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I worked at Valve a few years back, and I could write a book about what's wrong there. I think the biggest problem they have -- which the author of this articl

I worked at Valve a few years back, and I could write a book about what's wrong there. I think the biggest problem they have -- which the author of this article touched on -- is that "success is the worst teacher." Valve have discovered that cosmetic microtransactions are big money makers, and thus every team at Valve was dedicated to that vision. When I was there (before Artifact started in open development) there were essentially no new games being developed at all. There was a small group that were working on Left for Dead 3 (cancelled shortly after I joined), and a couple guys poking around with pre-production experiments for Half-Life 3 (it will never be released). But effectively all the attention was focused on cosmetic items and "the economy" of the three big games (DOTA, CS:GO, and TF2). One very senior employee even said that Valve would never make another single player game, because they weren't worth the effort. "Portal 2," he explained, had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it, when you could make 100s of millions a year selling digital hats and paintjobs for guns (most of which are designed by players, not the employees!) I joined Valve because I excited to work with what I thought was the best game studio in the world, but I left very depressed when I found out they're merely collecting rent from Steam and making in-game decorations for old games.

onezerozeroone 7y ago
While you were there, how much was Valve still an "anarcho syndicalist" paradise? When you say projects were cancelled, was that because the teams working on them decided to stop (since everybody there is supposed to be their own boss) or was it a decision that came from the top down? Just curious how close Valve still is to its roots -- or at least the popular mythos of them.
- riotnrrd 7y ago
  In theory, employees are allowed to (supposed to, even) work on whatever they think is valuable. In reality, you should be working on whatever the people around you think is valuable or you're gonna get fired really quickly. (Fewer than half of new employees make it to the end of their first year.) This usually means doing whatever the most senior people on the team think is important, both because they should know if they've been there for a while, but also because they wield enormous power behind the scenes. The problem with a company with no defined job titles or explicit seniority is that there is still seniority, but it is invisible and thus deniable. An example: in my first few months, I was struggling to find a good project and a very senior employee (one of the partners, actually) took me aside and recommended I leave my current team since my heart was clearly not in it and take some time to think about what I really wanted to do, or else I'd get let go. I took his advice seriously, came up with a couple ideas, and then approached him a week or so later to pitch these projects. He got _angry_ at me, stressing that he's not my boss, and that it showed a remarkable lack of initiative that I'd ask someone else at the company what I should work on. So: he has the authority to fire me (or at least to plausibly threaten to fire me) but the moment that authority would mean any responsibility or even the slightest effort to mentor someone, he's just another regular Joe with no special role at all. Similarly, there's no way to get meaningful feedback because nobody really knows who's going to be making the performance evaluations. Sure, you can take advice from someone who's been there for ten years, but if they're not included in the group that's assembled to evaluate you then their guidance is worth nothing. I worked with some very smart people there, but it was the most dysfunctional and broken work environment I've ever witnessed.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    The problem with a company with no defined job titles or explicit seniority is that there is still seniority, but it is invisible and thus deniable. In groups of humans operating in "communal" mode, this invisibility of the hierarchy is by design. It's not the top brass that's doing it. It's the "will of the people."
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    That is some Kafkaesque shit. I mean compare. > Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” ... > The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it. http://www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html http://www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Your boss can vigorously deny responsibility just as easily as a senior co-worker. What's to stop them?
    - Goronmon 7y ago
      So, Valve is a terrible company bogged down by incompetent middle managers, just like many other terrible companies run by incompetent middle managers. The only difference is that at Valve their official title is "co-worker" instead of "boss". I'm not sure that perspective is useful.
      - codesushi42 7y ago
        It is to some degree since a "co-worker" can be completely absolved of any responsibility for your performance. Cowards.
      - 7y ago
Cypher 7y ago
If it were purely a profit case and they really don't want to make a new game. Then why doesn't valve sell the IP to publishers that want to make HL3, Portal3, Left4Dead3 etc? they'll collect a check with no effort and enable fans to have a new game.
- downrightmike 7y ago
  Valve is treading water with their current games. Their current ecosystem is broadly based on goodwill of that system. If other publishers make a Valve game, like BattleField 2, and it gets called out and shunned, that ruins the good will that fuels Valve. And as long as they don't release games like that, they don't rock their boat. The problem with Epic is that they don't have any goodwill to start with that they can lose and they are smearing studios in a level of hate that is destroying those studio's goodwill. At the end of it both will make money, but Valve will come out smelling like roses and able to pick the winners after Epic destroys the low hanging fruit.
  - rasz 7y ago
    > Epic is that they don't have any goodwill none, except Unreal Tournament legacy and one of the best 3d engines on the market for the last 20 years.
    - mycall 7y ago
      Unreal Engine is miles better than Value's engine.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  Because HL3 would suck. First person shooters today are very different than what first person shooters were when HL2 was released. It's Quake vs Overwatch. So Valve is between a rock and a hard place; do they make HL3 in the modern style and alienate all their original fans? Or do they make HL3 in the dated style and risk a flop because the market for that dated style has only gotten smaller over the past decade and new players aren't interested in it? That's why HL3 would suck. No matter which path they take, and no matter how expertly they make it, it will almost certainly be something that leaves a TON of people dissatisfied. So it's better for Valve to not make it. They'd rather HL3 be an urban legend than a disappointment. That's better for their image as experts in their craft.
johnvanommen 7y ago
> "Portal 2," he explained, had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it, when you could make 100s of millions a year selling digital hats and paintjobs for guns (most of which are designed by players, not the employees!) All of the most successful tech companies are platforms: * Facebook is a platform for it's users to make posts * eBay is a platform for it's users to sell items * Amazon is a platform for retail companies * Even Google is a platform, because it's taking the Internet itself, and re-packaging it From that perspective, you can see how things wound up like this at Valve.
- shrewduser 7y ago
  they've made a huge mistake, their competitive advantage, somewhat like Nintendo, is that their platform has / had valve games on it.
  - Impossible 7y ago
    This was Steams initial competitive advantage and it's still a benefit, but now Steam's advantage is that most commercial PC games are on Steam. Although many people still dislike Steam for various reasons, it's still overall the best game platform available on PC and is better than console and mobile platforms in many ways. One thing to thing about is that many of the biggest games (LoL, Fortnite, Minecraft, Activision Blizzard and EA titles) are not available on Steam.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    This right here... There are game studios that can keep churning out enough games to create their own alternatives to Steam and they have and they will succeed without Steam. What will be left is microtransactions and indie games if they arent careful.
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Valve has the network effect being both a top-of-mind store, distribution platform, and friend network.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
I'd be curious to hear you speculate on how Valve's VR push may have come about. VR certainly has the potential to make money long term, but very long term, and that payoff is far from guaranteed.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  I guess they are afraid of the oculus store.if vr becomes a thing and something like the quest make it ( standalone vr) steam is gone for good. Then the middle man is Facebook with oculus store.
- throwaway34241 7y ago
  I'm not GP, but that information is actually publicly available from the people involved, here's a basic summary if you're interested: Gabe Newell invited Michael Abrash to work at Valve (they knew each other from back at Microsoft, and Abrash was even offered to be a co-founder of Valve originally but turned it down). Abrash was interested in wearable displays as a future platform. Valve missed mobile and even wants to reduce their dependence on Windows, so there's justification to research it and put together a team.
kbumsik 7y ago
I think this perfectly explains how Artifact [1], the worst game ever made by Valve, was made. Valve is now not interested in making games but something that makes money with least effort. [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/583950/Artifact https://store.steampowered.com/app/583950/Artifact
- stcredzero 7y ago
  now not interested in making _____ but something that makes money with least effort I substituted the blank for "games." Doesn't this now apply to lean startups?
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Isn't this the goal of every business and employee ever? To make money with the least effort. Is that so shameful?
    - bdavisx 7y ago
      Very often the way to make money with the least effort involves some kind of scamming/fraud - and at the very least it's not usually good for consumers, so it's not good for your company in the long run.
    - caffeinewriter 7y ago
      I mean, yes and no. Every business exists to make profit, but most companies thrive when their customers are happy, not miserable. Many (but not all) microtransactions in gaming, particularly in the more predatory free-to-play models, don't exist for the good of the product, but to offer a relief to the player as the game applies more pressure and pain to try and force the player to cave and spend money. Even the "just cosmetic" microtransactions lean hard on techniques to get the player to spend as much as possible. Both sides of this aren't universal, some businesses are very much "minimum effort, maximum profit" without much care for the quality of their product, and some games take great care to not fall into predatory monetization techniques, even with microtransactions, but speaking generally, it's something that seems rather unique to the game industry.
darkmarmot 7y ago
You should write that book!
- bytematic 7y ago
  Seriously, it seems like every gamer reveres valve and gabe but all I've ever heard from insiders is how awful they are (nowadays).
quadcore 7y ago
Video games are not like movies, not like content. Since their inception, 1% of the games get 99% of the players. For example, when half-life was released, everybody was playing half-life. In this environment, you can't simply make another fps with a cool scenario and expect it to be a hit. You have to have real hard innovations in your product. A look at the big trends since 30 years clearly shows it. For example, in 2000, 50 games were high-grossing hits over a total of 5000 games that were produced that year [1]. You may think, well, cool story bro but what about Ubisoft for example, they are doing games like content. Most companies that did or do video games like it's content have or will disappear (the data show it all). Now, there is a business in pissing video games like content, but there is only spots for a few big conglomerates that will profits from the quantity, not the quality. This is in my opinion the reason why Valve is having a hard time doing a new game, not because they don't want to. They want to be Valve and make good games, even if it means waiting years before an opportunity presents itself. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Game-French-Nicolas-Gaume/dp/284337331X https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Game-French-Nicolas-Gaume/dp/...
- Ygg2 7y ago
  While I agree some games take most of players you know who those players are and which games are those? I don't think it's the most revolutionary games. For example, EA sport franchises make more money than most of their other games. Not to mention casual cash grabs with pay to win mechanics.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  it's not like they should have lacked confidence though. They put out a lot of high quality games one after another. I still think the Orange box was pretty much the best game bundle ever to be sold. And given that they're a private company with lots of cash if they're not making great games, who else is supposed to?
- SXX 7y ago
  > Video games are not like movies, not like content. Since their inception, 1% of the games get 99% of the players. For example, when half-life was released, everybody was playing half-life. In this environment, you can't simply make another fps with a cool scenario and expect it to be a hit. You have to have real hard innovations in your product. I hope it's some kind of sarcasm. This is why Call of Duty is best-selling video game in the US 7 of 9 years since 2009: https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1134171732053331968 https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1134171732053331968 Basically most of video games market is content-driven games be it some mobile, social game or MMO. Innovations mostly occur in games for hardcore or indie audience and market share of these games are pretty small.
ehsankia 7y ago
That was my fear too, that anyone who was there for the sake of making quality games (such as you) had left and everyone still at Valve only cared about maximizing profit. It's unfortunate, the thing I kept hearing over and over is that Valve, being a private company, isn't required to maximize profit and can instead focus on making meaningful games. That's honestly what I thought the people who worked there wanted. Gabe himself was a millionaire from Microsoft, and I assumed he started a game company to for the love of making video games.
- dx87 7y ago
  From recent accounts of former employees, he's pretty hands off with the company nowadays, mainly playing Dota 2 in his office and occasionally coming out to see how everyone is doing. I was suprised to find out that he's one of the main reasons that Windows became the most popular PC gaming platform. He was one of the main proponents of porting the original DOOM to Windows, and him and his team were responsible for creating DirectX before he left to create Valve.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    > From recent accounts of former employees, he's pretty hands off with the company nowadays, mainly playing Dota 2 in his office and occasionally coming out to see how everyone is doing. Uh. That's kinda sad. I remember messages on some forums (edit: around hl2 release) from some gamers asking if he was okay since he had gained a lot of weight at that time. I remember one of the guy who won a prize competition and was given a tour of Valve offices and took pictures of the crowbar (or something else, details are fuzzy). It looks like depression from here.
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      So he has a money making plattform now, but maybe he should have focused more on making good games, that make people happy, to stay happy himself?
      - 7y ago
leowoo91 7y ago
> had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it So it's harder to expand the team than keeping an extra 200m revenue? Can't find words to describe if that's the real reason. Every player I know got excited when I told them we need Portal 3 btw.
- Guest0918231 7y ago
  This is what I don't understand. Why not hire 100 great game developers, give them $2 million each over 4 years, and have them develop Portal 3? We know it would sell well. What about Left 4 Dead 3? Once again, it would be an instant hit. Even if Valve develops a game that breaks even, it helps to strengthen Steam as a whole and those users go on to make purchases elsewhere on their platform. How much money did they lose because someone else developed Fortnite? How many users started buying games at Epic instead of Steam because their first jump into PC gaming was with Fortnite at the Epic store?
  - therealdrag0 7y ago
    Yep. I interviewed at Epic and the recruiter gave a big ol spiel about how they're working on developing a platform for cross-system gaming. Basically genericizing what they did for Fortnite and selling it as a game platform service. I could see a lot of those games going into an Epic Store that replaces Steam.
de_watcher 7y ago
What about VR? They are trying to make another breakthrough there.
- GuB-42 7y ago
  Well, IMHO The Lab is the best "game" made by Valve in the recent years. For a free tech demo, it has a surprisingly large amount of content: 8 minigames, plus the lobby. Three of them are score-based and have some replay value, the others are more like experiences. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there is more to it now. There is the Valve Index, but that's just a nice headset with nothing revolutionary. It may have a best-in-class display but none of the "gen2" features such as wireless communication, inside-out tracking, foveated rendering with eye tracking, varifocal lens...
hoffs 7y ago
Your comment seems to talk about all publicly known information and pretty much reiterates the common hate echo chamber. Which leads me to believe that you made this all up.
antisemiotic 7y ago
>most of which are designed by players, not the employees! Which is kind of funny, as the original CS and TF Classic were total conversion mods made by players. I fondly remember Natural Selection, which was also later made into a standalone game. Shame Valve didn't explore the market of enabling amateur/semi-professional game design before Unity and UE ate that particular lunch. I guess the hats must be worth it.
PingalPratyush 7y ago
Hey riotnrrd. I report for a video games news website. Would you like to share more about the environment at Valve? Feel free to contact me on discord - pingal#8518 or email - pingal@spieltimes.com

onezerozeroone 7y ago

While you were there, how much was Valve still an "anarcho syndicalist" paradise? When you say projects were cancelled, was that because the teams working on them decided to stop (since everybody there is supposed to be their own boss) or was it a decision that came from the top down? Just curious how close Valve still is to its roots -- or at least the popular mythos of them.

riotnrrd 7y ago
In theory, employees are allowed to (supposed to, even) work on whatever they think is valuable. In reality, you should be working on whatever the people around you think is valuable or you're gonna get fired really quickly. (Fewer than half of new employees make it to the end of their first year.) This usually means doing whatever the most senior people on the team think is important, both because they should know if they've been there for a while, but also because they wield enormous power behind the scenes. The problem with a company with no defined job titles or explicit seniority is that there is still seniority, but it is invisible and thus deniable. An example: in my first few months, I was struggling to find a good project and a very senior employee (one of the partners, actually) took me aside and recommended I leave my current team since my heart was clearly not in it and take some time to think about what I really wanted to do, or else I'd get let go. I took his advice seriously, came up with a couple ideas, and then approached him a week or so later to pitch these projects. He got _angry_ at me, stressing that he's not my boss, and that it showed a remarkable lack of initiative that I'd ask someone else at the company what I should work on. So: he has the authority to fire me (or at least to plausibly threaten to fire me) but the moment that authority would mean any responsibility or even the slightest effort to mentor someone, he's just another regular Joe with no special role at all. Similarly, there's no way to get meaningful feedback because nobody really knows who's going to be making the performance evaluations. Sure, you can take advice from someone who's been there for ten years, but if they're not included in the group that's assembled to evaluate you then their guidance is worth nothing. I worked with some very smart people there, but it was the most dysfunctional and broken work environment I've ever witnessed.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  The problem with a company with no defined job titles or explicit seniority is that there is still seniority, but it is invisible and thus deniable. In groups of humans operating in "communal" mode, this invisibility of the hierarchy is by design. It's not the top brass that's doing it. It's the "will of the people."
- Ygg2 7y ago
  That is some Kafkaesque shit. I mean compare. > Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” ... > The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it. http://www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html http://www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Your boss can vigorously deny responsibility just as easily as a senior co-worker. What's to stop them?
  - Goronmon 7y ago
    So, Valve is a terrible company bogged down by incompetent middle managers, just like many other terrible companies run by incompetent middle managers. The only difference is that at Valve their official title is "co-worker" instead of "boss". I'm not sure that perspective is useful.
    - codesushi42 7y ago
      It is to some degree since a "co-worker" can be completely absolved of any responsibility for your performance. Cowards.
    - 7y ago

Cypher 7y ago

If it were purely a profit case and they really don't want to make a new game. Then why doesn't valve sell the IP to publishers that want to make HL3, Portal3, Left4Dead3 etc? they'll collect a check with no effort and enable fans to have a new game.

downrightmike 7y ago
Valve is treading water with their current games. Their current ecosystem is broadly based on goodwill of that system. If other publishers make a Valve game, like BattleField 2, and it gets called out and shunned, that ruins the good will that fuels Valve. And as long as they don't release games like that, they don't rock their boat. The problem with Epic is that they don't have any goodwill to start with that they can lose and they are smearing studios in a level of hate that is destroying those studio's goodwill. At the end of it both will make money, but Valve will come out smelling like roses and able to pick the winners after Epic destroys the low hanging fruit.
- rasz 7y ago
  > Epic is that they don't have any goodwill none, except Unreal Tournament legacy and one of the best 3d engines on the market for the last 20 years.
  - mycall 7y ago
    Unreal Engine is miles better than Value's engine.
darkpuma 7y ago
Because HL3 would suck. First person shooters today are very different than what first person shooters were when HL2 was released. It's Quake vs Overwatch. So Valve is between a rock and a hard place; do they make HL3 in the modern style and alienate all their original fans? Or do they make HL3 in the dated style and risk a flop because the market for that dated style has only gotten smaller over the past decade and new players aren't interested in it? That's why HL3 would suck. No matter which path they take, and no matter how expertly they make it, it will almost certainly be something that leaves a TON of people dissatisfied. So it's better for Valve to not make it. They'd rather HL3 be an urban legend than a disappointment. That's better for their image as experts in their craft.

johnvanommen 7y ago

> "Portal 2," he explained, had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it, when you could make 100s of millions a year selling digital hats and paintjobs for guns (most of which are designed by players, not the employees!) All of the most successful tech companies are platforms: * Facebook is a platform for it's users to make posts * eBay is a platform for it's users to sell items * Amazon is a platform for retail companies * Even Google is a platform, because it's taking the Internet itself, and re-packaging it From that perspective, you can see how things wound up like this at Valve.

shrewduser 7y ago
they've made a huge mistake, their competitive advantage, somewhat like Nintendo, is that their platform has / had valve games on it.
- Impossible 7y ago
  This was Steams initial competitive advantage and it's still a benefit, but now Steam's advantage is that most commercial PC games are on Steam. Although many people still dislike Steam for various reasons, it's still overall the best game platform available on PC and is better than console and mobile platforms in many ways. One thing to thing about is that many of the biggest games (LoL, Fortnite, Minecraft, Activision Blizzard and EA titles) are not available on Steam.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  This right here... There are game studios that can keep churning out enough games to create their own alternatives to Steam and they have and they will succeed without Steam. What will be left is microtransactions and indie games if they arent careful.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Valve has the network effect being both a top-of-mind store, distribution platform, and friend network.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

I'd be curious to hear you speculate on how Valve's VR push may have come about. VR certainly has the potential to make money long term, but very long term, and that payoff is far from guaranteed.

Bombthecat 7y ago
I guess they are afraid of the oculus store.if vr becomes a thing and something like the quest make it ( standalone vr) steam is gone for good. Then the middle man is Facebook with oculus store.
throwaway34241 7y ago
I'm not GP, but that information is actually publicly available from the people involved, here's a basic summary if you're interested: Gabe Newell invited Michael Abrash to work at Valve (they knew each other from back at Microsoft, and Abrash was even offered to be a co-founder of Valve originally but turned it down). Abrash was interested in wearable displays as a future platform. Valve missed mobile and even wants to reduce their dependence on Windows, so there's justification to research it and put together a team.

kbumsik 7y ago

I think this perfectly explains how Artifact [1], the worst game ever made by Valve, was made. Valve is now not interested in making games but something that makes money with least effort. [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/583950/Artifact https://store.steampowered.com/app/583950/Artifact

stcredzero 7y ago
now not interested in making _____ but something that makes money with least effort I substituted the blank for "games." Doesn't this now apply to lean startups?
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Isn't this the goal of every business and employee ever? To make money with the least effort. Is that so shameful?
  - bdavisx 7y ago
    Very often the way to make money with the least effort involves some kind of scamming/fraud - and at the very least it's not usually good for consumers, so it's not good for your company in the long run.
  - caffeinewriter 7y ago
    I mean, yes and no. Every business exists to make profit, but most companies thrive when their customers are happy, not miserable. Many (but not all) microtransactions in gaming, particularly in the more predatory free-to-play models, don't exist for the good of the product, but to offer a relief to the player as the game applies more pressure and pain to try and force the player to cave and spend money. Even the "just cosmetic" microtransactions lean hard on techniques to get the player to spend as much as possible. Both sides of this aren't universal, some businesses are very much "minimum effort, maximum profit" without much care for the quality of their product, and some games take great care to not fall into predatory monetization techniques, even with microtransactions, but speaking generally, it's something that seems rather unique to the game industry.

darkmarmot 7y ago

You should write that book!

bytematic 7y ago
Seriously, it seems like every gamer reveres valve and gabe but all I've ever heard from insiders is how awful they are (nowadays).

quadcore 7y ago

Video games are not like movies, not like content. Since their inception, 1% of the games get 99% of the players. For example, when half-life was released, everybody was playing half-life. In this environment, you can't simply make another fps with a cool scenario and expect it to be a hit. You have to have real hard innovations in your product. A look at the big trends since 30 years clearly shows it. For example, in 2000, 50 games were high-grossing hits over a total of 5000 games that were produced that year [1]. You may think, well, cool story bro but what about Ubisoft for example, they are doing games like content. Most companies that did or do video games like it's content have or will disappear (the data show it all). Now, there is a business in pissing video games like content, but there is only spots for a few big conglomerates that will profits from the quantity, not the quality. This is in my opinion the reason why Valve is having a hard time doing a new game, not because they don't want to. They want to be Valve and make good games, even if it means waiting years before an opportunity presents itself. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Game-French-Nicolas-Gaume/dp/284337331X https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Game-French-Nicolas-Gaume/dp/...

Ygg2 7y ago
While I agree some games take most of players you know who those players are and which games are those? I don't think it's the most revolutionary games. For example, EA sport franchises make more money than most of their other games. Not to mention casual cash grabs with pay to win mechanics.
Barrin92 7y ago
it's not like they should have lacked confidence though. They put out a lot of high quality games one after another. I still think the Orange box was pretty much the best game bundle ever to be sold. And given that they're a private company with lots of cash if they're not making great games, who else is supposed to?
SXX 7y ago
> Video games are not like movies, not like content. Since their inception, 1% of the games get 99% of the players. For example, when half-life was released, everybody was playing half-life. In this environment, you can't simply make another fps with a cool scenario and expect it to be a hit. You have to have real hard innovations in your product. I hope it's some kind of sarcasm. This is why Call of Duty is best-selling video game in the US 7 of 9 years since 2009: https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1134171732053331968 https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1134171732053331968 Basically most of video games market is content-driven games be it some mobile, social game or MMO. Innovations mostly occur in games for hardcore or indie audience and market share of these games are pretty small.

ehsankia 7y ago

That was my fear too, that anyone who was there for the sake of making quality games (such as you) had left and everyone still at Valve only cared about maximizing profit. It's unfortunate, the thing I kept hearing over and over is that Valve, being a private company, isn't required to maximize profit and can instead focus on making meaningful games. That's honestly what I thought the people who worked there wanted. Gabe himself was a millionaire from Microsoft, and I assumed he started a game company to for the love of making video games.

dx87 7y ago
From recent accounts of former employees, he's pretty hands off with the company nowadays, mainly playing Dota 2 in his office and occasionally coming out to see how everyone is doing. I was suprised to find out that he's one of the main reasons that Windows became the most popular PC gaming platform. He was one of the main proponents of porting the original DOOM to Windows, and him and his team were responsible for creating DirectX before he left to create Valve.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  > From recent accounts of former employees, he's pretty hands off with the company nowadays, mainly playing Dota 2 in his office and occasionally coming out to see how everyone is doing. Uh. That's kinda sad. I remember messages on some forums (edit: around hl2 release) from some gamers asking if he was okay since he had gained a lot of weight at that time. I remember one of the guy who won a prize competition and was given a tour of Valve offices and took pictures of the crowbar (or something else, details are fuzzy). It looks like depression from here.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    So he has a money making plattform now, but maybe he should have focused more on making good games, that make people happy, to stay happy himself?
    - 7y ago

leowoo91 7y ago

> had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it So it's harder to expand the team than keeping an extra 200m revenue? Can't find words to describe if that's the real reason. Every player I know got excited when I told them we need Portal 3 btw.

Guest0918231 7y ago
This is what I don't understand. Why not hire 100 great game developers, give them $2 million each over 4 years, and have them develop Portal 3? We know it would sell well. What about Left 4 Dead 3? Once again, it would be an instant hit. Even if Valve develops a game that breaks even, it helps to strengthen Steam as a whole and those users go on to make purchases elsewhere on their platform. How much money did they lose because someone else developed Fortnite? How many users started buying games at Epic instead of Steam because their first jump into PC gaming was with Fortnite at the Epic store?
- therealdrag0 7y ago
  Yep. I interviewed at Epic and the recruiter gave a big ol spiel about how they're working on developing a platform for cross-system gaming. Basically genericizing what they did for Fortnite and selling it as a game platform service. I could see a lot of those games going into an Epic Store that replaces Steam.

de_watcher 7y ago

What about VR? They are trying to make another breakthrough there.

GuB-42 7y ago
Well, IMHO The Lab is the best "game" made by Valve in the recent years. For a free tech demo, it has a surprisingly large amount of content: 8 minigames, plus the lobby. Three of them are score-based and have some replay value, the others are more like experiences. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there is more to it now. There is the Valve Index, but that's just a nice headset with nothing revolutionary. It may have a best-in-class display but none of the "gen2" features such as wireless communication, inside-out tracking, foveated rendering with eye tracking, varifocal lens...

hoffs 7y ago

Your comment seems to talk about all publicly known information and pretty much reiterates the common hate echo chamber. Which leads me to believe that you made this all up.

antisemiotic 7y ago

>most of which are designed by players, not the employees! Which is kind of funny, as the original CS and TF Classic were total conversion mods made by players. I fondly remember Natural Selection, which was also later made into a standalone game. Shame Valve didn't explore the market of enabling amateur/semi-professional game design before Unity and UE ate that particular lunch. I guess the hats must be worth it.

PingalPratyush 7y ago

Hey riotnrrd. I report for a video games news website. Would you like to share more about the environment at Valve? Feel free to contact me on discord - pingal#8518 or email - pingal@spieltimes.com