4 ms·
Fascinating article. One question remains unanswered though - how did Valve afford all of this? Given Half Life was their first game, where was the money comin
by nmfisher 6y ago
Fascinating article.
One question remains unanswered though - how did Valve afford all of this? Given Half Life was their first game, where was the money coming from to not only produce an entire game, but to then scrap it and redesign/rewrite from scratch?
- Danieru 6y agoValve was started by two Microsoft Millionaires. Money wasn't an issue.
- nmfisher 6y agoEven still, the initial Cabal was three engineers, a writer, an animator and a designer, so you can assume that the broader team was at least that much again. That's 12 people full-time working for 2-3 years (and the actual credits go up to 30, so it's probably even more). At $75k per FTE (in 1996 salaries), that's at least $3 million, which is quite a lot, even for two people wealthy from MSFT stock options.
- enneff 6y agoGabe Newell was in a senior role at MS for 13 years before he left to start Valve. That’s a lot of money.
- baud147258 6y agoHalf-Life was published by Sierra, presumably Valve received some money from them.