It’s a convenient storefront and discovery system (too an extent). Some games I play rely on its backend services. It’s never screwed me over or antagonized me. They also have really good Linux support without having to think to hard about it. They’ve done a huge amount of work on that front that would still even fit me even if I stoped using steam and I do legitimately appreciate that. I kind of get the feeling that the hardware was an excuse to do Linux support, like it seems to me that people there want Linux to be a viable gaming platform even if the business case is pretty niche.

I don’t like that I don’t own the games, I don’t like the DRM, but there isn’t really an alternative on that front, except for GOG but they generally don’t have the games I’m interested in, which are normally smaller niche titles in categories that GOG isn’t focused on. The fact that they have a majority market share makes me nervous about them getting sold or going public and their practices changing. But them being the biggest kid on the block seems like a net positive given that the people liable to take their place are so hostile to consumers. Like the biggest critics of valve from within the industry (Tim Sweeney for instance) seem like they’re just angry that don’t get to be steam but more consumer hostile.

I’m not going to defend everything they’ve done, I’m not going to say they’re without sin, but the biggest issues with them are universal to the entire industry.

He’s reporting on it and trying to help the victim get restitution.

A lot of that cloud compute revenue growth comes from open AI and anthropic paying Microsoft to use their GPU compute to run their models, which is to say, that if you think “anthropic bankrupting people overnight with token costs” is unsustainable, then a lot of Microsoft’s cloud compute growth isn’t sustainable ether. Especially given that a significant amount of the associated “revenue” growth is just them counting redeemed credits as revenue. Credits that they traded to OpenAI in exchange for access to the IP and models that they built copilot on. So if openAI can’t run a sustainable business renting out Microsoft’s GPU compute to run openAI’s models, what makes Bill think Microsoft will be able to do so by running those same models them selves with that same GPU compute?

If we ignore that shell game of “revenue growth” then the rest of their increase in profits comes from incredibly short term and short sighted strategies, such as huge layoffs across multiple divisions and jacking up prices for 365 subscriptions. In fact they’re probably over valued right now given that their current valuation is based on the assumption that they will continue to grow at the rates they have in the past. Price(of their shares) to earnings(earnings per share) across the whole market are at record highs. A price to earnings of 21 to 1 would be exceptionally high 30 years ago. The fact that the average P/E of the companies on the S&P500 is 31 to 1 doesn’t mean Microsoft is undervalued, it means that most companies are massively over valued. Like, you need to be expecting insane growth over the next 10 years to justify P/E’s like that.