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Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

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Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#111

Post by ErikBjare »

gumby wrote: post #9

The reasulting reality of the managerless approach hasn’t been good. As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”. I have several friends who used to work at Valve none of them hate the place, they still have friends there, etc. But they tell similar stories as to why things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. Perhaps it’s best summed up by something one friend said a…

Feminist in the 80s tried the leaderless approach, which led to the seminal work "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" that addresses this.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#112

Post by j_maffe »

mmanfrin wrote: post #100
j_maffe wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the effect a monopoly has on the market.

You're replying to a chain about how valve got steam started, are you suggesting that the market was existing in a state of monopoly prior to their actual existence of the product you say held that monopoly?

No, of course not. I should have been more accurate by saying that they were able to do this because there wasn't a monopoly at the time.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#113

Post by 015a »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #90
015a wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve. By "things" do you mean "build an even moderately successful PC game distribution platform"? Because no one else has managed to do that. Epic, EA, Xbox, Ubisoft, and a dozen others have tried, none of them reached 10% the popularity of Steam, and if they still exist today its because they have one keystone game keeping them alive. Or, by "things"…

Valve's largest game, CS2, is still full of bugs and almost unplayable on valve servers due to lack of a working anti-cheat. They even removed existing anti-cheat features such as the overwatch system that allowed players to review games for potential cheating. They also removed a lot of the game modes and maps. Coasting on being a marketplace (where they also had first mover advantage) shouldn't score valve any poin…

Deadlock is already within 10k of Artifact's all time peak player count; and it "legally" doesn't exist and is closed invite only [1] [2]. So, you can guess whatever you want; no one in their right mind would assert that a hero-based shooter MOBA will achieve similar levels of success as a card game. But maybe you're not in your right mind.

As for Counterstrike 2; I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually matters when it spends just 24 hours outside of the top 5 most played games on Steam. Its #2 right now. Dota is #3. You're welcome to channel Trump and argue that they're cooking the books on their player-counts, but that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.

[1] https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/

[2] https://steamdb.info/app/583950/charts/

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#114

Post by Scramblejams »

nerdjon wrote: post #34
ric2b wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

About Epic, they're 35% owned by Tencent (with its inevitable unseen CCP entanglements) and 8% by Disney. That's plenty to put people off.

GOG's great but they're not big enough to move any needles.

Steam puts some of that 30% to work making wonderful things like the SteamDeck, and as a game dev I get a big audience and amazing things like free access to the Steam Datagram Network. So when I want to buy or sell a game, they're overwhelmingly my first choice.

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#115

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

015a wrote: post #113
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve's largest game, CS2, is still full of bugs and almost unplayable on valve servers due to lack of a working anti-cheat. They even removed existing anti-cheat features such as the overwatch system that allowed players to review games for potential cheating. They also removed a lot of the game modes and maps. Coasting on being a marketplace (where they also had first mover advantage) shouldn't score valve any poin…

Deadlock is already within 10k of Artifact's all time peak player count; and it "legally" doesn't exist and is closed invite only [1] [2]. So, you can guess whatever you want; no one in their right mind would assert that a hero-based shooter MOBA will achieve similar levels of success as a card game. But maybe you're not in your right mind. As for Counterstrike 2; I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually…

>I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually matters

Why do you think long time players of CS use FaceIt to play? That should immediately strike you as odd that the most dedicated demographic of the game is not even using Valve's servers. And do you really think people would still play at the rates they are if there were no skins?

>they're cooking the books on their player-counts

They are not, however some non-zero amount of the player base is bots farming free weapon case drops.[0][1] At one point these were making hundreds of thousands a week. No other game has this issue.

>that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.

Do you even play this game? It seems strange to make a claim about a game you have never played. Everyone who plays this game agrees that Valve has failed to make the game better and after almost a year people still agree that cs:go was better, although Valve deleted cs:go from steam so nobody can play it anymore.

[0] https://www.pcgamesn.com/counter-strike-2/csgo-case-drops

[1] https://www.dexerto.com/csgo/csgo-community-mocks-player-cou...

Re: Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

#116

Post by amy-petrik-214 »

prepend wrote: post #76
jacobsenscott wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You always have politics. Managers tend to be political ninjas, so they make it worse. I've been programming professionally for over 25 years at this point, worked at many places, and I couldn't tell you what value a manager brings. I know what they do - which is hold meetings that take time away from real work, and ask people "is it done yet". But I've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of som…

The best managers I’ve had provide support- good workspaces, training budgets, protection from layoffs, hiring good coworkers. Basically making it so no admin work comes to me and everything goes smoothly.

Exactly - they are political ninjas, yes, but they ethically view themselves as the feudal lord super-samurai whose job it is to defend and develop all the young paduan samurai under his watch. Nothing wrong with politics if done in a kind, ethical, "win friends and influence people" kind of way
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