
Microsoft is reportedly considering buying EA, PUBG Corp and Valve - artsandsci
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3025595/microsoft-considering-buying-valve-ea-and-pubg-corp
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JimmyAustin
EA - Potentially a decent acquisition. A good supply of great exclusives is
what the Xbone needs to fight off Sony.

Steam - Can't see a sale going through. Valve makes an absurd amount of money
doing relatively little. It's basically Gaben's personal playground. Valve
doesn't have the expertise to fix up the windows app store (which is an
ecosystem problem). Steam was bootstrapped by HL2, not with exclusive
partners. Valve has been doing some great work in VR (knuckles controllers,
etc) that could be useful for Microsofts VR offerings, but it seems they
basically give that away for free (or subsidised by all the games that use it
being sold on steam).

PUBG Corp - Complete waste of time. Player Unknown made a game that is
ridiculously fun, but is still buggy and poorly optimised. Unlike Minecraft
there isn't an educational/mod play either.

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nailer
> Steam was bootstrapped by HL2, not with exclusive partners.

A Steam-exclusive title nevertheless though.

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meesterdude
go ahead and buy EA, maybe they can fix some of it's problems. but leave valve
alone! jeeze. Isn't MS big enough? Valve is a pretty prominent figure in the
gaming community and have driven a lot towards gaming on linux. No way that
would have happened if Microsoft owned them.

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kitsunesoba
It’d be a shame if they turned Valve into a Windows/Xbox exclusive shop like
they did with Bungie back in the day.

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s2g
Why would Valve sell?

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sempron64
Good question. Isn't Valve the highest revenue-per-employee company in the
world? There's no reason to sell a money printing machine. Unless MS is
blackmailing them by threatening to lock down third party apps/app stores in
Windows, which would rob them of their business model.

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Spivak
I can't imagine the lock-down plan working. I would imagine that people are
far more local to Valve than MS. They would be the subject of an immediate AT
lawsuit and would receive perhaps the biggest backlash in gamer history.

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nailer
> I would imagine that people are far more loyal to Valve than MS.

I imagine people would go where the games are. If Valve Linux can only play,
say, 80% of games that Windows can, then they'd pick Windows.

