EA tries to buy Valve, Gabe laughs

[Wreckem]

Bill Gates is still the primary owner of the majority of stock for Microsoft and heads the board of directors. Steve Jobs also held a majority interest in stock when he ran Apple and he also was part of the board of directors. So your point is not factual when you take into context that your examples have individuals who owned the majority of stock for their publicly traded companies and thus were the biggest stock holders who had the most say in the companies they ran and partially owned.

Steve Jobs did NOT own a majority interest in Apple. He was the single(as in singular person, not institutional investors) largest shareholder, thanks to the 7.5million shares granted to him in 2001, but his holdings were a tiny fraction of Apple shares(less than 1%). You have to remember he sold off almost ALL of his original Apple holdings when he got fired as CEO the first time around(that is how he started NeXT and bought Pixar). Investment banks own have owned over 70%(with 5% being the largest owned by any investment bank) of Apple for quite a long time. If Apple wasn't successful Steve Jobs would have been out the door.

The majority of Steve Jobs wealth was from his 51% stake in Pixar. He learned his lesson from selling his original Apple shares. His 51% stake in Pixar netted him 137million shares of Disney when Pixar sold to Disney. Jobs was the largest singular shareholder of Disney when he died, but that again doesn't include institutional investors. Not bad considering he bought Pixar for $10million.

 

[slayernine]

I honestly don't get all the hate for EA these days. They have some of the best franchises in the business at the moment. MoH, BF, Crysis, and mass effect are all great.

I honestly can't think of anything good that Activision has currently. The blizzard stuff is decent, but not my cup of tea. EA's developers are doing more innovation than any of the other dev's out there, but that's just my opinion.

Valve is obviously the best, but they don't release games that frequently.

You mean they purchase "all the best franchises" and then milk them for all they are worth.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

It's actually extremely relieving to know that EA probably don't have the money to actually buy Valve out at this point, and that Gabe doesn't seem to have any interest in selling.

This is actually a fairly large worry of mine, that while I love the business practices of valve and their independent nature, it's always at risk of a business with lots of money coming along and simply making an offer they can't refuse. I'm pretty sure if that ever happens what comes next would be disastrous.

I honestly hope that valve continues to operate as a private entity for as long as possible and resists any acquisition attempts, in fact it would be great to see the opposite where Valve actually start reaching out to other businesses either acquiring them and turning them around.

 

[Ben90]

I think you are giving him too much altruistic credit.

If his company was valued at 3B, and EA offers 1 Billion, he is encouraged to say what he did. Why agree to sell your company for less than what the market thinks it is worth?

If EA offered more than 3B, I promise he would be thinking differently, unless he felt strongly that in the near term he could increase of the value considerably, or 3B was just the tip of the iceberg.

This would make sense if not for the entire reason he started Valve. It was never for money.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

someone start up a kickstarter to send Gabe out to that mystery place in the desert (seen on mythbusters) that allows you to fire a chain gun then have a sandvich ready for him. We all need to say thank you.

 

[Red Storm]

someone start up a kickstarter to send gabe out to that mystery place where the half life 3 launch button is.

ftfy. 😉

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Good one. Am I a heretic for losing interest in Half-life 1 & 2 after about 20 minutes of play?

 

[gladiatorua]

At this point Valve can release their games for free and still be profitable. In fact this tactic can bring profit, because it will make more people join Steam. But they aren't that desperate yet and such move will bring great amounts of hate from other devs. Why? Look at the multiplayer FPS market. What games are actually sell well on PC? CoD and BF. Everything else has to compete with TF2 which is free and has great community and dev support.
But if something were to threaten Steam, Linux is a long shot. Releasing a free game is not. Even an old title.
Steam is the greatest achievement of Valve, because it can support Valve's ambitions without dealing with the business side of making games.
For Valve to go down, it needs to do something REALLY stupid. And Steam has to die. And Steam will die VERY slowly.
So any talks about Valve selling are ridiculous at this point. For any amount of money.

 

[bigi]

True but mass effect 1 was developed when it was just Bioware, EA bought the company in october 2007, ME1 was released in november 2007. So EA had basically ah heck all to do with the first game.

Which proves the fact that ME1 is awesome, ME2 is meh, and ME3 - you know.

 

[paperfist]

I love privately held companies 🙂

Imagine if EA was...

 

[aigomorla]

so origin is getting its ass kicked by steam..
and EA wants to buy out the competition..

what else is new?

 

[smackababy]

someone start up a kickstarter to send Gabe out to that mystery place in the desert (seen on mythbusters) that allows you to fire a chain gun then have a sandvich ready for him. We all need to say thank you.

Maybe it got exploded when the Citadel blowns up. Alyx tried to save it, but packets was corrupts.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I don't know enough about EA due to avoiding them like the plague but, is there some sort of anti gaming conspiracy afoot? I mean does the Gollum in charge have a secret plan to destroy gaming or, at least, pc gaming?

As things stand now with a great many if not most games, at least large titles, suffering from consolization in one way or another, isn't PC gaming already "destroyed"?

 

[SantaAna12]

I am for separation of EA and Valve, continued competition, and creative exciting new games. And uh Gabe....get a fucking move on amigo....HL3 sometime in the distant future?
And I hope you got your hand in the Blackmesa redo......no half-measures for Half-life or I am going to burn you in effigy in a drunken rage.
Yours in gaming Gabe,
SantaAna12.

 

[IlllI]

someone refresh my memory. how many game companies did EA buy then run into the ground?

 

[natto fire]

someone refresh my memory. how many game companies did EA buy then run into the ground?

That depends on your definition of running into the ground, but they have acquired 38 companies since 1987. Also you probably can't use the verb "did" as I am sure they are not done running companies into the ground yet.

 

[rasczak]

I am a consumer. I never asked EA to destroy Command and Conquer, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc...

You may not have, but others who played the game did. What many people fail to realize is as was said above, the gaming industry is consumer driven. Most of the crap you see are the result of changes requested by said community, or trends from other genres.

 

[Red Storm]

You may not have, but others who played the game did. What many people fail to realize is as was said above, the gaming industry is consumer driven. Most of the crap you see are the result of changes requested by said community, or trends from other genres.

More like the companies cuttings costs and looking for every exploitable chance to nickel and dime consumers, who don't care enough to do anything about it because in the end they're just video games.

 

[BergeLSU]

i really doubt that HL3 is going to cause a have massive disappointment like D3 or DNF...even with HL3 beeing the most hyped game ever

valve games have a insane quality, just look at dota 2... the game already supports e-sports better than SC2, yet it is still in beta state

actually dota 2 is a just a good example...valve had everything to lose there, dota comunity is just full of haters, yet they got a very big respect by the comunity

Dota 2 is one of gaming's best kept secrets. It is incredibly designed top to bottom.

However, it is being designed in Valve time, so when it releases, it be a 2 year old game that no one wants to play. Also, the people that play seem to be awful human beings.

 

[JamesV]

My biggest issue with EA is their attitude towards online services.

Shutting down servers for a very popular, and only 2 year old game (FIFA 10 for example), so people will buy FIFA 12 is just shady.

Don't think for a minute that games like the original Borderlands wouldn't lose it's servers to sell more Borderlands 2 copies; and I wouldn't put it past them to eventually kill all Battlefield franchise online connectivity from 1942 through BC2 to get everyone buying BF every other year.

 

[Martimus]

My biggest issue with EA is their attitude towards online services.

Shutting down servers for a very popular, and only 2 year old game (FIFA 10 for example), so people will buy FIFA 12 is just shady.

Don't think for a minute that games like the original Borderlands wouldn't lose it's servers to sell more Borderlands 2 copies; and I wouldn't put it past them to eventually kill all Battlefield franchise online connectivity from 1942 through BC2 to get everyone buying BF every other year.

EA did shut down the authentication server for DA:O for 2 weeks when they released DA2. That angered me so much that I have avoided all EA products since.

 

[smackababy]

More like the companies cuttings costs and looking for every exploitable chance to nickel and dime consumers, who don't care enough to do anything about it because in the end they're just video games.

Except that if CoD and the likes were such "bad" games, they wouldn't sell as well as they do. The fact that the majority of gamers have no clue what AD&D rules are and don't give two shits about character development shows that the majority of gamers view games differently now. I imagine early video games, especially RPGs, were the evolution of books. Characters and story mattered to the player. Games today are more like the evolution of sports. It is more about what is happening right now and the motivations of everyone doesn't matter. Why do the Cowboys hate the Eagles? Who cares? Smash Michael Vick into the ground 100 times already!

 

[sash1]

Dota 2 is one of gaming's best kept secrets. It is incredibly designed top to bottom.

However, it is being designed in Valve time, so when it releases, it be a 2 year old game that no one wants to play. Also, the people that play seem to be awful human beings.

that's pretty standard for the MOBA scene, doesn't matter which game

 

[BladeVenom]

More like the companies cuttings costs and looking for every exploitable chance to nickel and dime consumers, who don't care enough to do anything about it because in the end they're just video games.

I agree with you. The majority didn't ask for the changes that made a game worse. They were done because of executives who only care about next quarter's profits and don't give a damn about gaming.

 

[Red Hawk]

EA did shut down the authentication server for DA:O for 2 weeks when they released DA2. That angered me so much that I have avoided all EA products since.

I don't think that was a purposeful shutdown though, just one big SNAFU.