Steam should just have immediately invented its own PayPal, its own payment processing system, that works everywhere, near instantaneously.
I mean… I do think this is something they could actually do, but its kind of nuts to just frame this as if they could have just flipped a switch and such a system would exist, blamo.
No, this would be a huge undertaking, which would, as many other Valve projects and concepts, take time.
You can’t just instantly implement what you seem to think you can. None this works that way, at all.
Hence the “past two decades” part of my comment. Sure it would take time, but looking at valves investment into linux gaming, tbey are no stranger to long term gambles. The status quo being the status quo doesnt absolve people from things. If it did, we could never improve anything in the world.
“My local grocer stopped selling meat for some reason, but really its my fault for not having a 100 acre cattle farm already in the works, since I’ve been eating meat my entire life”
Why would valve have any reason to need their own payment processing? thats why these services exist, to use them and their infrastructure instead of having to make your own. That’s the foundation of an economy your are arguing against here.
I don’t think anyone really thought that what is happening right now was a likely thing that would happen, going back 20 years.
Payment processors had never had a problem with this before, and then blam, they become political/cultural activists in a huge way, an unprecedented way.
Its… dubious to frame this as if this foundational business infrastructure that had never before shown any cracks or signs of wear… should just have been reasonably expected to suddenly shatter into a thousand pieces at some point.
Sure, yes, they could have been more forward looking, but you’re already talking about one of the most innovative and forward looking companies in gaming.
Payment processors had never had a problem with this before
Thats what i dont understand, because yes of course they have. Payment processors and banks cutting off individuals or groups for political reasons is like the oldest fucking trick in the book. The payment system oligopoly has been a ticking time bomb in the eyes of any person actually paying attention. Centralized global infrastructure will always fail, its just a question of when.
This time it was caused by some random weird anti game group, but what do you think will happen to all the US based payment systems once Trump fully manifests his hold over them?
In general, yes, payment processors have in the past essentially ‘debanked’ specific people or businesses.
To the best of my knowledge, this has never before occured to … something on the scale of the worlds largest digital marketplace for a particular kind of product.
I do not disagree.with you that the current status of things is bullshit, that there have been instances of usually very small businesses getting thrown off…
But the outright scale of dictating Steam around is … almost as insane as dictating Walmart around.
Up untill this point, yeah, I am again not aware of any prior ‘enforcement action’ of this magnitude, and… the way corporate America works is that if you are bringing enough money to the table, you get some leeway on this kind of thing, you handle it behind closed doors, in a fairly involved way.
The way MC, Visa, PayPal have gone about this represents a huge breach of those unspoken norms, a massive, flagrant, naked power grab.
What I am trying to say is not that this system has ever been fine, flawless, or good… what I am trying to say is that this is akin to engaging the nuclear option in a MAD scenario, its a thing that would be entirely reasonable for someone like Valve to … not assume they’d need to worry about this…
… precisely because the alternative actually is for Valve to develop basically its own PayPal, which would be a fairly large loss of business for other, former partnered payment processors.
Apparently the calculus of the situation has changed, in their minds, such that the payprocs seem to no longer fear Valve playing its nuclear option as a response to their own, seem to no longer value Steam as a marketplace.
Either that, or they have massively miscalculated.
…
So, to bring this back around to my original critique:
It is thus still pretty disingenuous to frame this all as if Valve should just reasonably expected these actions from payprocs this whole time, that they could just flip a switch and debut ValvePay.
A whole lot of corporate relationships follow very similar rules as do nationstates… a whole lot of things are based on an expectation of reasonable negotiations and relations, built up trust, and thus one party suddenly abandoning all of that for… what appear to be very confused and counter productive reasons…
No, thats not a reasonable thing to expect to happen.
What you are saying is basically:
Steam should just have immediately invented its own PayPal, its own payment processing system, that works everywhere, near instantaneously.
I mean… I do think this is something they could actually do, but its kind of nuts to just frame this as if they could have just flipped a switch and such a system would exist, blamo.
No, this would be a huge undertaking, which would, as many other Valve projects and concepts, take time.
You can’t just instantly implement what you seem to think you can. None this works that way, at all.
Hence the “past two decades” part of my comment. Sure it would take time, but looking at valves investment into linux gaming, tbey are no stranger to long term gambles. The status quo being the status quo doesnt absolve people from things. If it did, we could never improve anything in the world.
“My local grocer stopped selling meat for some reason, but really its my fault for not having a 100 acre cattle farm already in the works, since I’ve been eating meat my entire life”
Why would valve have any reason to need their own payment processing? thats why these services exist, to use them and their infrastructure instead of having to make your own. That’s the foundation of an economy your are arguing against here.
Lemme put it this way.
Valve did not prepare for unforseen consequences.
I don’t think anyone really thought that what is happening right now was a likely thing that would happen, going back 20 years.
Payment processors had never had a problem with this before, and then blam, they become political/cultural activists in a huge way, an unprecedented way.
Its… dubious to frame this as if this foundational business infrastructure that had never before shown any cracks or signs of wear… should just have been reasonably expected to suddenly shatter into a thousand pieces at some point.
Sure, yes, they could have been more forward looking, but you’re already talking about one of the most innovative and forward looking companies in gaming.
Thats what i dont understand, because yes of course they have. Payment processors and banks cutting off individuals or groups for political reasons is like the oldest fucking trick in the book. The payment system oligopoly has been a ticking time bomb in the eyes of any person actually paying attention. Centralized global infrastructure will always fail, its just a question of when.
This time it was caused by some random weird anti game group, but what do you think will happen to all the US based payment systems once Trump fully manifests his hold over them?
In general, yes, payment processors have in the past essentially ‘debanked’ specific people or businesses.
To the best of my knowledge, this has never before occured to … something on the scale of the worlds largest digital marketplace for a particular kind of product.
I do not disagree.with you that the current status of things is bullshit, that there have been instances of usually very small businesses getting thrown off…
But the outright scale of dictating Steam around is … almost as insane as dictating Walmart around.
Up untill this point, yeah, I am again not aware of any prior ‘enforcement action’ of this magnitude, and… the way corporate America works is that if you are bringing enough money to the table, you get some leeway on this kind of thing, you handle it behind closed doors, in a fairly involved way.
The way MC, Visa, PayPal have gone about this represents a huge breach of those unspoken norms, a massive, flagrant, naked power grab.
What I am trying to say is not that this system has ever been fine, flawless, or good… what I am trying to say is that this is akin to engaging the nuclear option in a MAD scenario, its a thing that would be entirely reasonable for someone like Valve to … not assume they’d need to worry about this…
… precisely because the alternative actually is for Valve to develop basically its own PayPal, which would be a fairly large loss of business for other, former partnered payment processors.
Apparently the calculus of the situation has changed, in their minds, such that the payprocs seem to no longer fear Valve playing its nuclear option as a response to their own, seem to no longer value Steam as a marketplace.
Either that, or they have massively miscalculated.
…
So, to bring this back around to my original critique:
It is thus still pretty disingenuous to frame this all as if Valve should just reasonably expected these actions from payprocs this whole time, that they could just flip a switch and debut ValvePay.
A whole lot of corporate relationships follow very similar rules as do nationstates… a whole lot of things are based on an expectation of reasonable negotiations and relations, built up trust, and thus one party suddenly abandoning all of that for… what appear to be very confused and counter productive reasons…
No, thats not a reasonable thing to expect to happen.