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Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]

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

#81

Post by 015a »

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…

> 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" do they mean "make successful games"? Because Valve does that too; they produce games that have far more and longer success than most publishers. They've had failed projects, sure; its funny how when projects fail in hierarchically structured companies, as they do every day, we just put our hands up, retro it, and move on; but when they fail at Valve it has to be because they don't have managers, right?

Do your friends mean "be profitable"? Couldn't be that; Valve is tremendously profitable by any account. Highly productive? No... they're also that. Loved by customers? Strike three, Valve also checks that box.

I guess you could argue that "things" means "build twenty different directly competing messaging apps". Got me there, Google's army of managers did manage to do that when Valve couldn't.

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

#82

Post by kevingadd »

modeless wrote: post #64
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…

If you measure success by how happy your most disgruntled employees are, maybe it doesn't look good. But if you measure success by revenue, profit, or quality of products, it looks incredible. Valve has succeeded in a very competitive industry and consistently released top quality products over a period of almost three decades. I don't buy people's excuses about them just exploiting a monopoly. Epic was gunning for t…

It's important to recognize however that Valve has a history of being very slow to ship product, and financially is supported by the existence of Steam alongside lootbox bonanzas like CS:Go and DOTA 2. Those are successful products, so by no measure is Valve a failed company, but compared to most other successful game studios their ability to ship a completed product is very poor - if you look at their track record, they release a few full-size games per decade and then some of them end up failing. Comparable studios with their staffing and budget can typically release double their number of games without whiffing on quality - look at From Software, for example, which delivers hit after hit with ~equivalent staffing on smaller timelines and smaller budgets.

It's true that a product shipped early is bad forever, but a product never shipped is certainly not a success by any metric either.

My suspicion is that the way the studio runs means that the stuff they eventually ship is high quality, but a lot of potential smash hits wither and die because of process dysfunction and staff attrition.

On the other hand, if you're a successful middleman taking 30% of everyone else's revenue, you don't really need to be good at making games anymore. You can leave that business if you want.

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

#83

Post by Hasu »

Shekelphile wrote: post #45
Hasu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. If all your failures are as "mild" as the "failure" of Valve's flat structure, you will have a very nice life. > However Valve kind of advertises itself as a video game company, and if someone is interested in making video games I feel like they'd actually be a bit disappointed after a while of working at Valve, simply bec…

> Steam would be completely enshittified by now. Has it not already been shit for like 15 years? It's 2003 shitware with an electron skin on top of it, with a predatory skin marketplace that you can't withdraw funds from and lootbox mechanics included in all their live service games (of which that is all valve has made in the last 15 years excluding HLA). Valve was never a good company. I would argue their early busi…

> Has it not already been shit for like 15 years?

You could argue that it has been, but "being shit" and "enshittification" are different things.

I don't think it's been shit. As a customer, Valve is one of the only companies left that I feel good about giving money to.

But it simply has not been enshittified. From Doctorow:

"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."

Valve hasn't started abusing gamers to benefit developers in any way that I can tell. Compared to the rest of the video game industry, Valve treats both very well.

> I would argue their early business model directly lead to the death of game modding in the first place

Game modding isn't dead or anywhere close to dead, so no.

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

#84

Post by FemmeAndroid »

aaarrm wrote: post #11

This thing has always been a treat to look through; it's made with so much effort and care. I haven't read through it in a bit though and don't plan to read through it again currently so I may be off in some of the rest of my comment. I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. Unless they still desire to all-in on the strategy of creating products and hoping to land…

I very much agree. I just want to provide some evidence of one if your points:

> if someone is interested in making video games I feel like they'd actually be a bit disappointed after a while of working at Valve.

In 2018, valve aquired Campo Santo. They were a 12 person company who made Firewatch and were working on a new game.

Since then, one of the founders worked on writing Half-Life Alyx. The rest have done little to nothing at valve despite being industry veterans who alwys seemed passionate about games. At least half of the employees at the time of the aquisition have left valve. Im too lazy and sick to look up everyone, but the people who wanted to make games left to good companies where they could work on games.

I personally am happy for the Campo Santo team that they hopefully did well financially in the acquisition, but I an sad that a team working on novel narrative games with high production values was disbanded with little to show for it.

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

#85

Post by Banditoz »

ric2b wrote: post #18
jsheard wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone who seeks to emulate Valves internal structure you have to ask yourself one question - do you already have a core product with a near-unimpeachable monopoly which consistently brings in enough money to keep the entire company afloat, with enough left over to bankroll moonshot R&D projects on top? If not, you can't afford to operate like Valve. They cancel 10 projects for every one they ship, if not for Ste…

Steam isn't an unimpeachable monopoly, their competition is just so much worse.

This is what's crazy to me. It feels like other PC game stores haven't caught up in feature parity to Steam from over 10 years ago.

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

#86

Post by andrewmcwatters »

AISnakeOil wrote: post #69
gigatexal wrote: post #53

Does it also say there will ever ever be an end to Gordan Freeman’s story, never a HL3 ever so stop asking? Seriously one of the most tragic things of my very privileged life was getting so into the game and the story and then waiting patiently for HL3 after the cliff hanger ending of HL2 EP 2. Now I have trust issues.

Page 20 has an employee with a HL3 shirt. It really is one of the most tragic tales in gaming history. Half-Life Alyx only being available on VR was the final nail in the coffin. I will never play it.

Controversial take, but it’s not that good anyway.

I remember someone at Valve, maybe Gabe Newell himself saying something along the lines of, “We are still capable of making a Half-Life game.” I’m butchering the quote.

Anyway, it’s just not true. If you compare the length and meaningfulness of Half-Life 2, and the following episodes, Half-Life: Alyx feels more like it belongs in the same category as Half-Life 2: Lost Coast.

It’s too short of a game, too few weapons, very little meaningful build up despite your trek in the game. It’s just a disappointment.

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

#87

Post by Systemmanic »

nerdjon wrote: post #52
Systemmanic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason I’ve heard is the stats and Achievements consolidation. Cross play solves this somewhat but it’s not consistent. PC is my main platform but I also have an Xbox (NHL games not available on PC), everything else is on Steam. I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.

> One reason I’ve heard is the stats and Achievements consolidation. I have not seen that referenced much so I am curious how many people that is the reason vs just some weird loyalty to Steam. But, as someone who is mostly a couch gamer so my console of choice is Xbox. I can see that, I have a PS5 but all of my cross platform games is Xbox. I have my PC for a lot of games that I would prefer that setup (for me its a…

>I have not seen that referenced much so I am curious how many people that is the reason vs just some weird loyalty to Steam.

Yeah, probably a healthy mix. The achievement and stats consolidation is via word of mouth and conversation I have had over the years. I don’t have data to back that up. I’m sure the /r/pcmasterrace folk would have something to say about it though.

I totally agree with your rant. It’s ridiculous that folk want to complain about this.

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

#88

Post by FemmeAndroid »

xnorswap wrote: post #56
boredtofears wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deadlock is awesome. I'm in the alpha and I've been totally hooked on it. It's the first multiplayer FPS game that my friend group and I have been excited about in probably a decade. If the reddit rumors are believed to be true, the former leads of DotA (Icefrog?) and TF2 (Robin Walker) are heavily involved in it's development.

Isn't deadlock just Valve's take on Valorant? It will need to do something very fresh if it wants to compete. Valorant felt extremely fresh and slick compared to both CSGO and Overwatch while fitting nicely inbetween. They brought innovation and UX improvements to the format that even CSGO ended up copying after it had been resting on it's laurels for too long.

Deadlock is quite different to Valorant in key ways. Rather than Valorsnt, which is essentially Counterstrike with hero powers. deadlock is Valorant plus Dota2. There are creeps and base management and extensive items.

I certainly think Deadlocks ui is unfinished, but the gameplay is certainly something that hasn't been done super well.

I don't love deadlock yet but haven't played it much. Plus, my opinion means nothing, I thought Artifact was a great game.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

wongarsu wrote: post #59
nerdjon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the competitors do what is necessary just fine But that's the issue. The competitors are fine. They aren't significantly better though. The only one with a compelling USP is GOG with their "no drm, download the installer, own the game even after we go under" pitch. Everyone else is just a steam clone with some exclusives and freebies. Without a compelling advantage network effect makes Steam the clear winner. It's…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

015a wrote: post #81
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…

> 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 points for the topic at hand, which is about their ability to get things done. CS2 is "successful" in that they run a gambling site and marketplace within the game that brings them a lot of money.[0] But they are also slowly killing their game and have ignored it for over a year. The best thing Valve has done in recent years is the steam deck. Their games are not getting better and my guess is Deadlock will end up closer to Artifact in reception than CS or Dota.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/global - in top 100 games by revenue for 12 years

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