Layoffs at Valve

Looks like even Valve is constricting a little...

I've loved having the Android app handy for Steam sales and I was intrigued at the prospect of a SteamBox... So, I'm really curious what this will mean for them.

Like I was saying in IRC, it's not really a suprise. Valve wasn't exactly setting up their hardware people for success in the first place.

They weren't hiring supply chain or logistics people, which you really need to actually sell complex hardware. It's not like you just go to a factory and say "build this for me". You need to price out suppliers, get contracts for labor, deal with import or export requirements(fun fact: if you export software containing encryption functionality to France, there's a 2 week waiting period before it can enter the country).

So if Valve was actually serious about making a Steambox in-house, they would have hired all those people then. There haven't been any job openings for those positions at all.

cube wrote:

So if Valve was actually serious about making a Steambox in-house, they would have hired all those people then. There haven't been any job openings for those positions at all.

So yeah, wanton speculation and all that, but I suspect they were at a juncture where they had to decide whether to fully commit or not. In an alternate universe, we could instead be seeing an announcement that Valve was hiring for exactly those positions. Instead, we have a layoff announcement.

Eh, not really.

The problem in this space is that it's really an all or nothing proposition.

It takes a lot to get hardware out, and a lot of it can be done in parallel to make sure the best design comes out for the price. That's where the supply chain people come in, and they're the most effective when they have input during the design and specification stage.

From what I've read it seems like Valve is using an outside company for the Steam Box. People like Jeri Ellsworth seem like concept people. Perhaps they've nailed down what they want and this outside company is handling the rest.

Business director Jason Holtman is apparently gone. He's been with Valve since 2005. This is a bigger deal than just hardware.

mrwynd wrote:

From what I've read it seems like Valve is using an outside company for the Steam Box. People like Jeri Ellsworth seem like concept people. Perhaps they've nailed down what they want and this outside company is handling the rest.

When that was announced, I recall representatives from Valve saying in multiple places that it wasn't "the" Steambox but "a" Steambox and that they would be making their own. As recently as last week, the Verge had an article up quoting Gabe Newell that Valve would be making their own Steambox to set the standard for third-party manufacturers.

Podunk wrote:

Business director Jason Holtman is apparently gone. He's been with Valve since 2005. This is a bigger deal than just hardware.

I wonder if that has anything to do with Gabe's talking about Valve taking a less curatorial role with Steam?

Podunk wrote:

Business director Jason Holtman is apparently gone. He's been with Valve since 2005. This is a bigger deal than just hardware.

That's more interesting to me, it would seem to me to be more than just about steambox, which depending how you look at it is just starting (besides valve's internal efforts).

Random guess is that it's something to do with steam, or spinning steam off. The other thread is titled "Gabriel Newell's Digital Wonder Emporium", which I think kind of describes Valve, it's a bit of everything, but not focussed, perhaps some people wanted to get back to making games and there's just too much under that one roof.

Podunk wrote:

Whoa.

Keep in mind that's a diff from a month ago and is far from complete. Anyone that quit recently and was taken off the website would be on the list. A few names are definitely confirmed though.

Given Valve's internal structure, I wonder how this decision was implemented. Has Valve ever laid anyone off before?

The more I hear about this, the weirder it gets.

Yeah, that list is mostly core Valve people. There are tons of people in publishing, support, etc who were not listed there to begin with.

edit: and some core people whose involvement at Valve has not been widely publicized were not listed there either (Clint Hocking, Doug Church).

Based on the events of the last year and ongoing news, this is not an industry with long term prospects or job security. Even at the big and established houses.

I realize I'm stating the obvious, but this situation with Valve cements my thought.

maverickz wrote:

Based on the events of the last year and ongoing news, this is not an industry with long term prospects or job security. Even at the big and established houses.

I realize I'm stating the obvious, but this situation with Valve cements my thought.

Valve seems to me like the kind of place I'd always be looking over my shoulder, not for someone stabbing me in the back but with that collection of high value talent there must be a big pressure to perform. When Newell is running around saying they are generating more profit per employee than google, that's got to get to you if for whatever reason you're not being productive for whatever goals Valve has at that moment in time. As much as it's portrayed as this glorious developer utopia that you can be elevated to, I can see problems happening.

Scratched wrote:

Valve seems to me like the kind of place I'd always be looking over my shoulder, not for someone stabbing me in the back but with that collection of high value talent there must be a big pressure to perform.

There was an interview with one of the lead designers on the original Counter-Strike mod which basically confirmed he felt a huge pressure to perform and voluntarily left after a year because he had little to show for it :\

Yeah, that definitely lines up with what I've heard about working at Valve.

Yikes, this isn't news you want to hear. Valve are our shining beacon of all that could be great in the industry, I'd sort of hoped they were immune to this sort of thing. Wishful thinking I guess.

Redwing wrote:

Yikes, this isn't news you want to hear. Valve are our shining beacon of all that could be great in the industry, I'd sort of hoped they were immune to this sort of thing. Wishful thinking I guess.

I think Nintendo is more of the beacon. I haven't heard of them laying off....anyone. When things get tough, management takes pay cuts.

Without knowing anything, as we don't, I might as well step in as devil's advocate. I'm not saying this is my perspective on this situation, since we don't know more, but just a perspective:

It's not good to the individuals but there's nothing intrinsically evil about a company pruning for long-term stability and success. It doesn't even have to be tied to performance-related issues, but in principle a company can re-evaluate priorities and make cuts- and it can be a good thing. It can be a good thing for all of the employees left there, for all of the future employees inline with the direction they want to grow, and a good thing for the ecosystem that a company contributes to. Taking stock and making decisions is not, in itself, always a bad thing. The problem is companies that go too far to squeeze blood from a stone. We don't know enough to properly contextualize this situation.

The crazy industry info ninja Superannuation was tweeting some stuff from Valve people saying that this time of year is the performance review time. It would appear that a certain number of people always tend to leave the company around this time but normally it's kept hush hush. Apparently Jeri Ellsworth mentioning that she was let go kind of broke the seal and so people have gone digging. I don't know how much truth there is to that but Superannuation is usually pretty accurate. I have also read that there is a lot of pressure to perform at Valve so maybe this isn't unusual there, though some of the long-time names departing does surprise me. Given that Gabe Newell keeps talking about how incredibly profitable they are (more profitable per employee than Google) so I doubt this is related to money.

checkm-8 wrote:

Statement from Gabe

I'm sure Ken Levine and Gabe are going to have something to chit-chat about if they run into each other at GDC this year. Those nosy journalists!

shoptroll wrote:
checkm-8 wrote:

Statement from Gabe

I'm sure Ken Levine and Gabe are going to have something to chit-chat about if they run into each other at GDC this year. Those nosy journalists!

If I see what you're saying correctly, it has to be an irritating problem for studio managers, that every bit of information that comes out of a studio must be somehow relevant and important. So long as studios use humans for testing development, there will be personnel issues of various forms which may or may not have anything to do with their output. At what point does gaming journalism get excited over nothing? Is 25 people remarkable? I kind of tune it out most of the time when there's a news post about some guy leaving some studio.

While I still argue that we don't know enough about the layoffs to be able to judge their merit- not that we always be the judges of everything- some of the layoffs are certainly surprising.

Scratched wrote:

At what point does gaming journalism get excited over nothing? Is 25 people remarkable?

Joystiq: Valve fires dozens of hardware, Android staff

While technically "dozens" implies some multiple of 12, that's definitely hyping up the news.

shoptroll wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Valve seems to me like the kind of place I'd always be looking over my shoulder, not for someone stabbing me in the back but with that collection of high value talent there must be a big pressure to perform.

There was an interview with one of the lead designers on the original Counter-Strike mod which basically confirmed he felt a huge pressure to perform and voluntarily left after a year because he had little to show for it :

This is an interesting fact to hear. Considering Valve's output over the years, which tends to be about one game per year, I'm curious as to where this pressure is being applied. If there is this much push to work hard, where is this work going? I realize the games they make are top notch, I'm a huge fan, but their production rate is not all that intensive.

demonbox wrote:

Without knowing anything, as we don't, I might as well step in as devil's advocate. I'm not saying this is my perspective on this situation, since we don't know more, but just a perspective:

It's not good to the individuals but there's nothing intrinsically evil about a company pruning for long-term stability and success. It doesn't even have to be tied to performance-related issues, but in principle a company can re-evaluate priorities and make cuts- and it can be a good thing. It can be a good thing for all of the employees left there, for all of the future employees inline with the direction they want to grow, and a good thing for the ecosystem that a company contributes to. Taking stock and making decisions is not, in itself, always a bad thing. The problem is companies that go too far to squeeze blood from a stone. We don't know enough to properly contextualize this situation.

This kind of stuff is bad for morale. It breeds a self-centered survivalist work environment instead of a collaborative one. That's bad management. Pruning for the sake of pruning generally means that personnel hiring was done with short term prospects in mind. That's also bad management.

Now, it's entirely possible, and most likely, they had made decisions about their future which did not involve the kind of work those employees were doing. So what I said above could be wrong.

maverickz wrote:

If there is this much push to work hard, where is this work going? I realize the games they make are top notch, I'm a huge fan, but their production rate is not all that intensive.

They ship a lot of updates and extra content for their old games. Hell, they probably release more stuff for no extra charge after the release of a main game than most studios do each year.

That's why I said about the 'fingers in many pies' thing earlier. They are very broad in what they have to support.

There's a few HL3 delaying jokes in there somewhere. Not intentionally I swear. Honest, Gabe. Don't put the HL3 team on notice.

Getting fired is never an uplifting thing, but it would be even stranger for a nimble and innovative company like Valve (which is the impression I get from them) to have an indefinite demand for everyone they've ever hired.

It all smacks of a notable shift in corporate strategy, I reckon. I fail to discern any greater element of drama, however.