Comment by ThrowawayR2
15 hours ago
The Windows Store was introduced in 2012, 14 years ago, and promptly went nowhere; Gabe Newell is ex-Microsoft himself and undoubtedly had a good understanding of how dim the prospects and how poor the execution was for it. Yet he persisted in pursuing the Steam Machine and Proton long after it was clear that the Windows Store was a flop.
If you want philanthropy (or perhaps not), Gabe Newell has $1 billion worth of yachts and research ships.
So I dunno anything about Gaben’s actual motives, but I will say, I personally would not be assuaged just because the store flopped. The underlying problem is that Valve sells games, and games needed Windows, and that’s exactly the sort of dependent relationship that Microsoft (and others) use to extract value and dominate new markets. It makes sense to me that Valve looked at how hard it would be to break out of that, and decided that it would remain diligent regardless of how credible the immediate threat was.