171–180 of 211 posts
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This is a common question from people interviewing at Valve. I was suspect how accurate it was before I joined given how long it's been since it was updated. However, it still 100% represents the culture within Valve. Desks are still on wheels, structure is still completely flat, etc... It's been on my list of "eventual todos" to make a trivial update to help reinforce that it's still relevant.
How is individual performance evaluated?
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Unfortunately, no-one’s investment in AR or VR has worked out. Even the “winner” (Oculus/Meta) has found the market to be disappointingly small.
Well that's because AR and VR are strictly worse for most use cases as compared to traditional human computer interfaces. The mouse, keyboard, and monitor is pretty much just right. Highly productive, you can go super fast, with extreme information density. VR and AR are obviously much slower to navigate because physical worlds are slow to navigate and that's what they're mimicing. We might assume a 3D world has more…
VR has basically been for niche high-end gamers. I can imagine a jet flighter simulation might be good for VR but I'm not even sure that's such a thing these days. One can imagine other uses like virtual exploration but it hasn't been that interesting and a big monitor works pretty well as an alternative.
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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…
> (see Tyranny of Structurelessness, etc.) so I am also skeptical that a company may have continued with this practice 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 sa…
At least I read it more as that you can't just declare 'there be no hierarchy here' and be done. Unless you carefully engineer the system, the implicit hierarchy will reclaim the void and, all else equal, an implicit hierarchy is harder to undo because it isn't supposed to exist.
In political terms: if all you do is kick the ruler out, you may get a corrupt patronage network instead of democracy. Actual equality doesn't come from just the absence of strong explicit hierarchy; it requires proper institutional design.
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HL Alyx and Dota 2 aren't of note?
Dota 2 is of note, but that was a pretty safe project being a straight remake of an already popular mod with the mods developer at the helm. Their major titles since 2012 were: CS:GO (remake of a remake) Dota 2 (remake) Artifact (flopped) Underlords (flopped) Alyx (good) Counter-Strike 2 (remake of a remake of a remake) Deadlock (early beta, but promising) They haven't completely lost the sauce, but it's rare to see…
> 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.
Top-down, controlling management vs unstructured chaos is a completely false dichotomy.
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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
At that point I'd feel entitled to keep the games I bought by pirating them.
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…
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.
Source? This comment is literally the first search result of "Chet Faliszek Valve employee handbook" for me. I've waded through several pages and haven't found a credible source of him saying that.
That being said, I don't want to say it is a bad thing or entirely wrong. It is of course a brushed up glorified version that certainly took a thing or two from their real experience working at Valve, but it was not used as an onboarding tool until it was published (and to my knowledge, isn't used nowadays as they have since changed their internal team composition since Half-Life Alyx was released).
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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.
I mean, you can provide support and structure without imposing it or telling people what to do. People who need the structure can rely on it; people who don't can work their own way. Top-down, controlling management vs unstructured chaos is a completely false dichotomy.
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
Exactly as that famous quote says, currently Steam is the better product, but if Valve would go rogue, that could change easily.
> If Steam decided to charge $10/mo
If you think about games already purchased I suspect that would be illegal in many parts of the world.