Report: Valve hit with layoffs; 'large decisions' ahead
Reports are beginning to surface that employee-friendly Valve Software is in the process of making "large decision" about the company's future, resulting in the layoff of as many as 25 employees from multiple departments.
Updates with Develop report of Valve's director of business leaving the company.
Reports are beginning to surface that employee-friendly Valve Software is in the process of making "large decision" about the company's future, resulting in the layoff of as many as 25 employees from multiple departments.
Gamasutra has confirmed that multiple people had been let go from the hardware and Android departments. The site said that the number 25 has been bandied about, but that is unconfirmed, and that those affected had used phrase like "great cleaning" and "large decisions" related to the terminations. In addition, engineer Jeri Ellsworth tweeted yesterday that she had been "fired," and senior mechanical engineer Ed Owen's LinkedIn profile (via PC Gamer) reflected an end to his employment this month.
Develop is also reporting that Jason Holtman, Valve's director of business and a primary go-between with developers using Steam, has left the company as well.
We have reached out to Valve for a statement and will update as more information becomes available.
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John Keefer posted a new article, Report: Valve hit with layoffs; 'large decisions' ahead.
Reports are beginning to surface that employee-friendly Valve Software is in the process of making "large decision" about the company's future, resulting in the layoff of as many as 25 employees from multiple departments.-
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wtf. i know they put a media blackout ever since team fortress 2 back in 1999, but it would be nice to have some clue as to how many games they are developing at once, how many they've scrapped, etc. it's strange that they'd be having a layoff at this point..it only leads fans to worry about HL3 and make baseless speculation.
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I submitted my resume to a couple of those hardware designer jobs back when they first popped up, but I've gone on the record as saying that I would be pretty surprised if they made first party PC hardware (in the vein of most people's expectations of a Steambox).
I don't know that Steam on Linux is dead (hardware and mobile departments), but the idea of a Valve-sourced Steambox is (and really should be, IMO) dead.
Speculation: They put together their specification, did a test run, and now they don't need the hardware engineers to shop out the spec to other houses. Or, my other REALLY INSANE guess is that the PS4 will be a type of Steambox.
That last one would be fucking nuts.-
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Valve thinks WAY farther ahead than most companies. Part sounds like strategic restructuring, part sounds like ridding of bloat.
Lead art design for TF2? No offense to the guy but I don't think he is as important as the lead art guy for DOTA2 or their other internal projects from a 'moving forward' standpoint.
Is it just me or is this curiously positioned a week before the PS4 reveal? Coup de grace against Microsoft with Steamworks integration into the PS4 and dual PS4/PC gaming capabilities? Oh my fucking god that would be incredible (I'd wager a 1% chance of that happening if security/piracy concerns are dominant).
I'm just saying stupid shit.
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Unless Sony is only producing the hardware for the PS4, and Valve gets to control ALL of the software, I can't see Valve teaming up with Sony. Gabe's too convinced that Apple is going to release v2 of AppleTV and create something that will end Sony, MS, and Nintendo in the living room (ironically because the Apple platform will be more open than the new consoles). A large number of analysts believe this will happen in the next year.
From the Develop article, the range of employees is so large that I don't think you could conclude it has anything to do with hardware. It's a lot of animators and artists too. I'd say it's stack system cuts. -
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Haha, some elsewhere has refereed to this as "The night of the long crowbars." in reference to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives -
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Not small scale, but "Valve lays off 25" is a much scarier story than "38 Studios lays off everyone".
Valve PR needs to understand what Valve is: a privately held (i.e.: not beholden to shareholders' whims) company that is legendary for quality consistency in games (mostly because of being privately held, therefore being able to say "when it's done"), with the biggest and (arguably) most consumer-friendly PC games digital distribution platform, that has developed a very good rapport with the gamer community since the release of The Orange Box, and abandoning their 2001-2007 attitude of "don't acknowledge the community EVER" attitude for one of better transparency and better customer advocacy.
My advice to head of PR at Valve: DON'T MESS WITH THAT. Finish revising your statement to the press and have it published by 23:00 UTC tonight.-
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Dude thats fucking crazy. You've gone off the deep end. Valve is just clearing house and getting rid of some unnecessary people. It would be very insulting to those people for Valve to make an official statement discussing the reasons for their firing.
Valve is one of the most powerful and profitable companies in the industry. Firing 25 people is and indication of nothing.
Honestly if you're this paranoid i recommend closing your steam account and unplugging your computer right this second and hiding under your bed. -
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I mean, let's say they want to fire 50 people. Now to keep it under your radar they have to do what, 3 per week and spend 4 months just getting the company to the point they want? You're advocating less operational efficiency so that you won't have something to fearmonger about. That seems like exactly the kind of reason Valve stays private, so they don't have to do/answer to that kind of sillyness instead of just doing what's best for their business.
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If it's not a big deal, why didn't they have a press release ready for when stuff got public?
Non-disparagement is probably not what I'm thinking of; what would a company force exiting employees to sign if they don't want them to communicate about their employment status change? That. If it's impossible, have a statement ready.-
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because firing a few people is not news, it's what businesses do periodically. You want them to be more transparent, but then you want fired employees to be unable to talk publicly, then you want Valve to fire these people slowly over time so you don't notice (less transparent), you're all over the place.
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1. Make sure Steam is not running. Start a command prompt. Change directory to Steam directory.
2. Run "dir steamapps\(directoryname) /ad" for the following subdirectories: "common", "sourcemods", and "(username)" (repeat as necessary for all usernames). Take this list, exclude anything that's not a game, and that's your list of titles. Start copying to alternate storage.
3. Take your list of titles, and classify each title as to whether it uses SteamWorks DRM or was imported externally (YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS BY HEART; every purchase of a SteamWorks title should have resulted in empathic pain at the moment of submitting the credit card transaction to Valve). Every title that uses SteamWorks is Dead To You; cross it off the list, it's never coming back, but keep the files around in case there's anything unencrypted to scavenge.
4. Take the remaining titles, and copy them to alternate directories. Depending on what DRM they use, they might still be runnable, but some may require a reinstall from physical media (you kept the physical media, even after importing to your Steam Library, right? If not, cross that title off the list)
5. Take comfort in the fact that credit card data is protected under the PCI DSS, so whoever takes it over is responsible for following those Data Security Standards, or else is responsible for paying hefty fines, or potentially may have their PCI merchant status revoked. For other data stored on Valve servers... well, hopefully a lawyer posts an FAQ.
6. Continue to play classic PC games unencumbered by server-side DRM. Buy only titles released completely DRM-free (Humble Indie Bundle, etc.). Find a new hobby to replace the gaping void.-
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Because I wouldn't have been able to play Half-Life 2. After that announcement, I vowed that Steam would be the first, and the last, such service that I would submit to to be able to play a video game.
http://www.shacknews.com/article/34045/evening-reading?id=8772683
http://www.shacknews.com/article/34295/first-post?id=8888718 -
Lots of titles require the use of Steam, you really don't have a choice if you want to play one of those games.
Also you should never have faith in a company. They are not a charity, they are not your friend, they are in the business of making money. Sometimes that aligns with respecting their customers, sometimes it doesn't. -
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There's a difference between that and losing the ability to play games because some DRM server doesn't exist anymore. Back when Bioshock had the SecuROM activation DRM, these concerns were brought up, and 2K answered them with "...if we ever stop supporting BioShock [online activation servers], we will release a patch so that the game is still playable." ( http://www.shacknews.com/article/53236/bioshock-pc-install-limit-lifted )
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Not all hardware people are gone apparently
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=47686476&postcount=1097
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I think people forget in that talk Gabe gave last week or whenever, he specifically said the one thing they learned about the 'valve style' of running a company is you have to be more aggressive about getting rid of people.
In that environment, if you just don't "get" how it works, or if you don't make the effort to find shit to do, you're a cancer to everyone else and they're going to cut you.
Like take the TF2 art people; over time there's just less work to do that's specifically related to that project. Those dudes are expected to _find_ work to do on other projects. Or come up with a project everyone else agrees is a good idea and lead it. What they're not expected to do is to just coast along the TF2 art train. I have no idea if that's what's going on or not; but it's an example of the dangers of that environment and why you might see perfectly competent people just suddenly get booted out.
It's also not an environment lends itself to tolerating people that burn out.
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Not really. If these people were drifting without guidance, someone above them should have gently pushed them to a new direction OR when there is a problem with someone's performance to the point of needing to be fired, they should fire them. Instead, those employees were allowed to drift, thinking everything is ok, and management decided it would be best to have a non-confrontational lay off. Now they will go off and get hired at some other company thinking they weren't the problem. That's what I mean about spineless.
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Did you not read their employee handbook? It's very explicit that you are expected to make your own work. The entire structure of the company is designed to cater to hyper productive people who do not need or want to be 'pushed'. The expectation is you will find your place in the various projects (because you think they are worthwhile projects) or you will create an project that is interesting enough that a team will form around you. If you can't handle that you don't belong there.
They are not a normal company, and the way they do things is completely alien from a normal corporate perspective.
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No. If you work at Valve, you know what you are getting into (no management).
http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf
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nnnnnnnnrrrrrrrggghh.... http://chattypics.com/files/eton_e1_xe9px2obei.jpg
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*breathe* *breathe* ... http://chattypics.com/files/20130213_serenitynow_msv8yd5fdr.jpg
I still can't fathom it; if Valve's workplace is one that organically sorts out those who don't seek projects, why the sudden shock of departures and "I got fired" posts all at once? If it's a business realignment, that doesn't mean that nothing changed. It's basically a denial, but if he says that this isn't about Steam, then I guess we press on. I just... can't stop looking back at that event in time where 25 Valve employees got let go.-
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Because it's easier to clear people out in batches. If you trickle people out one by one constantly that has an impact on the work environment and the mindset of the employees. No one likes seeing their friend get fired; you chop 25 people at once and everyone is sad for a few weeks but they get over it and continue to work.
Now imagine instead you spaced those people out evenly over the course of a year or something. That's a lot of constant sadness not to mention a lingering 'am I next!?' environment.
It's also entirely possible they just go through a once-a-year-review of how people are doing and this was just a particularly bad year.
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Kinda goes against what they talk about in Valve Handbook, especially the part about not being hired to do a particular thing. Guess they are just like any other company.
http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf
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