7 ms·

The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

240 points by krajzeg 2y ago

dmonitor 2y ago
Fascinating story. It's amazing hearing about how the seed of an idea that eventually became Steam started from preventing piracy of Half-Life, and later materialized as a contingency plan due to their awful publishing deal. Glad the author could share her side of the story and get some credit for her attributions.
echelon 2y ago
This is such a good story. Drawing down personal finances to underwrite the company, hiring pizza delivery drivers ... this was a really incredible journey.
ryandrake 2y ago
What really struck me was how OK Microsoft seemed to be with her moonlighting for Valve, basically working for a competitor (albeit a small one) directly in a role that was also her role in Microsoft. Pretty much unheard of in FAANGs today. You can't so much as breathe on an external project today without FAANG claiming IP ownership over anything and everything you breathe on. Imagine working for Apple and telling your manager, "Hey, by the way, I'm going to be helping out a little with a small-potatoes competing mobile operating system project... You're cool with that, right?" > I had another conversation with Microsoft execs about my role and the conflict with Valve, and again I was essentially told, “it’s fine, we’re OK, we like where you’re at, don’t worry.” WOW!
- intelVISA 2y ago
  Oof. What a sly way to imply the person doesn't have any real value to the company, MS truly be ruthless.
  - fn-mote 2y ago
    The way I took it was that she was producing a lot of value at Microsoft and they estimated the “threat value” was very low. In this case they were wrong, but could anyone have known?
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      This was years before Steam. It was just a regular game studio, of which most are complete failures.
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      Funny, I just recently had a talk about this with a guy who is younger than Half-Life. ugh Basically, at this point MS already had an understanding what games are a great driver for selling both the OS and apps, but the game market itself was too small to bother with more than being a publisher: >> In the United States, Age of Empires debuted at #7 on PC Data's computer game sales rankings for October 1997.[36] It secured places eighth and 13th the following two months, respectively.[37][38] By the end of 1997, Age of Empires totaled sales in the country above 178,000 units, for revenues in excess of $8 million. This performance made it the United States' most successful real-time strategy game during late 1997: a writer for PC Gamer US noted that its sales surpassed the combined totals of rivals Total Annihilation and Dark Reign over the same period, and were over four times greater than those of Myth: The Fallen Lords.[39] Sure, AoE was a great success eventually ($120M revenue, by 2000) but it was a hit which surpassed many, many other games and but it took a lot of time; while this was still a summer of '97.
  - klyrs 2y ago
    I read this as hubris from Microsoft -- they valued the author's work, but the expected value of a game company is negative so that's how they played their hand.
    - hex4def6 2y ago
      I don't know if I read that as hubris. What else could they do? If they say "no," and this truly is something she's interested in, they risk losing her completely. I think it sounds like they were remarkably accommodating. I doubt you'd find many companies these days that would grant the same sort of deal.
      - fragmede 2y ago
        Do you know a lot of people who report to directors at many Fortune 100 corporations? I'm sure if you are high up enough, and have specialized enough skills, many companies would grant the same deal because there are only a handful of people in the world that have been proven able to do that job. How many Bob Eigers are there?
        ryandrake 2y ago
        > 'm sure if you are high up enough, and have specialized enough skills, many companies would grant the same deal because there are only a handful of people in the world that are able to do that job. How many Bob Eigers are there? I think many people believe this, but how do they know? There are ~7 billion people on the planet. You mean to tell me that only a "handful" are capable of doing a particular job? And not even "CEO of billion dollar company" but "Director of a 200 person org who attends meetings and makes decisions." Really? Only a "handful" of the 7 billion people on earth can do this?
        barrkel 2y ago
        There's the raw talent, and then there's everything else: occupying powerful positions near the top of the hierarchy, the social network, the experience, the track record, the lessons learned from mistakes made, and so on. There's only so much room at the top, and you need to spend time near the top to get everything else. Truth is, the everything else is a big part of the package.
  - wk_end 2y ago
    That interpretation seems to contradict Microsoft's general attitude towards her: > I’d worked for Microsoft for nine years by then. My career was in high gear. A year earlier I’d been honored with the Market Maker award as the marketer who “added the most to the (1600+-person) Consumer Division’s bottom line.”
  - smittywerben 2y ago
    I find your speculation about Microsoft's intent to be vapid and unnecessary. Those who are easy to work with and well-liked are allowed to do more. It's that simple. This dynamic is common in workplaces.
- Dwedit 2y ago
  Gabe Newell was on the Windows 1.0 team.
  - gibbetsandcrows 2y ago
    An Easter egg of his was recently found in an old Windows 1.0 file. https://www.techradar.com/news/almost-37-years-after-its-launch-someone-found-an-easter-egg-in-windows-10 https://www.techradar.com/news/almost-37-years-after-its-lau...
    - Hikikomori 2y ago
      Doesn't say that Gaben did it?
- kevingadd 2y ago
  Anyone planning to moonlight while working at a big company should consult a lawyer first, but Microsoft has very employee-friendly policies in general.
  - filoleg 2y ago
    They still do (at least as of a few years ago, which was when I left). Out of all tech companies I’ve seen, their moonlighting policy is by far the most permissible one. You fill out a short form, they review it fairly quickly, and then you get an official “you are good to go, this is your project, we aren’t going to have any claims against in the future”email. I am yet to see anyone who got a rejection on that form (but I also don’t know anyone who would attempt to send the form for their personal project that would be a blatantly direct and significant competitor of a big moneymaker MSFT product).
Sakos 2y ago
Oh wow, the (now ex) wife of the co-founder. The guy who sold his stake in Valve before Steam was launched and then went sailing for 6 years with his wife. This paints a whole new picture of why he ended up leaving and it's fascinating. Grateful that she shared her side of the story. > The structure of the deal meant that we would be vested in Valve’s success over the next five years Great foresight.
- jamesfinlayson 2y ago
  Yeah I remember reading Gabe Newell's reflection on the leak of Half-Life 2 at some point and while Mike Harrington's departure was mentioned only briefly, I always got the impression that he left because he'd make his millions and was happy to sail off into the sunset.
kranke155 2y ago
With steel in my voice, I told the Sierra team that they were not pulling marketing dollars from Half-Life. They were going to re-release it in a Game of the Year Box, and they were going to support it with huge marketing spend or we were going to walk away from our agreement and tell the industry that had fallen in love with Valve how screwed up Sierra really was. At the end of the meeting, I was shaking. We were vulnerable, the partners were barely speaking, and life at home and in the office was tense. I love people like this. I’ve seen in documentaries. James Carville running the Clinton campaign. An absolute political animal. Always doing more, thinking faster, multiple moves ahead of the competition, doing movies the competition doesn’t even know exist, and relentlessly focused and often workaholic.
jerglingu 2y ago
Amazing read, and glad she could write this into history. It's amazing to me that Half-Life's status of immortality has more or less been preserved even today.
endgame 2y ago
Fantastic article. I think the title does it a disservice — I expected a disappointing chronicle of sexism, but it's full of details and strategy during one of the most interesting and volatile periods of PC gaming history. The article mentions that John Cook and Robin Walker made a mod that attracted Valve's attention, and then they shipped TFC. That would surely mean the mod would've been Team Fortress for QuakeWorld, and not for Doom?
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  I used to play Quake multiplayer with Jon and Robin at the Camberwell Internet Cafe! Ahh, those were the days! (They were much better than me, I was a n00b)
- jamesfinlayson 2y ago
  Agreed - I thought there was a note about a correction at the end? Maybe she got them mixed up with Dario Casali and Final Doom.
  - endgame 2y ago
    The clarification identifies the mod as TF but the article body still says that it was a mod for Doom.
- exmicrosoldier 2y ago
  Yes it was QuakeWorld Team Fortess. Funny story of my own. I had just started at Microsoft and met Robin Walker at a lan party with a bunch of other QuakeWorld TeamFortress fans. As soon as they hired Robin and John i knew they (valve) were going to be a giant hit. As a former windows PM, it seems that Gabe knew how valuable mod authors as first time game designers were. Valve may not have been the first to make their game engine a platform, but they were the most dedicated to it in that era. I didn't know their contract with Sierra was so much like a music industry contract and that they didn't own their Half life IP. It makes so much more sense why they recruited the founder of counterstrike, which is an even bigger hit than TF2. If they had been public i would have bought into valve before 2005. I missed the boat on apple, amazon, and so many others, but that one had a competitive advantage of understanding the industry that I understood.
JBits 2y ago
Fun and well written read. It's ironic though how terrible the 15% cut was considered given that Steam takes 30%.
- lanstein 2y ago
  85% no?
  - salomonk_mur 2y ago
    Yes, it was 85%. 30% by Steam is a steal comparatively.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      Just tells you how horrible logistics of physical products are. Digital world removed many of the hands that touched the box previously from manufacturing, to warehouse, shipping and then the retail shop especially. Everyone in the chain needing to be paid or taking their own cut. Digital is so much simpler.
rPlayer6554 2y ago
The author has the conclusion that she was wiped from the history books because she's a woman. But her husband worked almost the exact same amount (if not more - because he was always a full time employee.) and he got equally erased from the history books. Competitive environments can be cutthroat and she and her husband let Gabe become the face of the company because they left.
- gyropants 2y ago
  Additionally, she had to be less visible because her primary contribution was marketing. She describes in detail how much time and effort was necessary to create advance buzz around the game (seeding stories to the press, the "game of the year" posturing before they actually had a game). Her contributions were major to be sure, and I don't mean to downplay her efforts towards Valve's success. But by necessity, the machinery of marketing needs to be mostly invisible, because the manipulation doesn't work when people are conscious that they're being manipulated.
  - nox101 2y ago
    Agreed, how many marketing people can you name from Hollywood? Me, zero. But you can probably name some of the people who created the movie (actors, directors, producers, musicians, etc....)
    - ofrzeta 2y ago
      I don't know many producers, maybe with the exception of the Broccoli family who are producing James Bond :) I know some directors of photography, though, because their work is defines an aesthetic characteristic of movies. However I was/am a film buzz for a long time and don't think the layman will know any directors of photography. Related it's also interesting that in German the directory of photography is only called a "Kameramann" (camera guy) while the English term emphasizes their "directing". And it's true. They are typically not the ones operating the camera but have operators for that like "focus pullers". Sorry, I got carried a away with the topic a little bit :)
womenarebad 2y ago
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dietomorrow 2y ago
[flagged]
dangmustsuffer 2y ago
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240 points by krajzeg 2y ago

Fascinating story. It's amazing hearing about how the seed of an idea that eventually became Steam started from preventing piracy of Half-Life, and later materialized as a contingency plan due to their awful publishing deal. Glad the author could share her side of the story and get some credit for her attributions.

echelon 2y ago

This is such a good story. Drawing down personal finances to underwrite the company, hiring pizza delivery drivers ... this was a really incredible journey.

ryandrake 2y ago

What really struck me was how OK Microsoft seemed to be with her moonlighting for Valve, basically working for a competitor (albeit a small one) directly in a role that was also her role in Microsoft. Pretty much unheard of in FAANGs today. You can't so much as breathe on an external project today without FAANG claiming IP ownership over anything and everything you breathe on. Imagine working for Apple and telling your manager, "Hey, by the way, I'm going to be helping out a little with a small-potatoes competing mobile operating system project... You're cool with that, right?" > I had another conversation with Microsoft execs about my role and the conflict with Valve, and again I was essentially told, “it’s fine, we’re OK, we like where you’re at, don’t worry.” WOW!

intelVISA 2y ago
Oof. What a sly way to imply the person doesn't have any real value to the company, MS truly be ruthless.
- fn-mote 2y ago
  The way I took it was that she was producing a lot of value at Microsoft and they estimated the “threat value” was very low. In this case they were wrong, but could anyone have known?
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    This was years before Steam. It was just a regular game studio, of which most are complete failures.
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    Funny, I just recently had a talk about this with a guy who is younger than Half-Life. ugh Basically, at this point MS already had an understanding what games are a great driver for selling both the OS and apps, but the game market itself was too small to bother with more than being a publisher: >> In the United States, Age of Empires debuted at #7 on PC Data's computer game sales rankings for October 1997.[36] It secured places eighth and 13th the following two months, respectively.[37][38] By the end of 1997, Age of Empires totaled sales in the country above 178,000 units, for revenues in excess of $8 million. This performance made it the United States' most successful real-time strategy game during late 1997: a writer for PC Gamer US noted that its sales surpassed the combined totals of rivals Total Annihilation and Dark Reign over the same period, and were over four times greater than those of Myth: The Fallen Lords.[39] Sure, AoE was a great success eventually ($120M revenue, by 2000) but it was a hit which surpassed many, many other games and but it took a lot of time; while this was still a summer of '97.
- klyrs 2y ago
  I read this as hubris from Microsoft -- they valued the author's work, but the expected value of a game company is negative so that's how they played their hand.
  - hex4def6 2y ago
    I don't know if I read that as hubris. What else could they do? If they say "no," and this truly is something she's interested in, they risk losing her completely. I think it sounds like they were remarkably accommodating. I doubt you'd find many companies these days that would grant the same sort of deal.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Do you know a lot of people who report to directors at many Fortune 100 corporations? I'm sure if you are high up enough, and have specialized enough skills, many companies would grant the same deal because there are only a handful of people in the world that have been proven able to do that job. How many Bob Eigers are there?
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        > 'm sure if you are high up enough, and have specialized enough skills, many companies would grant the same deal because there are only a handful of people in the world that are able to do that job. How many Bob Eigers are there? I think many people believe this, but how do they know? There are ~7 billion people on the planet. You mean to tell me that only a "handful" are capable of doing a particular job? And not even "CEO of billion dollar company" but "Director of a 200 person org who attends meetings and makes decisions." Really? Only a "handful" of the 7 billion people on earth can do this?
        barrkel 2y ago
        There's the raw talent, and then there's everything else: occupying powerful positions near the top of the hierarchy, the social network, the experience, the track record, the lessons learned from mistakes made, and so on. There's only so much room at the top, and you need to spend time near the top to get everything else. Truth is, the everything else is a big part of the package.
- wk_end 2y ago
  That interpretation seems to contradict Microsoft's general attitude towards her: > I’d worked for Microsoft for nine years by then. My career was in high gear. A year earlier I’d been honored with the Market Maker award as the marketer who “added the most to the (1600+-person) Consumer Division’s bottom line.”
- smittywerben 2y ago
  I find your speculation about Microsoft's intent to be vapid and unnecessary. Those who are easy to work with and well-liked are allowed to do more. It's that simple. This dynamic is common in workplaces.
Dwedit 2y ago
Gabe Newell was on the Windows 1.0 team.
- gibbetsandcrows 2y ago
  An Easter egg of his was recently found in an old Windows 1.0 file. https://www.techradar.com/news/almost-37-years-after-its-launch-someone-found-an-easter-egg-in-windows-10 https://www.techradar.com/news/almost-37-years-after-its-lau...
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    Doesn't say that Gaben did it?
kevingadd 2y ago
Anyone planning to moonlight while working at a big company should consult a lawyer first, but Microsoft has very employee-friendly policies in general.
- filoleg 2y ago
  They still do (at least as of a few years ago, which was when I left). Out of all tech companies I’ve seen, their moonlighting policy is by far the most permissible one. You fill out a short form, they review it fairly quickly, and then you get an official “you are good to go, this is your project, we aren’t going to have any claims against in the future”email. I am yet to see anyone who got a rejection on that form (but I also don’t know anyone who would attempt to send the form for their personal project that would be a blatantly direct and significant competitor of a big moneymaker MSFT product).

Sakos 2y ago

Oh wow, the (now ex) wife of the co-founder. The guy who sold his stake in Valve before Steam was launched and then went sailing for 6 years with his wife. This paints a whole new picture of why he ended up leaving and it's fascinating. Grateful that she shared her side of the story. > The structure of the deal meant that we would be vested in Valve’s success over the next five years Great foresight.

jamesfinlayson 2y ago
Yeah I remember reading Gabe Newell's reflection on the leak of Half-Life 2 at some point and while Mike Harrington's departure was mentioned only briefly, I always got the impression that he left because he'd make his millions and was happy to sail off into the sunset.

kranke155 2y ago

With steel in my voice, I told the Sierra team that they were not pulling marketing dollars from Half-Life. They were going to re-release it in a Game of the Year Box, and they were going to support it with huge marketing spend or we were going to walk away from our agreement and tell the industry that had fallen in love with Valve how screwed up Sierra really was. At the end of the meeting, I was shaking. We were vulnerable, the partners were barely speaking, and life at home and in the office was tense. I love people like this. I’ve seen in documentaries. James Carville running the Clinton campaign. An absolute political animal. Always doing more, thinking faster, multiple moves ahead of the competition, doing movies the competition doesn’t even know exist, and relentlessly focused and often workaholic.

jerglingu 2y ago

Amazing read, and glad she could write this into history. It's amazing to me that Half-Life's status of immortality has more or less been preserved even today.

endgame 2y ago

Fantastic article. I think the title does it a disservice — I expected a disappointing chronicle of sexism, but it's full of details and strategy during one of the most interesting and volatile periods of PC gaming history. The article mentions that John Cook and Robin Walker made a mod that attracted Valve's attention, and then they shipped TFC. That would surely mean the mod would've been Team Fortress for QuakeWorld, and not for Doom?

jay_kyburz 2y ago
I used to play Quake multiplayer with Jon and Robin at the Camberwell Internet Cafe! Ahh, those were the days! (They were much better than me, I was a n00b)
jamesfinlayson 2y ago
Agreed - I thought there was a note about a correction at the end? Maybe she got them mixed up with Dario Casali and Final Doom.
- endgame 2y ago
  The clarification identifies the mod as TF but the article body still says that it was a mod for Doom.
exmicrosoldier 2y ago
Yes it was QuakeWorld Team Fortess. Funny story of my own. I had just started at Microsoft and met Robin Walker at a lan party with a bunch of other QuakeWorld TeamFortress fans. As soon as they hired Robin and John i knew they (valve) were going to be a giant hit. As a former windows PM, it seems that Gabe knew how valuable mod authors as first time game designers were. Valve may not have been the first to make their game engine a platform, but they were the most dedicated to it in that era. I didn't know their contract with Sierra was so much like a music industry contract and that they didn't own their Half life IP. It makes so much more sense why they recruited the founder of counterstrike, which is an even bigger hit than TF2. If they had been public i would have bought into valve before 2005. I missed the boat on apple, amazon, and so many others, but that one had a competitive advantage of understanding the industry that I understood.

JBits 2y ago

Fun and well written read. It's ironic though how terrible the 15% cut was considered given that Steam takes 30%.

lanstein 2y ago
85% no?
- salomonk_mur 2y ago
  Yes, it was 85%. 30% by Steam is a steal comparatively.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Just tells you how horrible logistics of physical products are. Digital world removed many of the hands that touched the box previously from manufacturing, to warehouse, shipping and then the retail shop especially. Everyone in the chain needing to be paid or taking their own cut. Digital is so much simpler.

rPlayer6554 2y ago

The author has the conclusion that she was wiped from the history books because she's a woman. But her husband worked almost the exact same amount (if not more - because he was always a full time employee.) and he got equally erased from the history books. Competitive environments can be cutthroat and she and her husband let Gabe become the face of the company because they left.

gyropants 2y ago
Additionally, she had to be less visible because her primary contribution was marketing. She describes in detail how much time and effort was necessary to create advance buzz around the game (seeding stories to the press, the "game of the year" posturing before they actually had a game). Her contributions were major to be sure, and I don't mean to downplay her efforts towards Valve's success. But by necessity, the machinery of marketing needs to be mostly invisible, because the manipulation doesn't work when people are conscious that they're being manipulated.
- nox101 2y ago
  Agreed, how many marketing people can you name from Hollywood? Me, zero. But you can probably name some of the people who created the movie (actors, directors, producers, musicians, etc....)
  - ofrzeta 2y ago
    I don't know many producers, maybe with the exception of the Broccoli family who are producing James Bond :) I know some directors of photography, though, because their work is defines an aesthetic characteristic of movies. However I was/am a film buzz for a long time and don't think the layman will know any directors of photography. Related it's also interesting that in German the directory of photography is only called a "Kameramann" (camera guy) while the English term emphasizes their "directing". And it's true. They are typically not the ones operating the camera but have operators for that like "focus pullers". Sorry, I got carried a away with the topic a little bit :)

womenarebad 2y ago

[flagged]

dietomorrow 2y ago

[flagged]

dangmustsuffer 2y ago

[flagged]