How can PoE compete with it's true competitor - Last Epoch

Plenty of shitheads in history have also not been fools.

The fact that I still think he's a genuinely nice person who means well and isn't personally greedy is the bigger miracle. He has, after all, sailed right past the threshold for business size in terms of its head being almost certainly a sociopath. How can you have that much money and make the sorts of decisions that might ruin lives *daily* and not to some degree be dehumanised and see your employees as a resource rather than...well, people?

Best friend of mine runs a much smaller venture and quite often he confides in me how easy it is to do just that, and it terrifies him.

That is why, or part of why, I was sad and disappointed when Chris sold not just his business to Tencent but also himself. Very likely a condition of the sale but not one he should have taken. PoE isnt the goose that lays golden eggs -- it's just another amazing egg the real goose should have sold once it hatched and became too much for the goose to handle.

And then he (Chris is so amazing he defies science) could have had another egg...hmm, I wonder that might have been.

OR he could have stopped altogether and actually had the time and energy to enjoy the return on his insanely successful product.

Less likely, that. Even at my most cynical I can't believe he was only in it for the money. Far too much excess in PoE. Too much indulgence. You don't spoil a child you view as a product. As a means.

Either way, I may be wrong. He may well be the guy who said, give or take, we will break our own laws for enough money. The origin of that guy can be found in the courting of Kripparrian. Smart business, especially when you know you can admit that is what you did and your players, now by your own admission a lesser priority, will be okay with that. God damn did my heart break a little over the priority queue debacle. Closest I have come to disliking Chris AND thinking this community genuinely stupid for not realising he had shown his hand not so much accidentally but smugly. It was an ugly situation and it was 100% GGG failing.

...so respect? Sure. My respect, much like my scorn, matters nothing. An echo in a canyon carved out of the earth by an orbital laser the size of a Diamond Kiwi. So why not. Dude made a huge successful something out of nothing following a vision and realising how much it needed to change to endure. He went from not even NZ level wealthy to undeniably stinking rich and he took those who believed in him with him, inasmuch as their beliefs translated into early GGG investment. Dude is brilliant and personable. Was. Is. Eh, was and is, in the Hedberg sense.

Why not respect all that?

Maybe respect is a lower bar than it seems. But there is respecting a thing, an action, or a person, and they are all quite different. I respect nuance above almost all else. :)