steam set out to change that. They offered digital downloads of games that would be permanently tied to ones account. These could then be downloaded and played on any computer the account owner held. When Steam was first released people absolutely hated it. They just wanted to play Half Life 2 without having to deal with a random download client. Despite this they ended up using Steam, because if you wanted to play Half Life you needed Steam, and no one hated Steam enough to stop them from playing Half Life 2.

As time went on things began to change. The Steam marketplace grew, and Valve started to sell games, from just about every other publisher. ed. People eventually realized that it was convenient for them to download all of their games from one overarching service. This cemented them as the primary digital distributor of computer games. Whenever someone goes to play a game today there is a good chance it is on Steam. It however is more than just convenience Valve then started to experiment with new pricing models for games. After games had been on sale for a while they started to hold sales where they cut the price of the game by 75% or even more. This was wildly successful for them, people started raving about how much they love steam because of how it enable them to purchase games for incredibly low prices. They did all of this while releasing a slew of their own excellent titles, which happen to be some of the most popular games on PC.

This has allowed them to shift internet culture in their favor. Everyone on the internet absolutely loves Valve. They hold them up as an example of what every company should be. Social media websites are full of people singing their praises. In some cases these people even allude to the companies CEO as a god. I understand their position, because Valve provides an excellent service. I use steam all of the time, and I love Valve's games. I however think this aggregation of power is incredibly dangerous. All of the games I own are just licenses from this company. If they decided to revoke my right to play these games I have no power to stop them. The entire pc gaming community is subject to this. If this company has any sort of policy change which makes them less benevolent we are all screwed.

Valve is also now expanding their power even further. They are trying to release a home console which you can use to play your games in the living room. They are also releasing their own linux based operating system which is aimed to take power away from Microsoft, and move pc gaming towards Linux. This move seems to be largely benevolent, because the entire OS is going to be open source, and it will be allowed to on any type of hardware. I still however think it is worthwhile to question their motives. They have everything to gain from grasping control away from Microsoft. This new OS is also going to be ushering in new types of content on to Steam. Valve is going to start selling movies, television shows, music, and software. This is concerning, because if they can become big players in other types of media distribution they are going to own a massive distribution empire. Which could work to stifle competition, and stagnate the industry.

As it currently stands Valve seems to be a force for good in the gaming industry. They have created a marketplace for everyone to sell their products, and they seem to genuinely care about their consumers. I just think the blind faith many people place in them is worrisome. If they ever have some sort of broad policy change content consumers and producers could be placed in a very bad position. People need to examine this more often be sure to question Valve's intentions to keep them in check.