Reading this is kind of like reading Peracles's Funeral Oration. You wonder if there was ever a place like that. You wonder if there ever could be another place like that. You salute as heros those who had the audacity to even try to make a place like that. After reading it, you are not quite the same person as you were before.
Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
31–40 of 116 posts
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#32This thing has always been a treat to look through; it's made with so much effort and care. I haven't read through it in a bit though and don't plan to read through it again currently so I may be off in some of the rest of my comment. I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. Unless they still desire to all-in on the strategy of creating products and hoping to land…
> I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else.
If all your failures are as "mild" as the "failure" of Valve's flat structure, you will have a very nice life.
> However Valve kind of advertises itself as a video game company, and if someone is interested in making video games I feel like they'd actually be a bit disappointed after a while of working at Valve, simply because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.
They've released a game every year or every other year since they were founded. That's more than a lot of studios, and the fact that they also do stuff with steam and hardware makes it that much more impressive.
> They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.
This would be a more valid critique of Valve's management structure if companies with traditional management structures didn't do the same damn thing. World of Warcraft has had dozens of abandoned features over the years, and Activision-Blizzard has a normal management structure. This is just general software industry shit, I can't think of any company that doesn't leave some stuff on the side because the focus moved onto something newer and shinier.
> I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused.
Well if they had traditional management, the game development part of the company would have been deleted a loooong time ago, and Steam would be completely enshittified by now.
I think there are valid criticisms of what they're trying at Valve, but 1) I'm glad they're doing it, I don't want every company to operate the same MBA playbook, and 2) I don't think the problems are really problems for the customer! It seems like it's mostly a problem for _employees_.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is Steam a monopoly? The platform it runs on (Windows) is open, unlike the App Store. Competitors exist on said platform, including a store & game pass run by the platform owner. The fact that Steam still runs the show is a testament to their ability to just do things better than anyone else. Sure, there is a sort of network effect at play, but there is no other “moat” here - let alone a monopolistic one.
They are saying "Steam is a monopoly because they're so big", you are saying "Steam is not a monopoly because they're not anti-competitive", you're not disagreeing
I am saying it’s not a monopoly at all because it’s a) not the only player in the PC games store market and b) has no mechanism in place to be able to enforce such a position even if it was.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone who seeks to emulate Valves internal structure you have to ask yourself one question - do you already have a core product with a near-unimpeachable monopoly which consistently brings in enough money to keep the entire company afloat, with enough left over to bankroll moonshot R&D projects on top? If not, you can't afford to operate like Valve. They cancel 10 projects for every one they ship, if not for Ste…
Steam isn't an unimpeachable monopoly, their competition is just so much worse.
I disagree, many of the competitors do what is necessary just fine.
There is a strong sentiment with many gamers of just not wanting to use an alternative and it is basically a non starter for many other stores. Many complain about the very idea of not all of their games being in the same place.
This isn't necessarily anything monopolistic done on Valve's side. But it would be very hard for another store to make any meaningful impact regardless of how they are.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone who seeks to emulate Valves internal structure you have to ask yourself one question - do you already have a core product with a near-unimpeachable monopoly which consistently brings in enough money to keep the entire company afloat, with enough left over to bankroll moonshot R&D projects on top? If not, you can't afford to operate like Valve. They cancel 10 projects for every one they ship, if not for Ste…
Steam isn't an unimpeachable monopoly, their competition is just so much worse.
In my opinion, GOG is phenomenal and hands down the best digital game storefront now, but it's not what consumers care most about. Many people already have extensive libraries on Steam, too.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steam isn't an unimpeachable monopoly, their competition is just so much worse.
I disagree, many of the competitors do what is necessary just fine. There is a strong sentiment with many gamers of just not wanting to use an alternative and it is basically a non starter for many other stores. Many complain about the very idea of not all of their games being in the same place. This isn't necessarily anything monopolistic done on Valve's side. But it would be very hard for another store to make any…
I agree.
I’ve met countless gamers who will simply not buy or play a game if it isn’t available on Steam.
Myself included, and all of my gamer friends.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#37The thing everyone misses about Valve in all the endless back and forth whenever this handbook is listed is that it is, at its core, a lifestyle company . It is optimizing for a certain lifestyle. It has pros and cons and tradeoffs and ways reality is different from imagined utopia, but in general it succeeds very well at this goal. It does not succeed at a number of other goals that people attribute to valve (or ima…
This.
It's nice that companies try different approaches. This way we have a choice and it's not just all the same at a certain company size.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are saying "Steam is a monopoly because they're so big", you are saying "Steam is not a monopoly because they're not anti-competitive", you're not disagreeing
I am saying it’s not a monopoly at all because it’s a) not the only player in the PC games store market and b) has no mechanism in place to be able to enforce such a position even if it was.
You can go back in history and apply that logic to any company and claim they weren't monopolies as a result. Standard oil and AT&T had plenty of competitors, none were able to grow beyond extremely small scale.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#39This thing has always been a treat to look through; it's made with so much effort and care. I haven't read through it in a bit though and don't plan to read through it again currently so I may be off in some of the rest of my comment. I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. Unless they still desire to all-in on the strategy of creating products and hoping to land…
It depends how you frame success. Game development seems to have slowed in the post-Steam boom world, but it's still there! DotA2, Artifact, Alyx, and currently Deadlock are all examples of relatively recent gaming products. From a purely financial perspective, they SHOULD continue to focus on marketplace dominance via STEAM. Whatever game is made for HL3/TF3 will ultimately fail to meet fan expectations (Duke Nukem…
Deadlock is awesome. I'm in the alpha and I've been totally hooked on it. It's the first multiplayer FPS game that my friend group and I have been excited about in probably a decade.
If the reddit rumors are believed to be true, the former leads of DotA (Icefrog?) and TF2 (Robin Walker) are heavily involved in it's development.
Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
#40This thing has always been a treat to look through; it's made with so much effort and care. I haven't read through it in a bit though and don't plan to read through it again currently so I may be off in some of the rest of my comment. I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. Unless they still desire to all-in on the strategy of creating products and hoping to land…
> I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. I see this echoed relatively often, and I have to wonder by what metric people consider valve have "failed" when they're the largest video game distribution platform on PC, raking in money hand over fist and constantly trouncing their competition such as EGS, Galaxy, Origin and UPlay. People don't just use steam because th…
> when they're the largest video game distribution platform on PC
And just adding on to this, they also a have a stable of some of the most successful (and presumably lucrative) games released in the last 20 years: dota 2, cs:go (admittedly, not in-house to start), TF2.
Granted, a lot of these are towards the autumn of their lifecycles, but it can't be discounted.