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Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

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Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#71

Post by kryogen1c »

>Valve is flat. It’s our shorthand way of saying that we don’t have any management

> Team leads Often, someone will emerge as the “lead” for a project. This person’s role is not a traditional managerial one. Most often, they’re primarily a clearinghouse of information. They’re keeping the whole project in their head at once so that people can use them as a resource to check decisions against. The leads serve the team, while acting like as centers for the teams

I appreciate the out-of-the-box-thinking+creativity foundation theyre trying to lay here, but... this is what management is. I understand management has other emergent properties and misaligned incentives, but those are literally the core (technical) value-adds of managers.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#72

Post by diggan »

monkeyelite wrote: post #45
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to believe that the principles outlined here weren't at least briefly followed when it's featured on their website too: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/publications , but I'd be an open to a source which substantiates your claim. 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 conti…

Also when you have a lot of money you can afford to be inefficient

Also, sometimes you need to first be a bit inefficient and lax in order to later come up with really good ideas and solutions.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#73

Post by jsheard »

ekianjo wrote: post #49
andyferris wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It interests me that it needs to be an "or". A HL3 team could essentially function as an independent studio using the Steam platform, with some funding thrown from Valve. Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back?

> Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back? The Google problem where every project that is not Search has a much worse ROI.

Yep, and that applies to Valve at two levels because Steam dwarfs the ROI of their games, and their forever-games like Counter Strike dwarf the ROI of any singleplayer game they'd ever be able to make. It's a miracle they even got Alyx out of the door, that was a special case since it was part of their larger VR initiative.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#74

Post by ekianjo »

jsheard wrote: post #73
ekianjo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back? The Google problem where every project that is not Search has a much worse ROI.

Yep, and that applies to Valve at two levels because Steam dwarfs the ROI of their games, and their forever-games like Counter Strike dwarf the ROI of any singleplayer game they'd ever be able to make. It's a miracle they even got Alyx out of the door, that was a special case since it was part of their larger VR initiative.

And Alyx was probably a huge failure, ROI wise, because nobody buys VR headsets. I know, not "nobody", but by far and large it has remained a super niche market.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#75

Post by Hendrikto »

AddLightness wrote: post #64
bob1029 wrote: post #27

Valve gets a lot of heat for slowing down on first party gaming content, but I think Steam has been a net positive for the gaming community. There are certainly some cases where the accessibility has created "noise" and other trouble, but overall I think this is a good thing. Their 30% cut is absolutely justified once you start looking into everything they do for you as a developer and the market that you have access…

I'm very scared about the future though. What happens when Gabe is gone? The entire PC Gaming industry is essentially locked in to a single platform. If Steam decided to charge $10/mo people have so much invested into their libraries they would likely do it. What about $20 or $30 per month? I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments

> I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments

Because they have been consistently good citizens for more than 2 decades. They built a reputation. Something other companies are eager to piss away at the first opportunity to sell out or squeeze their customers.

It’s not surprising that Valve is successful and trusted with this approach. What is surprising is that it is apparently so incredibly hard for other companies to understand this very simple fact.

1. Build a good product.

2. Consistently act in good faith.

3. Profit.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#76

Post by squigz »

AddLightness wrote: post #64
bob1029 wrote: post #27

Valve gets a lot of heat for slowing down on first party gaming content, but I think Steam has been a net positive for the gaming community. There are certainly some cases where the accessibility has created "noise" and other trouble, but overall I think this is a good thing. Their 30% cut is absolutely justified once you start looking into everything they do for you as a developer and the market that you have access…

I'm very scared about the future though. What happens when Gabe is gone? The entire PC Gaming industry is essentially locked in to a single platform. If Steam decided to charge $10/mo people have so much invested into their libraries they would likely do it. What about $20 or $30 per month? I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments

> I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments

They're not, really, but they've given us little reason to distrust them.

I'm also fairly confident there would be some fun legal stuff going on if Steam tried that. People have thousands - tens of thousands - of dollars worth of stuff on Steam. That isn't really the same as, say, having to watch ads even after paying for a subscription.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#77

Post by ThatPlayer »

Panzer04 wrote: post #46
bob1029 wrote: post #27

Valve gets a lot of heat for slowing down on first party gaming content, but I think Steam has been a net positive for the gaming community. There are certainly some cases where the accessibility has created "noise" and other trouble, but overall I think this is a good thing. Their 30% cut is absolutely justified once you start looking into everything they do for you as a developer and the market that you have access…

The other things is steam doesn't constrain competition (afaik? Open to being wrong but this is how I'd understood it). Devs can sell their own games, games can be on other platforms, etc. Despite that gamers think it's worth the convenience and utilities steam provides to keep shopping there. Steam isn't dominant because it's strangling competition like the app store and similar. People can trivially download altern…

Steam is currently being sued by Wolfire for being anti-competitive by allegedly having a "platform most-favored-nations" clause. Preventing games on other platforms from being priced lower.

According to the developer:

> [Valve] would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.

> I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores.

https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-cla...

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#78

Post by jajko »

monkeyelite wrote: post #59
nvarsj wrote: post #35

> spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value. Well that hits close to home. I wonder why every other mega successful company thinks the opposite.

Because being smart and talented is not the same skill as being self managing. Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at. And because self managing people do not automatically organize to achieve the same goals.

> Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at.

That's extremely rare and even in overall success stories you will find plenty of unhappy folks.

But as a general excuse for some micro-management-obsessed middle manager with 0 trust into anybody else its good enough excuse I suppose.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#79

Post by SXX »

bob1029 wrote: post #27

Valve gets a lot of heat for slowing down on first party gaming content, but I think Steam has been a net positive for the gaming community. There are certainly some cases where the accessibility has created "noise" and other trouble, but overall I think this is a good thing. Their 30% cut is absolutely justified once you start looking into everything they do for you as a developer and the market that you have access…

As consumer I very much agree with you, but as game developer 30% is abysmal amount of money. Imagine you're indie developer or owner of a small 3-10 people studio that finally released reasonably successful game:

  1 - Let's say you invested $100,000 of your own money for vertical slice and managed to find a publisher to give you $200,000 to complete the game.
  2 - Ignore that you had some failed games before, but this time you let's say sold 100,000 copies for $10 each average. 100k sold is a big success really.
But here is the math:

  1 - Valve got $1,000,000 as gross revenue for 100,000 sales.
  2 - Usually 16% is VAT and immenient refunds. So now $840,000 left.
  3 - Now Valve took their 30% cut. $588,000 left.
  4 - Now your publisher took $200,000 to recoup invested money. $388,000 left.
  5 - Now publisher split remaining $388,000 by honest 50/50.
Now your company sold 100,000 copies of a game, but only get $194,000 gross income as royalties. And if you will make any profit you'll likely pay at least 20% corporate or divident taxes so yeah at best your profit gonna be $155,000.

So you did all the work, somehow managed to fund it, worked on game for a year and got $155,000 while Valve made $252,000 for payment processing and CDN. Steam do not provide marketing - it only boost already successful products.

PS: This is best case scenario. Usually your publisher will also recoup whatever expenses they had on their end for marketing and whatever.

Re: Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

#80

Post by monkeyelite »

jajko wrote: post #78
monkeyelite wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because being smart and talented is not the same skill as being self managing. Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at. And because self managing people do not automatically organize to achieve the same goals.

> Good structure helps people use the skills they are good at. That's extremely rare and even in overall success stories you will find plenty of unhappy folks. But as a general excuse for some micro-management-obsessed middle manager with 0 trust into anybody else its good enough excuse I suppose.

Your management is so effective you are not even aware of the structure around you! there is a place you come to ready with goals and tasks, and those tasks are prepared for you to apply your engineering skill (other departments will apply their skills separately and be added to yours). And there are ways to communicate if you need resources or support.

Think about how common it is for someone to be effective at work and totally confused and aimless in their personal life. They might have trouble sticking to projects, or not know what goals are worthwhile, or make bad decisions - all while performing great at work.

I am an IC at the lowest rung of any org chart with no aspirations to change that.

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