Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet when current management leaves, as usual happens in these cases, those that worship Valve and Steam will see yet another big corporation, this if it doesn't eventually get acquired.
What management? Gabe doesn't have any direct involvement in the running of the company at this point, in spite of being the majority owner. It's an open question what happens if he leaves or dies but it doesn't seem likely that he'd do anything to intentionally sabotage the company, like sell it off. It's more likely that ownership will transfer to a trusted party or to the employees.
Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
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Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet when current management leaves, as usual happens in these cases, those that worship Valve and Steam will see yet another big corporation, this if it doesn't eventually get acquired.
What management? Gabe doesn't have any direct involvement in the running of the company at this point, in spite of being the majority owner. It's an open question what happens if he leaves or dies but it doesn't seem likely that he'd do anything to intentionally sabotage the company, like sell it off. It's more likely that ownership will transfer to a trusted party or to the employees.
Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#23Valve hasn’t released anything of note since this has been published. So I guess we should take these as anti patterns. Valve is more of a hat generation company than a game company so it seems like no one should take any game related advice from them.
Half-Life Alyx, Dota 2, Steam Deck, Index, Proton, CS:GO (released same year as this handbook), and not to mention still dominating with Steam despite the competiton spending hundreds of millions of dollars to not even make a dip in their marketshare.
Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#24Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#25Chet Faliszek, writer for games like Half-Life and the lead writer for Portal/Portal 2 has since confirmed that this handbook was never given to employees. It was created and released as part of advertising them as an employer.
However, non-hierarchical structures are often open to manipulation and land-grabbing (see Tyranny of Structurelessness, etc.) so I am also skeptical that a company may have continued with this practice.
Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#26Surprising amount of discussion on work/life balance and kids/family for a game dev. Is Valve known for this or is it just relative?
Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#27Steam is still like what Netflix used to be. You have pretty much everything you care about in one place. Even big monster AAA developers like EA have given up and put their content on the platform. If I had to pick between having HL3 and a coherent gaming ecosystem, I'd pick the latter.
Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Half-Life Alyx, Dota 2, Steam Deck, Index, Proton, CS:GO (released same year as this handbook), and not to mention still dominating with Steam despite the competiton spending hundreds of millions of dollars to not even make a dip in their marketshare.
Counter-strike 2 was also just recently released. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike_2
Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)
#29It would be interesting to see copies of this from subsequent years (this is the 2012 edition) to understand how Valve's process has evolved over time.