Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf](steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net)
steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net
Valve New Employee Handbook (2012) [pdf]
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf
115 comments
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 Steam bringing in endless billions of dollars they would have gone out of business a decade ago.
Steam isn't an unimpeachable monopoly, their competition is just so much worse.
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 meaningful impact regardless of how they are.
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 meaningful impact regardless of how they are.
> 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 where your other games are and it's where your friends are.
But that only holds true while Valve doesn't screw up. Their competitors can't be much better than Steam, but Steam could absolutely make horrible decisions that cause people to leave. But they don't. Their organizational inability to make decisive action without wider support has lead to an incredibly stable, predictable platform.
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 where your other games are and it's where your friends are.
But that only holds true while Valve doesn't screw up. Their competitors can't be much better than Steam, but Steam could absolutely make horrible decisions that cause people to leave. But they don't. Their organizational inability to make decisive action without wider support has lead to an incredibly stable, predictable platform.
FWIW, there are tons of DRM free games on Steam as well, it's just not a given like it is on GOG.
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Many of these alternatives failed because they were forced onto users who had already paid over $60 for a game, and they were incredibly slow and clunky. They might have improved over time, but people still remember how bad these stores were at launch.
Isn’t that exactly what Steam did with the Orange Box? They just did it in the 2000s, years before anyone else.
They could get away with it because there was no competitor like Steam.
Yes, that's the effect a monopoly has on the market.
You're replying to a chain about how valve got steam started, are you suggesting that the market was existing in a state of monopoly prior to their actual existence of the product you say held that monopoly?
No, of course not. I should have been more accurate by saying that they were able to do this because there wasn't a monopoly at the time.
Not really. When Steam was the only digital distribution marketplace in existence, it didn't have to be better than any other digital distribution marketplace to convince users to switch to it, by virtue of being first. The followers who look at Steam's profits and want to capture that for themselves have to do so. It just happens that it seems every marketplace since has attempted to compete for developers (particularly in the vein of trying to achieve exclusive games) and generally ignored competition for users except as a byproduct of developer competition.
And the result is that users overwhelmingly prefer to use Steam, with alternatives largely relegated to at best grudging acceptance for those games that require alternative launchers. Since companies are reluctant to post numbers, it's hard to tell what the exact situation other than "Steam is well over 50% of the market", but the next largest is probably GoG, especially if you exclude self-publishing from statistics (if you include it, the popularity of Fortnite might push Epic Game Store into second place). And note that GoG is pretty much the only store that offers users a specific value proposition to use them over Steam: GoG is DRM-free (better publisher/distributor split is a value proposition for developers, not users).
And the result is that users overwhelmingly prefer to use Steam, with alternatives largely relegated to at best grudging acceptance for those games that require alternative launchers. Since companies are reluctant to post numbers, it's hard to tell what the exact situation other than "Steam is well over 50% of the market", but the next largest is probably GoG, especially if you exclude self-publishing from statistics (if you include it, the popularity of Fortnite might push Epic Game Store into second place). And note that GoG is pretty much the only store that offers users a specific value proposition to use them over Steam: GoG is DRM-free (better publisher/distributor split is a value proposition for developers, not users).
> Many of these alternatives failed because they were forced onto users who had already paid over $60 for a game
I really doubt that hurt their adoption. Yes, it pissed people off, but that doesn't mean it suppressed adoption. Being slow and clunky, sure, but you're probably not going to get anywhere without some high value exclusives.
I really doubt that hurt their adoption. Yes, it pissed people off, but that doesn't mean it suppressed adoption. Being slow and clunky, sure, but you're probably not going to get anywhere without some high value exclusives.
That only explains a couple of the stores but not all of them.
Xbox and Epic don't fall in that category. I don't believe EA does either, but not 100% sure.
To be clear here. I am referring to the being forced after buying a game. None of these, to my knowledge, you were forced to use after buying the game on Steam. Unlike Ubisoft.
Xbox and Epic don't fall in that category. I don't believe EA does either, but not 100% sure.
To be clear here. I am referring to the being forced after buying a game. None of these, to my knowledge, you were forced to use after buying the game on Steam. Unlike Ubisoft.
XBox and Epic absolutely do fall in that category. People, myself included, detest using either of those stores, because of their poor implementations. They're slow and unwieldy. The Xbox store on PC is actually so bad. I bought Forza as a chill on the couch and relax kind of game and it is one of the most regrettable purchasing experiences I've ever had. The Epic store is just outright unpleasant software.
The Epic store will only show me prices in Rubles. Never tried to debug it -- who needs it, anyway? -- but always thought that was somewhere between bizarre and hilarious. (US computer, US IP address, no VPN, en-us locale.)
The Epic store might not've been slow, but it was missing so much. It was launched with almost no features, not even reviews. They also didn't have any communities/forums/groups.
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About Epic, they're 35% owned by Tencent (with its inevitable unseen CCP entanglements) and 8% by Disney. That's plenty to put people off.
GOG's great but they're not big enough to move any needles.
Steam puts some of that 30% to work making wonderful things like the SteamDeck, and as a game dev I get a big audience and amazing things like free access to the Steam Datagram Network. So when I want to buy or sell a game, they're overwhelmingly my first choice.
GOG's great but they're not big enough to move any needles.
Steam puts some of that 30% to work making wonderful things like the SteamDeck, and as a game dev I get a big audience and amazing things like free access to the Steam Datagram Network. So when I want to buy or sell a game, they're overwhelmingly my first choice.
I agree.
I’ve met countless gamers who will simply not buy or play a game if it isn’t available on Steam.
Myself included, and all of my gamer friends.
I’ve met countless gamers who will simply not buy or play a game if it isn’t available on Steam.
Myself included, and all of my gamer friends.
I never really understood this mentality, especially when on the console side people seem just fine with the idea of buying multiple consoles for exclusives. (not that I am agreeing with that either).
There isn't a cost to having multiple stores, you don't even need to keep them running at all time. I get the concerns over the Epic app, but Heroic exists.
Personally I have games on Steam, Xbox (cross buy between xbox and PC), Epic, and EA. Plus Game Pass.
The only annoying part is when I go to install or buy a game, finding where I have it or making sure I don't already own it somewhere. But there are launchers like Playnite to address that.
But it does feel like I am in the minority with this opinion.
There isn't a cost to having multiple stores, you don't even need to keep them running at all time. I get the concerns over the Epic app, but Heroic exists.
Personally I have games on Steam, Xbox (cross buy between xbox and PC), Epic, and EA. Plus Game Pass.
The only annoying part is when I go to install or buy a game, finding where I have it or making sure I don't already own it somewhere. But there are launchers like Playnite to address that.
But it does feel like I am in the minority with this opinion.
For me, I don’t like launchers constantly updating and running at startup. Inevitably, they end up breaking something or popping up a modal when I’m trying to do something else.
I tolerate steam on my laptop because they were the first. I hate Epic and other launchers when I just want a game.
I will wait until it gets to steam. And have even skipped free games because I don’t want the mental load.
I tolerate steam on my laptop because they were the first. I hate Epic and other launchers when I just want a game.
I will wait until it gets to steam. And have even skipped free games because I don’t want the mental load.
When you say "people do this" and "people also do that contradictory thing" you're making the mistake assuming that the word refers to the same people.
I didn’t mean to imply they were the same people.
But it is interesting that we have 2 groups of gamers.
One that is so used to and accepting of a practice to not only sometimes buy 2 nearly identical boxes to play exclusive games but also complain when one of them does the right thing and is ending the practice (see drama about Xbox).
One that complains about installing another piece of software with no cost.
Why do these 2 groups of gamers have very different opinions on this.
But it is interesting that we have 2 groups of gamers.
One that is so used to and accepting of a practice to not only sometimes buy 2 nearly identical boxes to play exclusive games but also complain when one of them does the right thing and is ending the practice (see drama about Xbox).
One that complains about installing another piece of software with no cost.
Why do these 2 groups of gamers have very different opinions on this.
Software, especially if installed on my Windows PC, always has a risk of causing security problems, running spyware, agents that slow things down, taking up HD space, weird new DRM, screwing with the registry, etc.
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.
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 game by game decision), but with game pass and cross buy it already didn't make sense for me to go all in on steam, but some games are only on steam.
So what was the harm in adding other stores when it made sense.
> I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.
I don't want to reward it. But I also view myself as a gamer first before any platform loyalties. If I want to play something, that takes priority. So annoyingly I have both under my TV.
rant I am so annoyed at the people complaining about Xbox going Multiplatform as if it isn't a good thing for consumers to not have to buy nearly identical hardware. I don't care that it is how the industry has ran for so long, it's still anti-consumer. end rant
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 game by game decision), but with game pass and cross buy it already didn't make sense for me to go all in on steam, but some games are only on steam.
So what was the harm in adding other stores when it made sense.
> I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.
I don't want to reward it. But I also view myself as a gamer first before any platform loyalties. If I want to play something, that takes priority. So annoyingly I have both under my TV.
rant I am so annoyed at the people complaining about Xbox going Multiplatform as if it isn't a good thing for consumers to not have to buy nearly identical hardware. I don't care that it is how the industry has ran for so long, it's still anti-consumer. end rant
>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.
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.
At this point, sunken cost into a Steam library aside, I won't buy a game if it isn't on Steam and at least SteamDeck supported.
Valve alone has made it possible to game full-time on Linux as a first class citizen and has greatly improved a lot of the Linux desktop experience which is more than enough for me to be willing to continue to only buy games from them.
Valve alone has made it possible to game full-time on Linux as a first class citizen and has greatly improved a lot of the Linux desktop experience which is more than enough for me to be willing to continue to only buy games from them.
In my opinion, GOG is phenomenal and hands down the best digital game storefront now, but it's not what consumers care most about. Many people already have extensive libraries on Steam, too.
Yeah, these days I check GOG first, and sometimes wait until the game is available there.
Both of these can be true, and it’s far more likely to be self reinforcing. Because it’s such an unimpeachable monopoly, the competition that doesn’t put forth billions are doomed to fail.
People talk about feature parity, but that’s irrelevant when slashing Valves cut by 1% is enough to get the vast majority of publishers and developers to stay on board.
They are such an unimpeachable monopoly that Microsoft, makers of the OS that Steam predominantly relies on for consumer spend, also bows to them. After all they’re large enough to get a new cut from the normal distribution terms.
People talk about feature parity, but that’s irrelevant when slashing Valves cut by 1% is enough to get the vast majority of publishers and developers to stay on board.
They are such an unimpeachable monopoly that Microsoft, makers of the OS that Steam predominantly relies on for consumer spend, also bows to them. After all they’re large enough to get a new cut from the normal distribution terms.
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.
> near-unimpeachable monopoly
The failures of other companies trying to emulate or capture that market do not a monopoly make. There is no real moat for Steam beyond customer loyalty and the fact that nearly every competitor sought to gain market through anti-consumer moves (exclusivity) rather than value-adds, and almost universally with shittier software to boot. There are a few notable counterexamples (GoG is a good store, value add, respectful of customers; but just didn't have the juice to establish itself beyond indie/abandonware games; Itch.io is doing fine in its niche).
Just because customers prefer a product does not mean it's got an unimpeachable moat.
The failures of other companies trying to emulate or capture that market do not a monopoly make. There is no real moat for Steam beyond customer loyalty and the fact that nearly every competitor sought to gain market through anti-consumer moves (exclusivity) rather than value-adds, and almost universally with shittier software to boot. There are a few notable counterexamples (GoG is a good store, value add, respectful of customers; but just didn't have the juice to establish itself beyond indie/abandonware games; Itch.io is doing fine in its niche).
Just because customers prefer a product does not mean it's got an unimpeachable moat.
How is Steam a monopoly?
The platform it runs on (Windows) is open, unlike the App Store. Competitors exist on said platform, including a store & game pass run by the platform owner.
The fact that Steam still runs the show is a testament to their ability to just do things better than anyone else. Sure, there is a sort of network effect at play, but there is no other “moat” here - let alone a monopolistic one.
The platform it runs on (Windows) is open, unlike the App Store. Competitors exist on said platform, including a store & game pass run by the platform owner.
The fact that Steam still runs the show is a testament to their ability to just do things better than anyone else. Sure, there is a sort of network effect at play, but there is no other “moat” here - let alone a monopolistic one.
I'd describe Steam as a monolith, not a monopoly. There are several competing storefronts, and many games have been successful without releasing on Steam.
That said, the PC gaming landscape has completely warped around Steam. Epic had to offer huge incentives to get EGS exclusivity deals. Smaller games struggle without a Steam release, and even big companies with their own storefronts have decided the sales boost from Steam overrides the 30% cut Valve takes. And Steam is so entrenched at this point that it's difficult to see how a competitor could make a meaningful dent in Steam's market share.
Despite this, if we're going to have one dominant PC gaming storefront, Steam is probably the best we could hope for. Despite my many misgivings with Valve and Steam, it's difficult to imaging the situation improving if the dominant platform was run by a company like Microsoft or Epic. And it's fair to say that PC gaming wouldn't be nearly as big as it is today without the success of Steam.
That said, the PC gaming landscape has completely warped around Steam. Epic had to offer huge incentives to get EGS exclusivity deals. Smaller games struggle without a Steam release, and even big companies with their own storefronts have decided the sales boost from Steam overrides the 30% cut Valve takes. And Steam is so entrenched at this point that it's difficult to see how a competitor could make a meaningful dent in Steam's market share.
Despite this, if we're going to have one dominant PC gaming storefront, Steam is probably the best we could hope for. Despite my many misgivings with Valve and Steam, it's difficult to imaging the situation improving if the dominant platform was run by a company like Microsoft or Epic. And it's fair to say that PC gaming wouldn't be nearly as big as it is today without the success of Steam.
Steam could “easily” be dethroned by a competitor that cares about the customers.
- Duplicate all the Steam shop features
- Integrate your social framework with Discord
- Add a proper overlay browser
- Make game ownership ephemeral until first play (meaning you can give away games in your library, or duplicate games in a bundle)
- Shim with Steam Input
- Better looking “Big Picture”-style mode
- Built-in game streaming, paid either with subscription or per-minute via wallet
There’s probably tonnes other that I’m forgetting. The above would take a ridiculous amount of dev hours though.
The big mistake Epic made (is making) is that their store is more beneficial for developers, mostly by taking a lower percentage. But those savings are barely passed on to the consumer, and even then, consumers don’t care about that. They’ll happily pay 10-20% more to have their game on the superior platform.
- Duplicate all the Steam shop features
- Integrate your social framework with Discord
- Add a proper overlay browser
- Make game ownership ephemeral until first play (meaning you can give away games in your library, or duplicate games in a bundle)
- Shim with Steam Input
- Better looking “Big Picture”-style mode
- Built-in game streaming, paid either with subscription or per-minute via wallet
There’s probably tonnes other that I’m forgetting. The above would take a ridiculous amount of dev hours though.
The big mistake Epic made (is making) is that their store is more beneficial for developers, mostly by taking a lower percentage. But those savings are barely passed on to the consumer, and even then, consumers don’t care about that. They’ll happily pay 10-20% more to have their game on the superior platform.
They are saying "Steam is a monopoly because they're so big", you are saying "Steam is not a monopoly because they're not anti-competitive", you're not disagreeing
I am saying it’s not a monopoly at all because it’s a) not the only player in the PC games store market and b) has no mechanism in place to be able to enforce such a position even if it was.
You can go back in history and apply that logic to any company and claim they weren't monopolies as a result. Standard oil and AT&T had plenty of competitors, none were able to grow beyond extremely small scale.
The key question is whether an antitrust target is engaging in uncompetitive practices. I haven't noticed any claims of Steam/Valve using uncompetitive practices (but I could have simply missed them.)
Making comparisons across industries & time periods is not going to work well, especially at a superficial level.
So did they have a different structure before Steam existed? And then post-Steam, now there is total freedom to organize however they want?
You're saying that this organization doesn't lead to success, but because they accidentally have a successful money maker, now they can run like this?
I think there is disconnect here. There are successful companies that can operate like this, because this is a good way to get to success.
You're saying that this organization doesn't lead to success, but because they accidentally have a successful money maker, now they can run like this?
I think there is disconnect here. There are successful companies that can operate like this, because this is a good way to get to success.
Early Valve coasted on the money Gabe Newell personally made as a senior Microsoft executive, so if you want to emulate that Valve then you'll need to find 8 or 9 figures in your bank account without taking any outside investments, in order to keep the company completely untainted by shareholder influence. That's not a template most founders can follow either.
There's a timeline where startup Valve went through the standard publisher funding model instead and got pressured into releasing the "finished but not very fun" 1997 cut of Half Life, rather than taking an entire extra year (an eternity in game development cycles of that era) to overhaul the whole game at their leisure. Things could have gone very differently right from the start.
There's a timeline where startup Valve went through the standard publisher funding model instead and got pressured into releasing the "finished but not very fun" 1997 cut of Half Life, rather than taking an entire extra year (an eternity in game development cycles of that era) to overhaul the whole game at their leisure. Things could have gone very differently right from the start.
They had this structure before Steam
Steam isn't a monopoly. I, and everyone I know who uses steam is familiar with GOG or Epic games or Battle.net or some other service. You can even distribute your game independently (e.g. in the case of minecraft and some of the most successful PC games of all time) or just distribute it as a web game (increasingly feasible as WebGL, WebGPU, WASM etc. continue to advance).
Steam is successful because it has good user experience compared to alternatives, and has a lot of major titles.
Steam is successful because it has good user experience compared to alternatives, and has a lot of major titles.
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 them, Microsoft was gunning for them, all the big publishers tried to compete on PC game distribution, consoles try to take market share from PC, GoG and others exist. The failure of their competitors to unseat them doesn't mean Valve had it easy.
Google, on the other hand, is what you get when you try to optimize for employee happiness across the board. Their business has been successful (the monopoly argument seems more applicable in this case, at least in the last decade), but product quality is in the toilet and employee happiness ultimately couldn't be maintained in the face of bureaucracy and layoffs.
I don't buy people's excuses about them just exploiting a monopoly. Epic was gunning for them, Microsoft was gunning for them, all the big publishers tried to compete on PC game distribution, consoles try to take market share from PC, GoG and others exist. The failure of their competitors to unseat them doesn't mean Valve had it easy.
Google, on the other hand, is what you get when you try to optimize for employee happiness across the board. Their business has been successful (the monopoly argument seems more applicable in this case, at least in the last decade), but product quality is in the toilet and employee happiness ultimately couldn't be maintained in the face of bureaucracy and layoffs.
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.
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.
Unlike most other middlemen that take revenue though, people legitimately are willing to choose to pay Valve on both sides of the transaction, despite a relatively level playing field. I choose Steam when I don't have to, even if it costs more, because the service is simply the best. I like what I get from Steam. Pending the lawsuit about anti-competitive behavior, which I think would definitely harm the argument that people simply prefer Steam a great deal, I honestly do generally just believe Steam actually does bring enough value to justify the relatively high price tag.
I actually also believe that Google Play and Apple App Store as marketplaces also provide "enough value" to potentially justify a fairly high price tag, but in their case it's not actually fair because the problem is that nobody else is even allowed to try to provide similar value at any cost. For example, both Google and Apple provide "free" push notification infrastructure, which is sort of necessary: if everyone was running push notification infrastructure, it would be pretty bad for battery life. However, the net effect is that you're being forced to price all of the value that they provide as platforms, into their marketplace, whether or not your app needs or wants their "value", and that's the problem. This doesn't quite compare to the situation with Steam, and I think that warrants more recognition.
Frankly, Steam sucked ass when it first came around. It was relentlessly mocked, and the only reason people tolerated it was because you needed it to play Half Life 2. But... they never stopped improving it. And frankly, even if this makes Valve a "worse" company from a position of investors and onlookers, it has made Valve a better company for consumers to be able to trust. It's pretty obvious that not every product or service Valve puts out is fantastic, but in the same token that things which are easy at "normal" companies are impossible at Valve, things that are impossible at normal companies appear to be possible at Valve.
I hate to romanticize it too much, but I'm not even a huge gamer, and I still feel like Valve has done very well by most of their consumers and developers. If anything, the biggest trouble they seem to have is deciding how exactly to moderate/censor the Steam store, given all of the different external pressures. Now that is a tough problem and they've had a tough time figuring it out.
I actually also believe that Google Play and Apple App Store as marketplaces also provide "enough value" to potentially justify a fairly high price tag, but in their case it's not actually fair because the problem is that nobody else is even allowed to try to provide similar value at any cost. For example, both Google and Apple provide "free" push notification infrastructure, which is sort of necessary: if everyone was running push notification infrastructure, it would be pretty bad for battery life. However, the net effect is that you're being forced to price all of the value that they provide as platforms, into their marketplace, whether or not your app needs or wants their "value", and that's the problem. This doesn't quite compare to the situation with Steam, and I think that warrants more recognition.
Frankly, Steam sucked ass when it first came around. It was relentlessly mocked, and the only reason people tolerated it was because you needed it to play Half Life 2. But... they never stopped improving it. And frankly, even if this makes Valve a "worse" company from a position of investors and onlookers, it has made Valve a better company for consumers to be able to trust. It's pretty obvious that not every product or service Valve puts out is fantastic, but in the same token that things which are easy at "normal" companies are impossible at Valve, things that are impossible at normal companies appear to be possible at Valve.
I hate to romanticize it too much, but I'm not even a huge gamer, and I still feel like Valve has done very well by most of their consumers and developers. If anything, the biggest trouble they seem to have is deciding how exactly to moderate/censor the Steam store, given all of the different external pressures. Now that is a tough problem and they've had a tough time figuring it out.
You always have politics. Managers tend to be political ninjas, so they make it worse. I've been programming professionally for over 25 years at this point, worked at many places, and I couldn't tell you what value a manager brings. I know what they do - which is hold meetings that take time away from real work, and ask people "is it done yet". But I've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of something a manager did.
I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who have had what they consider effective management, what did the manager do to make your work better?
I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who have had what they consider effective management, what did the manager do to make your work better?
The best managers I’ve had provide support- good workspaces, training budgets, protection from layoffs, hiring good coworkers.
Basically making it so no admin work comes to me and everything goes smoothly.
Basically making it so no admin work comes to me and everything goes smoothly.
Exactly - they are political ninjas, yes, but they ethically view themselves as the feudal lord super-samurai whose job it is to defend and develop all the young paduan samurai under his watch. Nothing wrong with politics if done in a kind, ethical, "win friends and influence people" kind of way
Some of the most important work that a good manager does goes unseen by their team. I've been a manager and now I'm an IC so I've seen both sides. There is a lot of shielding and pushing back that managers do to protect their teams. Unless the manager tells their team about everything they've been doing behind the scenes, the team has no idea.
You say that you've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of something a manager did but you've probably had managers that were working preventing interference, saying no to last minute requirement changes, pushing back on deadline changes, etc.
You say that you've never seen anything get done faster or better as a result of something a manager did but you've probably had managers that were working preventing interference, saying no to last minute requirement changes, pushing back on deadline changes, etc.
I've had good managers make decisions to steer the effort efficiently. Also, they can act as tie breakers in disputes so that reasonableness can previal.
In government, good managers ensure the myriad roadblocks that inevitably surface are properly dealt with before their direct reports even know it existed.
One of the best roles of a good manager is insulating their employees from the political bullshit that goes on above them. One example that happened to a coworker of mine is that something happened in an open source project they were the maintainer of that caused VP-level executives to blow up at him, so the manager told them to take they day off and let him deal with angry executives instead.
Valve's approach to managerless is closer to anarchy. You can add more accountability/structure with better results while still being managerless, such as in a holacracy.
Politics exist in any corporate structure. I'm not sure what's worse though, Valve's tribe-based politics or your traditional corporate game of thrones politics.
Politics exist in any corporate structure. I'm not sure what's worse though, Valve's tribe-based politics or your traditional corporate game of thrones politics.
It's hard - I'd say impossible for most people - to be simultaneously excellent at the organization and (yes,) politics that go into managing the output of a company, and the execution that goes into developing and operating the systems of a company. They both take effort because they are both real jobs.
Add a bit of arrogance in the mix and you get devs thinking their managers are worthless and managers thinking their teams are useless.
Add a bit of arrogance in the mix and you get devs thinking their managers are worthless and managers thinking their teams are useless.
> 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.
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.
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
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/global - in top 100 games by revenue for 12 years
Deadlock is already within 10k of Artifact's all time peak player count; and it "legally" doesn't exist and is closed invite only [1] [2]. So, you can guess whatever you want; no one in their right mind would assert that a hero-based shooter MOBA will achieve similar levels of success as a card game. But maybe you're not in your right mind.
As for Counterstrike 2; I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually matters when it spends just 24 hours outside of the top 5 most played games on Steam. Its #2 right now. Dota is #3. You're welcome to channel Trump and argue that they're cooking the books on their player-counts, but that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.
[1] https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/
[2] https://steamdb.info/app/583950/charts/
As for Counterstrike 2; I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually matters when it spends just 24 hours outside of the top 5 most played games on Steam. Its #2 right now. Dota is #3. You're welcome to channel Trump and argue that they're cooking the books on their player-counts, but that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.
[1] https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/
[2] https://steamdb.info/app/583950/charts/
>I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually matters
Why do you think long time players of CS use FaceIt to play? That should immediately strike you as odd that the most dedicated demographic of the game is not even using Valve's servers. And do you really think people would still play at the rates they are if there were no skins?
>they're cooking the books on their player-counts
They are not, however some non-zero amount of the player base is bots farming free weapon case drops.[0][1] At one point these were making hundreds of thousands a week. No other game has this issue.
>that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.
Do you even play this game? It seems strange to make a claim about a game you have never played. Everyone who plays this game agrees that Valve has failed to make the game better and after almost a year people still agree that cs:go was better, although Valve deleted cs:go from steam so nobody can play it anymore.
[0] https://www.pcgamesn.com/counter-strike-2/csgo-case-drops
[1] https://www.dexerto.com/csgo/csgo-community-mocks-player-cou...
Why do you think long time players of CS use FaceIt to play? That should immediately strike you as odd that the most dedicated demographic of the game is not even using Valve's servers. And do you really think people would still play at the rates they are if there were no skins?
>they're cooking the books on their player-counts
They are not, however some non-zero amount of the player base is bots farming free weapon case drops.[0][1] At one point these were making hundreds of thousands a week. No other game has this issue.
>that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.
Do you even play this game? It seems strange to make a claim about a game you have never played. Everyone who plays this game agrees that Valve has failed to make the game better and after almost a year people still agree that cs:go was better, although Valve deleted cs:go from steam so nobody can play it anymore.
[0] https://www.pcgamesn.com/counter-strike-2/csgo-case-drops
[1] https://www.dexerto.com/csgo/csgo-community-mocks-player-cou...
I imagine what is impossible at Valve is keeping people working on projects that the employees have lost interest in. I suspect this is what is happening in CS2. As a player, I can feel the lack of interest in the well-being of the game, the lack of skilled talent working on the fundamentals. Even though this game has made Valve more money than any other game on its platform, they just don't support it enough probably because it just doesn't excite the employees much anymore.
> As the they say, “if you don’t have any managers you have politics”.
This reminds me of the classic essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
This reminds me of the classic essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
> Google tried this, notoriously dense grating and then firing basically all the managers at an all-hands. That didn’t work out well at all...
When did this happen? Sounds absurd. I’d love to read more if anyone has a postmortem or other sources.
When did this happen? Sounds absurd. I’d love to read more if anyone has a postmortem or other sources.
It wasn't "Google", it was Larry, apparently on a whim of the moment. It wasn't managers in general, it was project managers. And as I understand it, the project managers were called right back in, so Google was actually never run without them.
That happened in 2001, and is arguably the reason Eric stepped up to take the reins from him.
That happened in 2001, and is arguably the reason Eric stepped up to take the reins from him.
Feminist in the 80s tried the leaderless approach, which led to the seminal work "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" that addresses this.
"if you don’t have any managers you have politics. and if you do have any managers, you also have politics"
The thing everyone misses about Valve in all the endless back and forth whenever this handbook is listed is that it is, at its core, a lifestyle company. It is optimizing for a certain lifestyle. It has pros and cons and tradeoffs and ways reality is different from imagined utopia, but in general it succeeds very well at this goal.
It does not succeed at a number of other goals that people attribute to valve (or imagine that valve should have), but that always strikes me as beside the point.
This is all without passing any judgment on whether valve is good or bad - it just seems like the best model the fits the available facts.
It does not succeed at a number of other goals that people attribute to valve (or imagine that valve should have), but that always strikes me as beside the point.
This is all without passing any judgment on whether valve is good or bad - it just seems like the best model the fits the available facts.
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 a another billion dollar baby, then sure, this strategy is good for that. 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 because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.
And the bonus structure that I recall also seems dated. iirc it was setup in a way such that delivering new projects would land you a bonus. But this incentivizes creating things, but there is no incentive to continue supporting or updating or iterating on it. In my opinion the bonus structure should be done in such a way so that if you deliver something new, you would land a bonus, and then you'd get larger bonuses at the 1 year mark, 2 year mark, etc, if that thing has been updated and improved.
Many things these days are not just a single product that you release and that's that. They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.
I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused. Obviously I don't know how it actually is in there these days, but things like this manual and other hearsay / rumors are the best I have to go off of.
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 a another billion dollar baby, then sure, this strategy is good for that. 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 because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.
And the bonus structure that I recall also seems dated. iirc it was setup in a way such that delivering new projects would land you a bonus. But this incentivizes creating things, but there is no incentive to continue supporting or updating or iterating on it. In my opinion the bonus structure should be done in such a way so that if you deliver something new, you would land a bonus, and then you'd get larger bonuses at the 1 year mark, 2 year mark, etc, if that thing has been updated and improved.
Many things these days are not just a single product that you release and that's that. They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.
I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused. Obviously I don't know how it actually is in there these days, but things like this manual and other hearsay / rumors are the best I have to go off of.
> I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else.
I see this echoed relatively often, and I have to wonder by what metric people consider valve have "failed" when they're the largest video game distribution platform on PC, raking in money hand over fist and constantly trouncing their competition such as EGS, Galaxy, Origin and UPlay. People don't just use steam because they have to, they choose to use it because it's the superior product.
> I wish they were more video game focused
I suppose a lot of people look at Valve and think because they haven't made a hit game in a while that's why they're a failure? Personally I couldn't care less if they never made another game again; there are thousands of video game companies making great games every year, and no-one else is doing what Valve are doing in regards to Proton and other Linux desktop work. The steam deck isn't a particularly novel idea, but it's definitely one of the best examples of a handheld portable gaming device running a desktop OS.
For someone who used to be a diehard GOG fan due to their no DRM policy, my entire library is now on Steam due to their Linux efforts, not just because it's the best client, but because I want them to keep doing what they're doing.
I see this echoed relatively often, and I have to wonder by what metric people consider valve have "failed" when they're the largest video game distribution platform on PC, raking in money hand over fist and constantly trouncing their competition such as EGS, Galaxy, Origin and UPlay. People don't just use steam because they have to, they choose to use it because it's the superior product.
> I wish they were more video game focused
I suppose a lot of people look at Valve and think because they haven't made a hit game in a while that's why they're a failure? Personally I couldn't care less if they never made another game again; there are thousands of video game companies making great games every year, and no-one else is doing what Valve are doing in regards to Proton and other Linux desktop work. The steam deck isn't a particularly novel idea, but it's definitely one of the best examples of a handheld portable gaming device running a desktop OS.
For someone who used to be a diehard GOG fan due to their no DRM policy, my entire library is now on Steam due to their Linux efforts, not just because it's the best client, but because I want them to keep doing what they're doing.
> I see this echoed relatively often, and I have to wonder by what metric people consider valve have "failed" when they're the largest video game distribution platform on PC, raking in money hand over fist and constantly trouncing their competition such as EGS, Galaxy, Origin and UPlay. People don't just use steam because they have to, they choose to use it because it's the superior product.
I think network effects play a bigger role (no user wants to have to juggle multiple game launchers and developers mostly cannot afford to not be on Steam) but yeah their competition being overly greedy and/or incompetent does help as well.
I think network effects play a bigger role (no user wants to have to juggle multiple game launchers and developers mostly cannot afford to not be on Steam) but yeah their competition being overly greedy and/or incompetent does help as well.
> when they're the largest video game distribution platform on PC
And just adding on to this, they also a have a stable of some of the most successful (and presumably lucrative) games released in the last 20 years: dota 2, cs:go (admittedly, not in-house to start), TF2.
Granted, a lot of these are towards the autumn of their lifecycles, but it can't be discounted.
And just adding on to this, they also a have a stable of some of the most successful (and presumably lucrative) games released in the last 20 years: dota 2, cs:go (admittedly, not in-house to start), TF2.
Granted, a lot of these are towards the autumn of their lifecycles, but it can't be discounted.
It depends how you frame success. Game development seems to have slowed in the post-Steam boom world, but it's still there! DotA2, Artifact, Alyx, and currently Deadlock are all examples of relatively recent gaming products.
From a purely financial perspective, they SHOULD continue to focus on marketplace dominance via STEAM. Whatever game is made for HL3/TF3 will ultimately fail to meet fan expectations (Duke Nukem anyone?).
From a purely financial perspective, they SHOULD continue to focus on marketplace dominance via STEAM. Whatever game is made for HL3/TF3 will ultimately fail to meet fan expectations (Duke Nukem anyone?).
> It depends how you frame success. Game development seems to have slowed in the post-Steam boom world, but it's still there! DotA2, Artifact, Alyx, and currently Deadlock are all examples of relatively recent gaming products.
They have however refocused on cash-cow live-service games rather than the polished single player experiences they were originally famous for. In the 13 years since Portal 2 they've only released one single player game, and that one was driven by their company-wide VR push more than anything else. It's harder to get excited about their games when they no longer want to make anything that can't be leveraged into an infinite money siphon.
They've also had an uptick in disastrous flops with Artifact and Underlords, hopefully Deadlock will be a return to form.
They have however refocused on cash-cow live-service games rather than the polished single player experiences they were originally famous for. In the 13 years since Portal 2 they've only released one single player game, and that one was driven by their company-wide VR push more than anything else. It's harder to get excited about their games when they no longer want to make anything that can't be leveraged into an infinite money siphon.
They've also had an uptick in disastrous flops with Artifact and Underlords, hopefully Deadlock will be a return to form.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, just Super Monday Night Combat again? ;)
(That’s not a bad thing but first-person MOBAs have fallen from favor a bit… which I suppose does leave a market gap.)
(That’s not a bad thing but first-person MOBAs have fallen from favor a bit… which I suppose does leave a market gap.)
Valorant just felt like CS to me. Hated it for all the same reasons I dislike CS.
Deadlock is more like a moba shooter.
Deadlock is more like a moba shooter.
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.
> 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.
> 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 because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.
They've released a game every year or every other year since they were founded. That's more than a lot of studios, and the fact that they also do stuff with steam and hardware makes it that much more impressive.
> They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.
This would be a more valid critique of Valve's management structure if companies with traditional management structures didn't do the same damn thing. World of Warcraft has had dozens of abandoned features over the years, and Activision-Blizzard has a normal management structure. This is just general software industry shit, I can't think of any company that doesn't leave some stuff on the side because the focus moved onto something newer and shinier.
> I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused.
Well if they had traditional management, the game development part of the company would have been deleted a loooong time ago, and Steam would be completely enshittified by now.
I think there are valid criticisms of what they're trying at Valve, but 1) I'm glad they're doing it, I don't want every company to operate the same MBA playbook, and 2) I don't think the problems are really problems for the customer! It seems like it's mostly a problem for _employees_.
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 because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.
They've released a game every year or every other year since they were founded. That's more than a lot of studios, and the fact that they also do stuff with steam and hardware makes it that much more impressive.
> They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.
This would be a more valid critique of Valve's management structure if companies with traditional management structures didn't do the same damn thing. World of Warcraft has had dozens of abandoned features over the years, and Activision-Blizzard has a normal management structure. This is just general software industry shit, I can't think of any company that doesn't leave some stuff on the side because the focus moved onto something newer and shinier.
> I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused.
Well if they had traditional management, the game development part of the company would have been deleted a loooong time ago, and Steam would be completely enshittified by now.
I think there are valid criticisms of what they're trying at Valve, but 1) I'm glad they're doing it, I don't want every company to operate the same MBA playbook, and 2) I don't think the problems are really problems for the customer! It seems like it's mostly a problem for _employees_.
> 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 business model directly lead to the death of game modding in the first place because in their first few years they straight up stole the IPs of successful mods to turn into second rate games internally, usually not giving original developers any cuts of the proceeds beyond a normal position at the company.
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 business model directly lead to the death of game modding in the first place because in their first few years they straight up stole the IPs of successful mods to turn into second rate games internally, usually not giving original developers any cuts of the proceeds beyond a normal position at the company.
> 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.
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.
I wonder if this is still the same handbook new hires get today. Would be interesting to see the current version, if there is one.
I wonder if Valve is still the same as described in this handbook, or if it ever truly was.
The section on stack ranking is really fascinating ... seeing how that sausage was made would let you know exactly who is in the secret cabals the handbook says don't exist ;-)
The section on stack ranking is really fascinating ... seeing how that sausage was made would let you know exactly who is in the secret cabals the handbook says don't exist ;-)
If you want some more insight into what working at Valve is actually like, People Make Games released a great video last year [1] where they talked to a bunch of current and former employees.
While there are people who can thrive at Valve, their structure doesn't set people up for success. Valve has a many pseudo-managers, people who have a lot of influence at the company, but aren't designated as such. Doing well at Valve often requires trying to figure out what sort of things these people want, which they often don't make clear. Getting meaningful feedback is difficult, with employees often having little idea on what they need to do differently to improve things.
It really seems like Valve is kind of a mess internally, and they probably wouldn't still be around if it wasn't for the enormous success of Steam.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo
While there are people who can thrive at Valve, their structure doesn't set people up for success. Valve has a many pseudo-managers, people who have a lot of influence at the company, but aren't designated as such. Doing well at Valve often requires trying to figure out what sort of things these people want, which they often don't make clear. Getting meaningful feedback is difficult, with employees often having little idea on what they need to do differently to improve things.
It really seems like Valve is kind of a mess internally, and they probably wouldn't still be around if it wasn't for the enormous success of Steam.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo
Awesome, thanks!
Your description is exactly what I expected to see out of a "completely flat" company: shadow structures emerging, little fiefdoms run by people who are adept at building and maintaining power, and sheer terror for those underneath.
Your description is exactly what I expected to see out of a "completely flat" company: shadow structures emerging, little fiefdoms run by people who are adept at building and maintaining power, and sheer terror for those underneath.
Is it that video where they spend 3/4 of the runtime talking about how Valve doesn't adhere to woke politics? That one was just a bait and switch
> I wonder if Valve is still the same as described in this handbook, or if it ever truly was
I recommend looking at companies hiring pages to get a pulse on their longer term direction and strategy (a major reason for bogus job posts btw).
Based on Valve's [0], it's mostly sustaining work for Steam Marketplace, Steamworks, and R&D for VR.
[0] - https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/
I recommend looking at companies hiring pages to get a pulse on their longer term direction and strategy (a major reason for bogus job posts btw).
Based on Valve's [0], it's mostly sustaining work for Steam Marketplace, Steamworks, and R&D for VR.
[0] - https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/
> I wonder if Valve is still the same as described in this handbook, or if it ever truly was.
The fact that this handbook was deliberately released to the public (rather than posted on the Valve intranet the handbook refers to) does make it feel more like submarine recruitment/marketing material rather than something actually intended for onboarding new hires.
The fact that this handbook was deliberately released to the public (rather than posted on the Valve intranet the handbook refers to) does make it feel more like submarine recruitment/marketing material rather than something actually intended for onboarding new hires.
Back in 2012, did this “employee handbook” actually “leak” to begin with? Or was the whole thing just a calculated corporate PR stunt? Everyone just takes it at face value, but I've always wondered.
The prevailing opinion since then has definitely been that it was an intentional release.
That's what I thought, but every time this comes back up, it seems most people discovering it for the first time fail to pick up on this.
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The real answer is to stay small and avoid growth. Politics and management frustrations get worse with more people. Stay small and avoid all the idiocy. Growth is not mandatory. Especially with technology, you can scale profit without more employees. Profit sharing is better than equity.
Humans have a natural tendency towards social hierarchies. If you don't provide structure people will instinctively create it; so attempting to entirely remove structure from an organization is idealistic and inevitably fails. This usually leads to hidden power structures and counter-productive popularity dynamics. A great classic read about this topic is essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
The simplest way to encode a structure is with a basic hierarchal structure where power gets delegated and directions flow down from a single individual at the top, and information gets filtered and flows up to enable decision making. This is one of the most simplest and common structures you see across society. It is a structure great at quick, efficient decision making, but has numerous flaws that make it suboptimal in many cases. Notably, the single-directional flows means it's particularly bad at self-regulating, and therefore it's susceptible to corruption without a significant outside influence.
However you can leverage systems and technology to engineer and enable novel and durable alternative structures and power dynamics. On a societal level, democracy is a hugely successful example of a system like this. Elections create a loop from the bottom to enable accountability for the person at the top, helping solve a number of failure states. You also have techniques like creating multiple structures that operate in tension, structures that operate entirely via democratic consensus, etc. Each structure has different strengths and weaknesses, and combining them well can be used to create high-functioning governments.
At the level of corporations however, you see minimal exploration of optimal structure. The modern corporation has seen some innovation, but this happened almost entirely at the ownership level, with boards and shareholder elections etc. The actual executive functionality of most companies is almost entirely your standard hierarchy. It beggars belief to think that this would be the optimal operational structure across all industries. The reality is it's the structure that maximizes shareholder control (and therefore shareholder value). Other structures might enable an organization to better serve the market, employees, etc ; but these are not the concerns of the people setting up and funding said corporations.
The simplest way to encode a structure is with a basic hierarchal structure where power gets delegated and directions flow down from a single individual at the top, and information gets filtered and flows up to enable decision making. This is one of the most simplest and common structures you see across society. It is a structure great at quick, efficient decision making, but has numerous flaws that make it suboptimal in many cases. Notably, the single-directional flows means it's particularly bad at self-regulating, and therefore it's susceptible to corruption without a significant outside influence.
However you can leverage systems and technology to engineer and enable novel and durable alternative structures and power dynamics. On a societal level, democracy is a hugely successful example of a system like this. Elections create a loop from the bottom to enable accountability for the person at the top, helping solve a number of failure states. You also have techniques like creating multiple structures that operate in tension, structures that operate entirely via democratic consensus, etc. Each structure has different strengths and weaknesses, and combining them well can be used to create high-functioning governments.
At the level of corporations however, you see minimal exploration of optimal structure. The modern corporation has seen some innovation, but this happened almost entirely at the ownership level, with boards and shareholder elections etc. The actual executive functionality of most companies is almost entirely your standard hierarchy. It beggars belief to think that this would be the optimal operational structure across all industries. The reality is it's the structure that maximizes shareholder control (and therefore shareholder value). Other structures might enable an organization to better serve the market, employees, etc ; but these are not the concerns of the people setting up and funding said corporations.
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.
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.
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.
Valve is transitioning into a mini-Apple, ie a consumer hardware company with a cash cow marketplace.
HL: Alyx was more of a tech demo for Valve's work in VR R&D. I'd be curious what Valve ends up releasing in the next 5 years, given how heavily they've been hiring in the CV, Hardware, and Spatial Computing space for the past few years now.
Once Valve "solves" VR Gaming, I wouldn't be surprised that a HL3 would be released shortly.
HL: Alyx was more of a tech demo for Valve's work in VR R&D. I'd be curious what Valve ends up releasing in the next 5 years, given how heavily they've been hiring in the CV, Hardware, and Spatial Computing space for the past few years now.
Once Valve "solves" VR Gaming, I wouldn't be surprised that a HL3 would be released shortly.
if HL3 was a VR exclusive I'd buy a headset to play it ... I just want the loop closed, and the story finished or continued.
It would be interesting to compare the Valve organizational approach to that of W.L. Gore, which has a unique and successful approach described in Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point" as it discusses the Rule of 150.
At Gore, it is a flat structure, but with self-organizing teams that take initiative and responsibility ("commitments") as appropriate for current goals.
https://www.gore.com/careers/working-at-gore
At Gore, it is a flat structure, but with self-organizing teams that take initiative and responsibility ("commitments") as appropriate for current goals.
https://www.gore.com/careers/working-at-gore
Reading this is kind of like reading Peracles's Funeral Oration. You wonder if there was ever a place like that. You wonder if there ever could be another place like that. You salute as heros those who had the audacity to even try to make a place like that. After reading it, you are not quite the same person as you were before.
More companies should have that kind of focus.
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 about her year and a half at Valve: “I first learned who my boss was on the day she fired me.”
Google tried this, notoriously dense grating and then firing basically all the managers at an all-hands. That didn’t work out well at all... And now they have over-steered in the opposite direction!