Almost certainly fake, but what a horrible thought.
Microsoft wanted to buy Nintendo and Valve before. It was in the leaked documents. And I’m sure Microsoft makes suggestions all the time, we just don’t hear about it usually. We mostly hear about deals that happen.
Besides that, I can’t imagine that a competitor could buy a competitor. That would be illegal in most cuntries. Unlike Activision, which was not a competitor to Microsoft.
Yeah, I think all indications have been that Microsoft is getting out of the video game business. Or, if they were planning on staying in, why would they close a bunch of studios, including successful ones like Hi-Fi Rush’s Tango games.
As long as valve say no then they can offer all they like. That is the advantage of not being a publicly traded company!
$16B for Valve ? Clown offer 🤡
That… weirdly… seems like a lowball given the recent success of the steam deck
Looking at the sales estimates, the numbers appear pretty modest compared to the other gaming devices. They’re probably under 5m units sold since early 2022.
EA is worth several times that and they don’t have the #1 PC games platform or any hardware
Valve should at least be in the same ballpark
according to unverifiable rumours. … The leak comes from an unknown and unreliable source in the gaming industry.
But continues to write an entire article about it. I wouldn’t be shocked if the rumor was set by the person who writes the article itself. Edit: Which itself is only a few paragraphs, but filled with ads, links and images on the entire page.
I’ts not about integrity, it’s about clicks. It doesn’t matter if you read the headline, only if you clicked.
I’m a little surprised it’s that low. I mean, considering their cloud and hardware divisions they’d be getting, shouldn’t Valve pay a bit more than $16m to buy Microsoft?
In 2022, Blizzard was valued at $60B and had a gross profit of $5.4B. Valve almost certainly had a gross profit more than that (Microsoft estimated $6.5B in 2021). $16B would be such a laughably low figure for the company, especially since Microsoft bought Blizzard at $70B (market cap of $74B around the same time). Not to mention how low-risk Valve’s profit is.
If this happens I’m inciting riots.
The “source” otherwise does nothing but give away cosmetic in-game items if you subscribe and tag a friend on X.
…they can’t even handle everything with Activision Blizzard. Jesus christ.
So they can burn it to the ground?
Tinfoil Hat Time:
Linux Gaming, while increasingly viable, isn’t currently a threat to MS. There are enough reasons people will stick with Windows. But Valve are doing a good job of showing that it’s possible, that Microsoft’s hold on PC gaming isn’t absolute and that an increasing number of games are playable on Linux too (with the right tools). Wine and co. have been around for a while, but they never enjoyed the spotlight of a major videogame platform investing time and manpower into developing a dedicated gaming compatibility engine.
I don’t think MS would intentionally run it into the ground. They’d probably try to squeeze it for money, which might end up doing so anyway.
I also don’t think they’re really worried about Linux gaming. But I also doubt they’d leave Proton untouched entirely. Whether they’d kneecap it, whether they’d enshittify it, whether they’d work on interfacing it with their proprietary stuff in an attempt to put it ahead of any competition and tip potential Linux Gaming developments in favour of using their engine to more easily target both platforms at once, I doubt they could resist doing something to squeeze money from it.
Maybe the very idea that they’re challenging Microsoft’s supremacy is unpleasant to them. Maybe their analytics show enough of a trend to concern them. Maybe they just want to make sure they have a piece of the pie if it ever becomes worth something.
Or maybe the whole thing is baseless bullshit made up for attention and site traffic.
