161–170 of 211 posts
Chet 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.
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You think Gabe will sell to PE? You need someone willing to sell to be able to buy something. I’m betting that won’t happen, and that the next BDFL is not going to run the thing into the ground fast enough for it to matter to me.
Dude, Gabe could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and all it takes is for 0.2% of Steam shares to be given to a secondary person, for any reason, due to a legal order (as he owns only 50.1%) to cause the takeover. Valve is also facing a class action lawsuit for anticompetitive practices. If they lose, even though they will almost certainly survive, watch the tables flip upside down fast.
Products like the Steam Deck or Steam Controller don't need any Valve software to play games. Valve knows a post-Steam world will exist one day, and they're fine with that. From a consumer standpoint, I respect that.
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Microsoft/xBox are waiting to buy Valve.
I wouldn't be surprised, especially after eventually there is a management change. Most folks aren't keeping tabs on how many studios Microsoft nowadays owns as publisher, even moreso after the ABK deal.
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In addition to the other products mentioned: Deadlock is maybe the best new big budget IP in recent memory, in terms of theme/setting and art style and character design. Particularly after the update a week ago, the game is stylish as hell now. Even the main menu music is a banger: https://youtu.be/WkGDC3idX1E Now, the game isn't exactly out yet, but it is pretty widely accessible, and the core of the game is just fa…
I pretty much have the opposite feeling about Deadlock after putting 200+ hrs into it (not that much but enough to understand the game). There was a recent streamer that said it best: the game design fundamentally punishes you for engaging with other players. Instead, it rewards you for running around the map breaking static entities (boxes, statues, static creeps, etc.). Which is, frankly, boring. There's just no wa…
Also, I am no longer a 20 year old with no responsibilities and sometimes things come up where I would need to leave the game. I guess I am just getting older now and no longer play 20 hours a weeks of video games, but things like Deadlock don’t have appeal.
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PC gaming is what has been since the MS-DOS days and lame beeps, versus the Amiga. I always find interesting the mention of "rise of PC gaming". Those of my generation have been playing PC games, and 8 bit home computers before that, since the 1980's. Game consoles were almost inexistent in most European households for us. The exception being the Game and Watch from Nintendo series, like Manhole.
Trying to define "Personal Computer" is another rabbit-hole, it's such a broad concept. I'd argue someone could be right if they called an iPhone a PC as for many that is their computing device, at the same time as someone else's PC being a monstrous workstation that you'd need to load onto a trolley to move.
That is why those old Mac vs PC ads from Apple were the way they were, back when Apple was relaunching themselves.
Everything else is trying to give new meaning to something that during 1980-2000's was quite clear what it stand for.
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At least one former employee has confirmed that exactly the problems you are describing were a problem at Valve. https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/
>"they pretty much killed off our project.” That project was CastAR — augmented reality glasses which Jeri Ellsworth is now working on as a separate project, having been handed the legal rights to do so by Valve . But how many billion-dollar companies would do that? Just give the rights to the ex-employees? I think most other companies would have not. So, in that sense, Valve is unusual, even if it's not the oranizat…
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Which is a great way to run a business that you care about owning for a long time. But as a consumer you have to think about what happens when leadership changes—PE buys them and starts reputation mining. It takes a while to burn through the good will and for a few years you can make a lot more money off of that than you can continuing thing as usual.
You think Gabe will sell to PE? You need someone willing to sell to be able to buy something. I’m betting that won’t happen, and that the next BDFL is not going to run the thing into the ground fast enough for it to matter to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think Gabe will sell to PE? You need someone willing to sell to be able to buy something. I’m betting that won’t happen, and that the next BDFL is not going to run the thing into the ground fast enough for it to matter to me.
Dude, Gabe could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and all it takes is for 0.2% of Steam shares to be given to a secondary person, for any reason, due to a legal order (as he owns only 50.1%) to cause the takeover. Valve is also facing a class action lawsuit for anticompetitive practices. If they lose, even though they will almost certainly survive, watch the tables flip upside down fast.
I am genuinely asking, as I am curious.
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…
At least one former employee has confirmed that exactly the problems you are describing were a problem at Valve. https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/
Chet 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.
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…
I have always been disappointed with people making claims that explicitly imposed bad hierarchy is inevitable, because of a vague complaint about implicit hierarchy.
It feels like they are using this to justify imposing a bad hierarchy from the top down, for the benefit of the people at the top of said imposed hierarchy. Like when you have a well-functioning team with a very weak explicit hierarchy, and the people at the top introduce a bunch of bad managers. They will tell you it was inevitable. There's no way the thing you saw working well could continue to work well. Because that lack of bad managers was actually working just as poorly, you see. In fact it was much worse.