Richard D. Wolff

Hi Professor, I listened with interest to your segment on Valve Corporation in a recent episode, "Revolt Against Sexual Abuse". I'm a trade union officer and video game journalist who has dealt with Valve on a number of occasions and was hoping to provide you with some further information on this company, particularly with how they apply the co-operative self-determination aspect to themselves, but apply a brutal extractive capitalist free-market methodology to their customers and clients. Valve operates the Steam storefront for digital goods, taking a 30% cut of any games or software sold through it, as well as entering into a highly predatory relationship with artists who essentially provide spec work content for their own titles. I covered a lot of this in an article for the games website Polygon (https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive) which I would urge you to read, as well as more in-depth in a podcast with the marxist Discourse Collective group (https://soundcloud.com/discoursecollective/episode-38). I'd be happy to talk to you at length about this but I feel it's very important to address that while Valve may seem like an innocent worker co-op in many ways, they are the most profitable company on a per-employee basis in the USA because they engage in horrific Uber-esque practices and their CEO is now valued at more than $5 billion. Thanks again for your time and your great work, I love listening to your podcast each week.