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Former Employees Explain Reasons Why Valve Releases Games So Rarely
- Thread starter IbizaPocholo
- Start date
- Opinion Game Dev
diffusionx
Gold Member
They released a GOTY candidate game in 2020. They have two of the most successful games on the planet. Do you say that Riot is “barely functioning” too? They released a very successful piece of hardware last year that smashed through all sales projections and is influencing how PC games are released.
It’s weird, we live in this world where all these channels exist to make money as a vidya developer and Valve and only Valve is criticized for not putting out games in a box on a shelf like it’s 2005.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Flat organizations are best for super small places where there's hardly anyone working there. There's not many people at the company so everyone plays an important role and can have an important voice at the table.
According to Google, Valve has 360 people there. That's way too many for a super flat organization. There will still be ranks and hierarchy of some kind, but you probably got like 100+ people all the same rank trying to be their own boss, with no formal managers in a chain of command to move things along.
It would be interesting to see their organizational chart. My office has around 150 people and each department has their PPT slide showing a hierarchy tree. Many levels. It typically goes like this for each department:
VP
Directors
Managers/Leads
Solo vets
Junior and Assistant roles
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Plus the industry leading storefront that all others fail to measure up to.
People act like Valve is the size of Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo and just sits around.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
And criticized for being wHite males! Wait, did they just assume their genders?
bentanchorbolt
Banned
Hmmmmm
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
Ideally, they'd go flat for planning / brainstorming and then change to a standard hierarchy with defined roles after projects are locked in. But they don't, and their output is incredibly minimal as a result.
Having a flat and totally disorganized workforce might work if all you want is people tinkering on adjustments to a digital store.
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Interfectum
Member
My guess would be multiple buckets of flat structures with managers making sure shit works cohesively.
Wildebeest
Member
I think only Valve and one other tech company tried this experiment. It was a very high profile disaster at the other company, but the games industry is just more secretive and insular. Also, Valve has steam, so their game dev employees could spend all day crying and jerking off in the toilets all day and the company could still make a fortune.
Magic Carpet
Gold Member
hemo memo
You can't die before your death
Yeah so? 100% of Premier League players are men. Should we include a women just because? Majority of builders are men. Majority of maintenance workers are men. It is about talent. Shouldn’t be about filling a quota. Majority of people are smart, why don’t they just hire someone random from the street I mean why discriminate against stupid people. Why are the majority of house keepers jobs are women? Why the majority of people in prison are men? They should equalize that and put more women in.
The extreme of west world is going insane.
It's really code for their lazy asses have had 18 years to make HL3 and still haven't delivered.
Interfectum
Member
Just to bullet this... Valve has, off the top of my head:
- created the best VR game of all time
- created one of the best VR headsets of all time
- created the best portable PC gaming device of all time
- is in the process of perfecting the ability to play any windows game on linux
- created their own stable OS that is based on linux
- has multiple GaaS titles with hundreds of thousands of players
- has lured every single third party dev back to their platform after trying to be like Valve
"barely functioning"
Rykan
Member
yes, very striking indeed. Baffling how the developers of the video game industry, a form of entertainment that up until less than 2 decades ago was primarily enjoyed by white young men, is also made up by the same young men growing up playing them.
I encourage everyone with an interest in game development to join the industry, but can we stop pretending as if the lower amount of women and "Minorities" in game development has any other cause besides a lack of interest for game development from these groups?
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
You never hear them crying to become sanitation workers. I wonder why that is?
EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.001
Should there be more valve games yes they got portal 2 on PlayStation.
marquimvfs
Member
Oh! So, if Valve hires more women and non white people, will Half Life 3 be launched?
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
Didn't they just buy a few of those games like DOTA? Then put your disorganized crew on adding small little microtransactions, because that's the size of what they can do with a few friends.Just to bullet this... Valve has, off the top of my head:
- created the best VR game of all time
- created one of the best VR headsets of all time
- created the best portable PC gaming device of all time
- is in the process of perfecting the ability to play any windows game on linux
- created their own stable OS that is based on linux
- has multiple GaaS titles with hundreds of thousands of players
- has lured every single third party dev back to their platform after trying to be like Valve
"barely functioning"
VR games are great, but it's a short game. The main reason they were the first to make it is because they just have infinite time to play around with stuff that is not going to be profitable. Lots of companies could make a AAA VR game, it just makes zero economic sense so they don't do it.
A portable PC gaming device is not impressive. It's convenient, but why is it impressive?
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
VR headset and STeamDeck were about the store.
VR was a potential threat to STeam. So they put out a headset in hopes of keeping VR games sales on STeam.
Nintendo Switch was a threat to older pc game sales. Maybe it had an effect on STeam sales. Maybe they saw people paying full price for old pc titles on the Switch. Either way they saw a threat. And released SteamDeck.
In both cases they don't necessarily want to keep making the hardware. They would rather others follow their lead, make the hardware and use their store and at least in the case of STeamDeck use their OS as well.
VR was a potential threat to STeam. So they put out a headset in hopes of keeping VR games sales on STeam.
Nintendo Switch was a threat to older pc game sales. Maybe it had an effect on STeam sales. Maybe they saw people paying full price for old pc titles on the Switch. Either way they saw a threat. And released SteamDeck.
In both cases they don't necessarily want to keep making the hardware. They would rather others follow their lead, make the hardware and use their store and at least in the case of STeamDeck use their OS as well.
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Men_in_Boxes
Banned
Why is Valve's output disappointing?
Because they're too white.
Because they're too white.
Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
marquimvfs
Member
You forgot cis male
LordCBH
Member
Oh the horror
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
No they hired the guy who made the dota warcraft mod then had to go to court or something to win the right to use the dota name because blizzard tried to say it was theirs.
edit: then the game was made on valves own source engine.
Valve hires DotA: Allstars developer
www.destructoid.com
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Fuz
Banned
Yep, trash article. No need to read further.
Reizo Ryuu
Member
I don't think anyone is saying this, nobody likes tokenism, but it's worth exploring whether or not your statistics are formed by a (unconscious) bias or not; the only other option is to pretend discrimination isn't real.
Though there's no real way to put it to the test because you'd need access to applicant data to see if there's any skewed rejections, percentage/relative wise.
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Elysion
Banned
Sounds like a bit of a conundrum for leftoids. On one hand, having a ‚flat organizational structure‘ sounds like something they would usually be cheering, but if it leads to a lack of diversity…
Wait, does this imply that diversity has to be imposed from the top, otherwise it won‘t exist? Questions upon questions…
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
I just wish they would develop single-player games again. Are we just never going to get Half Life 3? That sucks. Steam Deck is cool, tho! Probably picking one up this year.
Financially, they don’t have to make single-player games to have a strong business. So maybe that era is just over, and it’s never coming back
Financially, they don’t have to make single-player games to have a strong business. So maybe that era is just over, and it’s never coming back
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How hilarious, people writing off an article because of two sentences which the article isn't even based on. I'm not a fan of Era, but the two sites went so far away from each other it's utterly comical. I'm wondering how much of it is 'triggered anti-wokeness' or 'Valve defense force'.
Either way, I do actually want a Half Life 3, despite me not being the biggest fan of HL 2, liking 1 more. We've had a bunch of Left4Dead clones since 2 so it's not too bad, but I feel nothing ever quite captured what HL was. A HL3 would be nice.....a proper sequel to the original FEAR would also be nice(didn't like F2 all that much)...but the industry is what it is....they're making bank off the Steam Store so why even bother.
Either way, I do actually want a Half Life 3, despite me not being the biggest fan of HL 2, liking 1 more. We've had a bunch of Left4Dead clones since 2 so it's not too bad, but I feel nothing ever quite captured what HL was. A HL3 would be nice.....a proper sequel to the original FEAR would also be nice(didn't like F2 all that much)...but the industry is what it is....they're making bank off the Steam Store so why even bother.
hemo memo
You can't die before your death
A company main goal is to make money. They would hire a monkey if that would bring more revenue. Why wouldn’t they not hire more women if that is more beneficial? And why idiotically the first train to jump to by is this tiring argument and assumption that it must be discrimination knowing that very few women are interested in working in the industry in general? I mean should I go to every hospital and sue them for discrimination because the majority are women nurses?
AndrewRyan
Member
For their next explosive expose they should investigate any university computer science classroom in the US and expose why there isn't more diversity.
MarkMe2525
Banned
The topic is not about whether valve is a failure or not.
AlteredForms
Banned
Because the modding community dried up and they no longer have viable ideas .
.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
It's an agenda piece. Happy now?
Tams
Member
What a load of waffle. People Make Games can be so pretentious.
It's down to two things:
1. They make so much money with Steam that there's little incentive to push a game to release.
2. That money allows them to have effectively unlimited time to work on any game. And perfectionism almost always kicks in then, and nothing gets anywhere near finished.
It's down to two things:
1. They make so much money with Steam that there's little incentive to push a game to release.
2. That money allows them to have effectively unlimited time to work on any game. And perfectionism almost always kicks in then, and nothing gets anywhere near finished.
What agenda? The two sentences in an article count as 'agenda piece'? Or are you saying it's a hit piece on Valve? Does this site has a history of that?
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
"Ex-employee on reasons why .... sure are a lot of white males. Maybe it's their bigoted voting."
Yes. It's a hit piece.
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BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
Gabe refusing to make a stance on anything political and instead giving every employee 10k to donate where they please is wild.
diffusionx
Gold Member
They last released a regular, “boxed” game in 2020. How often should Valve be releasing games? What is an acceptable number of videogame releases for them? They have about the same number of people on staff than a dev team at Ubi, how long does it take them to make a game? How many people have worked on Skull & Bones? Rocksteady has been working on Suicide Squad for 8 years at this point, are there any pieces about what’s taking them so long?
The criticisms are completely incoherent and nonsensical. Obviously this is a hit piece.
The criticisms are completely incoherent and nonsensical. Obviously this is a hit piece.
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Reizo Ryuu
Member
ok, you're arguing things I didn't say.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Jim Ryan got raked over the coals by fanaticults and politcults for this. All for saying, "We will not tolerate a regressive culture of you tearing down your peers over outside views unrelated to work. Be kind and respectful to one another." (paraphrased)
"Cats are great, I love cats"
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