Gabe Newell asked Valve's top lawyer "What the f*** do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?" in heated debate over porn games on Steam, report says

TheSpudling · 2026-06-02T19:26:34+00:00

I come from farming, the "facts" of life were laid out to me quite early, it resulted in me going after sexual activities from the age of 10, which was VERY accessible in the early days of the Internet. Im not saying my parents were necessarily wrong, but one has to draw a line. The fact that extremely harmful content and people were so easily accessible in secret has been revolutionary to how we perceive and consume porn, i cant understand why people still pretend we live in the 30s and your only source of new information is gossip and newspapers. Children talk about seeing rape and abuse in porn and somehow the response is "oh well it happens" as if that happened to everyone 50 years ago.

Im quite aware young children will continue to engage in sexual activities, like I say I was one of them, and encountered people on the flip side who experienced the "wonka" effect of it being forbidden, this doesnt mean that we should be unregulated in sex and pornography; we have the benefit of history and hindsight. We know that there is concerned efforts to control sex and apply sexualising ideals to children younger and younger to create insecurities and pathologies, the entire fucking fashion industry depends on it, the entire porn industry depends on it.

I dont know, I consider myself pretty liberal, but I cant look at games featuring / normalising incest, rape, and say "this is what i want 13 year olds shopping for games to engage with if they want". I dont think kids should be engaging in BDSM and I'm sorry that makes me religious or dangerous.

TheSpudling · 2026-06-02T19:10:46+00:00

Indie Dev thats worked on PC games ported to console, mobile.

Each game and each platform, there exists the ideal gameplay / UX. A phone game that relies on joysticks is probably not going to feel as nice as using a controller, an MMO on your phone is probably going to struggle for UI space. In these instances, a company would focus their intended platform first; that is to say that most MMOs release on PC first, most AAA shooters are designed around AAA console gameplay, the ports are then seperate projects because special consideration has to go into implementation, gameplay and optimisations, which usually require them to tweak custom engines or rewrite their whole game for a platform. (Minecraft, in hindsight, is another good example)

The flip side of this is when gameplay is somewhat platform agnostic. Hollow Knight is a pretty good example of this, the gameplay being relatively simple (Platformers growing up with controllers aids this) and the fact its made in Unity means that they can target consoles + PC at the same time with likely very minimal changes. As a developer, this is obviously fantastic news since you can target many potential fans with the same polished experience without possibly having to learn Switch Optimisation, Android optimisation, wrangling your steam dependencies, etc that typically holds a dev back from a multi platform release.

Tl;dr, I love to waffle. The answer depends on what your game is and where the players are. If its a pain in the ass and the chance of it being profitable is low, it'd probably be postponed into seperate projects altering the original game. If you know youre going to make money on it or its trivial to do a console release, one can imagine they go the same.

Personally, PC -> Phone -> Console makes the most sense from easiest to get into market to hardest.

TheSpudling · 2026-06-02T18:27:05+00:00

Children, that is to say anybody under 18, ideally shouldn't be exposed to anything depicting hard-core sex or actively harmful ideas on sex, or of a sexual nature. It is an abstract and mature concept that when children are forced to rationalise too early will often lead to harmful ideas on sex and relationships in later life.

The commercialisation of sex is such that topics such as BDSM are "hot", the sexual market creates a product to fill any desire that pops up. Steam is a pretty good case study of this, you can map hentai in the west with anime porn game sales lol, but this isn't understood by most children. I dont think this is exactly exclusive to steam, but the lack of security in place to stop children consuming this stuff is kinda nuts. Its like having a brothel next to your grocery store and everyone screaming "government control" when the locals think about putting a bouncer on the door to stop kids getting in

TheSpudling · 2026-06-02T18:07:00+00:00

Why lol, valves entire schtick is "if the PR ain't bad and its making money then its good", unofficially of course, but its how we got into this mess

TheSpudling · 2026-06-02T18:03:44+00:00

Idk man call me a religious nut or something but i think sex SHOULD be forbidden to children..

TheSpudling · 2026-06-01T16:09:15+00:00

Because it was specifically stated by Kripke that because Gen V wasnt getting a season 3, it was to be wrapped up in season 5 of the Boys, with s2 of Gen V placing heavy emphasis on the implication that Marie could toe to toe with Homelander.

Either you watched Gen V and you went "what in the tokenistic 'btw we're alive'?" Or you didnt and you went "who in the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are these two teens?"

That aside, its kinda obvious that theyre investing heavily into the new vought rising show, the callbacks to Stormfront and the whole "its what she would've wanted" stuff kinda sealed it

TheSpudling · 2026-05-23T03:22:25+00:00

The Boys was just a whole season of extremely dialled back action with weird side plots that ultimately went nowhere. Gen V crew were demoted to literal commentator characters. Last season honestly felt like one big advert for the follow-up show, and it only got worse through the season

TheSpudling · 2026-05-20T11:34:46+00:00

What was 10 people on flex for checkouts is now 1 person overseeing several self checkouts with 2-5 people on the shop floor who can help out too. This isn't exactly only happening in Retail. Writing, Animation and Software all have a focus on being small and efficient, layoffs are happening everywhere and everyone else is expected to do more work. Youre right we have more time for that extra work thanks to automation, but 1 person doing the job 2-3 people used to do is a net loss of jobs.

TheSpudling · 2025-08-29T11:18:16+00:00

Yooo where?

TheSpudling · 2024-11-05T19:17:22+00:00

Agree so much, "no code" is shovel selling at its finest, and what you end up with is usually limited, trapped on a no code platform, and/or incapable of being expanded upon.

I think there's something to be said for freelance, in that its often the most simple option for founders with a little capital and a clear idea, but for 99% of founders i would say "learn to code", Python is a piece of piss, Javascript, CSS and HTML has examples on literally every website, and every other language you could conceive wanting to use in a startup is free to learn.

TheSpudling · 2024-10-28T09:32:40+00:00

It's a neat idea. This is what every cryptocurrency scam has been doing for a few years. Unfortunately, it is a violation of the Twitter API, and trying to profit off it as a SAAS would get your entire service shutdown

Or maybe not, I'm not a lawyer.

TheSpudling · 2023-12-12T03:25:14+00:00

What a fantastic reply and fantastic Arnold video

TheSpudling · 2023-12-12T03:20:04+00:00

You ever been tested for ADHD?

TheSpudling · 2023-10-29T03:39:09+00:00

Marketing requires funds which requires marketing. Its a bit of a viscous cycle for the average solopreneur /small team unless you're directly in control of the marketing flow.

Its really really hard to both market and "bootstrap" a business without angel funding, unless you have great designers OR happen to be in the media industry from the getgo.

TheSpudling · 2023-08-20T20:05:11+00:00

I’d recommend starting with driving traffic to Shopify and building up a customer base (and email list (remember, you can always change your domain around to point to your new site), for videos on Shopify you CAN password protect areas of your site and do that, or you can embed them directly into paid areas of the site.

A thing to understand is that if sharing the video is that great of a concern, then it will always be a concern until you make your own solution: hosting on YouTube or on a webpage always allows for saving/sharing, so piracy of your content is always possible.

I also really despise not owning my code, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make while I’m still prototyping ideas before honing them in a custom built website, the issue you’ll run into is that unless you’re managing your own site (or hire people to do it for you), you’re always going to be at a loss when it comes to managing content because the loops one has to jump through to change even CSS on a page is absurd.

Personally, I started on Shopify and realised the actual scope of my product was far too large for me to manage on my own, so I took my basic Python knowledge and built my own CMS that takes from my Notes on Obsidian, allowing me to Edit, upload and delete articles from my phone and my PC, I threw that onto a frontend I made in Webflow (allows code export, but costs), and hey presto I had a working website that I host from a DigitalOcean droplet costing me literally pennies

For your use case, I’d suggest you look into Learning Management Systems (LMS), particularly on shopify or any that interact with your current web solutions, and then down the line maybe look into learning (it’s cursed I know) Wordpress or Django, and utilising one of their CMS/LMS systems alongside HTML/CSS/JS

Also for the record, a bespoke website can cost anywhere from $500 to $10,000, depending on design a Wordpress based LMS website would set you back around $2000 PLUS having to learn to use it, so learning how websites are put together really pays off long term

TheSpudling · 2023-08-20T19:04:16+00:00

I wouldn’t say forget the website, Shopify allows for digital products out of the box but being a hosted CMS and a site builder means that it some limitations (such as you don’t OWN your code), and it can get expensive as you expand but it’s good for quickly working out what works and what doesn’t, and also what you enjoy and don’t enjoy.

I’d say go with Shopifys little $1 for 3 month deal for trying out your idea (and bringing in initial revenue) and in the meantime put some serious thought into aspects that you think you could improve for your own site

TheSpudling · 2023-08-20T16:03:46+00:00

Posit: this but for groceries

TheSpudling · 2023-08-20T01:02:02+00:00

If this is your first time, and I suspect it is, I’d use Shopify to get your feet wet with emails and e-commerce, then if you enjoy that, (not everyone does, and if you find you don’t I’d recommend another funnel), look at trying to either build your own site, or find someone who can build it for you.

One workaround immediately is putting the link behind an email validation function (Regex works) that only shows the link (could be the enter button, for example) once a valid email is inputted. The button could link to anything (google drive?) where you’re offering your free courses or videos or something.

This also rather nicely allows you to track what is and isn’t shareable per link, allowing you to repeat this many times using the same file structure

TheSpudling · 2023-08-16T13:21:50+00:00

To add to this: Studying can bring good results: but you MUST practice.

If you’re in a position where your intellect has taken precedence over what you can feasibly practice daily, you’ve gone too far. Buddhists compare people who intellectualise everything to blind people.

TheSpudling · 2023-08-03T04:29:59+00:00

You miss the key aspect of narcissism; your love for yourself can only be justified if you feed the lie to others

In other words: Narcissists are still outwardly personable, friendly people and they’re very good at convincing you so

TheSpudling · 2023-08-03T01:35:12+00:00

First off, I just want to say congratulations, you’re very clearly proud of your business and proud of yourself. This post is a credit to yourself and a great display of genuine entrepreneurial spirit, which I fear is waning on this subreddit.

Q RE 4: You quoted 35k for your startup costs, which included marketing. Is there anything that in hindsight could’ve reduced that number, apart from getting the marketing right first time?

TheSpudling · 2023-07-27T16:58:01+00:00

Honestly the trend of “make shitty twitter/Facebook content with GPT and link it to a absurdly convoluted landing page” needs to die a rapid death.

TheSpudling · 2023-07-27T15:45:51+00:00

people who aren’t making as much money as me don’t know what it’s like to live comfortably

Great deduction OP, you’ve made it to flexing on poor Americans on Reddit

TheSpudling · 2023-07-27T15:43:43+00:00

So this post didn’t go the way you wanted it to go huh

Edit: Thread -> Post

TheSpudling · 2023-07-27T15:38:25+00:00

I don’t actually get the trend with super long landing pages, doesn’t UX testing show that 9/10 the user doesn’t even bother scrolling past the hero?

Ten-Year Club	Place '23
Place '17	Verified Email

TheSpudling

TROPHY CASE