Valve, a very lean, very profitable tech company estimated to make $50 million per employee, announced this week that it was raising Steam Deck prices by hundreds of dollars. Some of the most affordable, bang-for-your-buck PC gaming devices immediately became luxury goods. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who runs a competitor to Valve’s Steam storefront, figured this would be a good opportunity to take a shot at rival CEO Gabe Newell.
“Everyone’s being too harsh here,” Sweeney posted on Thursday afternoon. “There has been a significant rise in the cost of components that Steam customer spending ultimately funds, and economic trends have created severe disruptions in the component parts supply chain for megayachts.”
This was the head of the Forntite maker getting a dig in about Newell’s conspicuous consumption. In particular, his penchant for yachts. Very big, very expensive yachts. The biggest, most expensive of those is called the Leviathan. The $500 million boat has been getting glowing blowouts in Forbes and Fortune over the past year promoting all of its lavish amenities. Those include a submarine garage, basketball court, and, naturally, a PC gaming café.
It’s rue that the AI-fueled RAM shortage has put outsized pressure on Valve to raise hardware prices because it can’t leverage the same economies of scale and supply chain pricing power that its PC and console gaming competitors have access to. It’s also true that showing off a $500 million yacht while raising prices is a bad, some might even say obscene, look.
But those in glass Fortnite houses probably shouldn’t cast stones. People immediately responded to Sweeney’s uncharacteristic jab at the lives of the rich and famous by pointing out that just months ago he fired 1,000 employees. “Hey Tim when was the last time Valve laid off their employees?” one person on X wrote. “Oh yeah never?”
Roughly half of those laid off staff, which Sweeney previously said any company besides Epic Games would be lucky to have, have been assembled on an ex-Epic Awesome People List to help game industry recruiters reach out. PC Gamer spoke to a few of them about what it was like having the rug pulled out from under them at one of the seemingly most successful companies in modern gaming history.
“The layoff was very sudden and we only had a slight hint that the company revenue wasn’t doing well,” one anonymous employee said. Epic Games still hasn’t confirmed exactly what the financial issues it was facing were, and cited costs beyond declines in Fortnite engagement. Those included a major crusade against big tech platforms like Apple and Google that has only recent begun paying dividends.
I guess the moral of this story is that CEOs are not your friends, though it is occasionally cathartic to watch them fight each other.