On the 12th of November (yesterday as of writing this), Valve Software released a 6 minute announcement video. In said video? 3 new additions to the Steam Hardware family - the Steam Deck’s new siblings, if you will. A new Steam Controller, a new Steam Machine, and a new VR Headset - named the Steam Frame. None of these are something revolutionary for Valve – in all of them we see plenty of ideas explored in their previous hardware ventures – but in all of them we see those ideas refined and improved upon to provide exactly what Valve’s customer base wanted.
Now, I could absolutely gush about how this is the first hardware launch to get me excited in many years, but I think I tortured my followers on fedi enough with that. Instead, I want to focus on something very nicely summarised in a fedi post by @preya@mastodon.social
Holy Shit, #Valve did a product launch in 2025 and did not mention AI a single fucking time. So refreshing.
That they did. And not only that, but there’s the reaction to it: it was overwhelmingly positive. From people who are up to date on all the tech launches, to those who haven’t cared for hardware launches in years, from Valve’s hardcore fanbase, to fans of competing platforms: everyone is excited for the new Steam Hardware. The reviewers who got an early look at the hardware and launched their pre-reviews alongside Valve’s announcement video also had overwhelmingly good things to say, with the only potential ‘gatcha’ they could think of being the price, which Valve did not reveal as of now, but it’s rumoured and expected for most of the new hardware to be slightly more expensive than their direct competitors.
However, Valve’s not the only company to have had the spotlight put on them yesterday.
Over the past few weeks, Microsoft has been making several announcements about AI integration into their products, their Windows operating system being the most notable. Yesterday, Microsoft also stated their ultimate goal for Windows: for it to become an “agentic OS”. And the reaction to that? Probably best described by this Techspot article:
Users simply hate the idea
Straight up, nobody wants this
And to quote just a few reactions from users quoted in that article:
it’s evolved into a bug-ridden slop pile that’s not stable enough for an enterprise environment. You destroyed what was an already flawed product.
Maybe you should pay attention to the unanimously negative replies here and adjust your goals accordingly.
It’s an understatement to say that users aren’t excited about Microsoft’s recent AI additions to Windows and their other products, and it would also be very dishonest of me to single out Microsoft here. In truth, every company that has been doubling down on AI integration into their existing products has faced the same reaction: “nobody wants this”. From giants like Google and Microsoft, to smaller but still established companies such as the Mozilla Corporation, it really seems like users hate the idea of AI being integrated into everything they do. ChatGPT usage might have grown unexpectedly fast, but that doesn’t seem to translate into enthusiasm for AI. While I’m no expert, to me it really seems like ChatGPT’s growth should be attributed more to novelty and people trying to automate boring and tedious work, rather than genuine expectations of AI becoming a truly helpful assistant.
But if that’s the case, then why is seemingly every company under the Sun doubling, tripling, even quadrupling down on AI? Well, there’s one thing that sets Valve Software apart from most: it is privately owned, by its original founders. This is a great contrast to other companies in the AI gold rush, most of which have many investors they answer to. Microsoft and Google are both publicly traded companies. OpenAI is owned 27% by Microsoft, with various investors owning smaller shares. xAI is majority owned by Elon Musk, a man beholden to the shareholders of his other companies, some of which he is a minority shareholder in.
So, what’s the point that I’m getting at? Seeing as the reception to AI integration in things like Windows is so overwhelmingly negative, meanwhile Valve’s product launch which did NOT include AI was an instant hit that had the entire internet excited within an hour, the reason for AI being pushed so hard is clearly not user demand. So what is it?
Again, I’m not an expert, but my standing theory is as follows: Shareholders want the line to go up, and, in the technology sector, the line usually went up with innovation. And AI is innovation (even if it’s yet to prove itself useful for anything other than flooding the internet with propaganda and slop). So, as investors are pouring mind-boggling amounts of money into AI expecting massive returns, every company wants a slice of that pie, so every company seeking investor money will seek AI. Even companies which already have more money than they know what to do with (as is the case with Microsoft), they are kinda forced to adopt AI anyway. If they don’t, the investors might divest and move their money into companies which are chasing AI, and if the divestments come thick and fast, the stock price dips, leading to even more stock selling, leading for the dip to further dip. Of course, this isn’t an endless cycle – people buying the dip will prevent it from dipping to a flat 0 and eventually it will stabilise, but any publicly traded company would be hurt greatly by something like this. And so, every company chases AI because the investors are convinced the returns will be great.
But will they? The AI boom has already been described as a snake eating its own tail due to how circular the money trail is, with a lot of companies involved in the AI boom investing in each other. And it’s possible these investments won’t even pay off as customer money is yet to flow in at rates to pay even for operating expenses, with OpenAI losing $11.5 billion in a single financial quarter according to Futurism. As per Fotrune’s reporting, Deutsche Bank also warns that the AI boom might, in fact, be a bubble.
And it’s in the middle of this AI boom-maybe-bubble that Valve came in, dropped a 6 minute announcement video about a gamepad, a small form-factor Linux PC, and a VR headset, and generated more excitement in the general public than any AI feature has. And I think this sends a very loud and clear message: that maybe the industry broadly needs to stop for a moment and think if what they’re doing is really helping anyone, or if they’re just blindly chasing a trend that promises them more money but which doesn’t actually help anyone.