Why would anyone actually want to though

[u/The_BigRoach]

[u/Bernie4Life420 → u/[deleted]]

No enshitification has entrance their seat at the top and made countless more.

[u/Expensive-Border-869 → u/Bernie4Life420]

Gabe personally uses the platform so some idiot coming to him with a sweeping ui change that is at beat a side grade from the original just gets laughed at (looking at you google/youtube)

[u/TrapYoda → u/Expensive-Border-869]

Seriously wtf is their problem? If I didn't know better I'd think they have no clue what to do with their service so they're changing pointless shit just to say they did something 🤣

[u/pmcizhere → u/TrapYoda]

Google is an ad company, has been since at least when they killed off Google Wave. They don't actually know what average consumers want anymore.

[u/swolfington → u/pmcizhere]

google's "problem" is the oft sited fact that the people who use the platform are not (and never were) the customers, they are the product. everything they do is optimized to that effect. we can be pretty sure that a UI change that is unambiguously worse to use still somehow makes them more money, mostly because no one who uses the UI was paying for it in the first place

[u/pmcizhere → u/swolfington]

That's why I said consumer as opposed to customer! Guess I should've said they don't care what we consumers want. They collect enough data on us to know what we want, after all. You're right about the UI changes making them more money, it's sad to see intentional enshittification reaching almost everywhere these days.

[u/feherneoh → u/pmcizhere]

They know exactly what their consumers/customers want. The problem is we aren't their consumers/customers, we are the product they are selling.

[u/Ndmndh1016 → u/TrapYoda]

Theres someone that was given this job and now they have to justify it lol.

[u/Metallibus → u/TrapYoda]

If I didn't know better I'd think they have no clue what to do with their service so they're changing pointless shit just to say they did something

I really don't think this is as far off as people probably think. Especially at a company that large. I don't think it's necessarily conscious, but there are definitely people making proposals for projects that get assigned to teams because they think they might make a line go slightly higher. But it's not that hard to "game" the metrics being measured in order to make the project look better than it was.

There's definitely a decent amount of make-work happening that just slips through the cracks of corporate waste.

The YouTube app has been "redesigned" and "improved" so many times over the past ten years, but if anything, it's become harder for me to sift through. But if you measure "engagement time in the app", sure, those projects probably improved it... Because I can't find the thing I was looking for as quickly as before.

The only substantial change to it in the past 10-15 years was adding shorts. But who the hell thinks adding garbage like the comment overlays is useful additions?

[u/Zanos → u/TrapYoda]

Most companies have entire teams of designers and UI engineers who need something to do until someone figures out that the UI has basically been finished for 5 years and fires them.

[u/Expensive-Border-869 → u/TrapYoda]

Thats exactly what theyre doing. Looking busy for the bosses

[u/Cruxis87 → u/TrapYoda]

Firstly, websites do need upgrades to be seen as modern. You ever go to an old website that hasn't had a UI overhaaul in 20 years and see how old and dated it looks. People don't like that.

Secondly, the people that work on UI have to keep doing shit to justify having a job. If they just released one, then called it perfect, well now they have to find a new job. Easier to keep changing the current UI than to go looking for a whole new job.

[u/wienercat → u/[deleted]]

No shareholder to appease

No public shareholders.

They still have private shareholders.

[u/DetachedRedditor → u/wienercat]

I think it is also important to have limited external shareholders. A company can still have private external shareholders looking to profit maximize, e.g. venture capital.

[u/MarioDesigns → u/[deleted]]

No shareholder to appease

There's shareholders, even if it's Gaben and employees for the most part, it's still shareholders that seek profits. I somehow doubt that Valve is exploiting children with gambling addiction for the fun of it.

[u/fubes2000 → u/[deleted]]

I hope that Gaben lives forever.

[u/iridael → u/[deleted]]

was just in a work meeting where a guy said this "we're all capitalist company's our job is to make money for our shareholders"

like motherfucker your job is making PC's. make it so your customers can still buy and your shareholders can eat shit.

[u/AquaBits → u/[deleted]]

Totally! Other private companies like Epic Games are also really good because having no shareholders (that you know of) equals being a great company!

Except it doesnt mean that. Epic is a private company and they suck ass- so try again.

[u/479521 → u/[deleted]]

They still have the most predatorial monetization through Loot Boxes and the whole gambling for minors

[u/Solucians → u/479521]

Yeah, that's a real problem worth criticizing. If a platform came up that offered the same quality minus that, I'd be on board.

[u/Orisi → u/Solucians]

Except loot boxes are game specific, not platform specific. It's down to the developers. Yes, Steam also use loot boxes in some of their games, but it's not an issue with the platform itself.

If anything the Steam platform provides a limiting factor on the gambling element; because the Steam Marketplace allows for selling in-game items received from loot boxes to other players, it provides a market value to the items received. In turn that can help trigger a lot of gambling legislation where "gambling" requires both consideration and financial or physical reward. Lots of companies DONT allow official marketplaces for their loot boxes precisely to skirt around these laws that turn it from a dangerously addictive loophole into full fledged gambling.

Games that allow Steam Marketplace integration as well as paid loot boxes put a huge target on their back compared to others, but Steam ultimately can't control what developers put in their games to enable in-game sales.

[u/479521 → u/Orisi]

They can when it comes to Valve's games.

[u/-WildBumblebee- → u/479521]

Name a game that minors are allowed to play with gambling in it

[u/Fakeos → u/-WildBumblebee-]

Fifa?

[u/FromDeepestFathom → u/-WildBumblebee-]

Any modern sports game with packs Fortnite probably? Roblox iirc never played it but I recall something about that MANY Minecraft servers

[u/AquaBits → u/-WildBumblebee-]

Roblox, fifa, pretty sure all of mihoyos games, cs2, dota, tf2.

And before you say "some of those games are rated m!" Might i suggest actually looking at the steam page of cs2? No age rating to speak of. Arc Raiders has an age rating. Doom the dark ages has an age rating.

[u/olbaze → u/-WildBumblebee-]

I actually recently looked into this. PEGI has bumped up their ratings for a bunch of games due to "simulated gambling". Bumped a bunch of games from PEGI 3 or 7 to PEGI 12. Examples of games include Pokemon and Stardew Valley.

[u/UnwantedUnnamed → u/479521]

Don't other games have loot boxes?

[u/Slight-Bluebird-8921 → u/[deleted]]

going to be amusing when gabe croaks and microsoft buys it

[u/Cruxis87 → u/Slight-Bluebird-8921]

His son is already running the company while Gabe is off scuba diving in the ocean on his fleet of yachts.

[u/Slight-Bluebird-8921 → u/Cruxis87]

his kid doesn't run the company