I don't think anyone is implying they did it for any other reason. Only a bunch of people jumping on to a seemingly good thing a company did to be a killjoy about it.
Yes, they're clearly doing this to help the Steam Deck and other projects. I'm sure that will make them money and I'm sure someone at the company will do something with that money that people object to. That's just the nature of living in anything beyond a barter economy with humans. I think most people (especially on HN) get that. We don't need 5 people to pop out and remind us of it every time a company does something.
Unless it's obvious that there's a clear malicious intent hidden in what the company did, a lot of times it just feels like "How dare these people feel some joy. Capitalism must make everyone feel bad all the time."
>Only a bunch of people jumping on to a seemingly good thing a company did to be a killjoy about it.
That's 100% the reaction here every time Microsoft launches something benefiting devs and consumers. Everything is scrutinized with skepticism. Why should other billion dollar tech companies get a pass? Or why the double standards?
How do you think Valve would be towards consumers if they were to become a monopoly in the PC gaming sales space? Not knocking them, I'm just saying it's good to be paranoid when billion dollar tech companies are being too generous and benevolent with consumers, and not get romantically attached to these corporations.
I'm not saying that Valve should be above complaint. I'm also annoyed when people show up in threads about WSL or VS Code or whatever else that Microsoft does just to be like "Stop liking this, Microsoft is evil". I'm just saying that "But they're a company so nothing they do can be good" is a generic response without anything interesting behind it. You can post it on every thread about every action done by every company and it will be true.
I'm not saying not to be paranoid, but unless the point is just "people can't enjoy things made by companies" maybe save the actual paranoia for cases where it's clear that the action is going to be a big downside. There's no call to action except "don't talk about this" or "why are you buying things from a corporation?"
So much of it just feels mean-spirited to me. That there's literally no possible thing any company could do that wouldn't be spun as "well this is just good PR to cover up X evil thing they're doing." And that's maybe true, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage them to do good things and recognize them when they do them. It feels like a perverse joy in stomping on other people's happiness, even if it's justified.
It's like showing up at someone's birthday and reminding them they're a year closer to death and debilitating old age diseases. It's true, but what does anyone gain by doing that. Are people on this forum A. unaware of corporate malfeasance or B. able to be persuaded from their current position on its dangers? I'd say that's almost never the case here.
> Why should other billion dollar tech companies get a pass? Or why the double standards?
The issue is that you aren't pointing to anything actually wrong with what they are doing, you are just vague saying "They are doing it for the money", and implying that there is some bad thing that is happening, without saying what the bad thing is.
If Valve is doing some bad, then say so. But just because they are a for-profit company, it does not mean that every good thing they do, has some hidden negative side-effect that is unnoticed.
Exactly. "It's all for the money" is a generally useless thing to point out. It's the table stakes of living in the modern world unless you want to join a commune somewhere. Most folks on here generally expect corporations to do things against our interest as consumers, and that's generally the state of things. That said, we would rather they do SOME positive things and not NO positive things.
I've got plenty of bad things to say about Valve, but that's for another thread, where the topic is a bad thing they're doing.
I seriously do not get why people think that companies do 'good' for any other reason than money.