Uh oh , turns out working at Valve ...sucks

[JonDnD 2,816]

I worked at Valve a few years back, and I could write a book about what's wrong there. I think the biggest problem they have -- which the author of this article touched on -- is that "success is the worst teacher." Valve have discovered that cosmetic microtransactions are big money makers, and thus every team at Valve was dedicated to that vision. When I was there (before Artifact started in open development) there were essentially no new games being developed at all. There was a small group that were working on Left for Dead 3 (cancelled shortly after I joined), and a couple guys poking around with pre-production experiments for Half-Life 3 (it will never be released). But effectively all the attention was focused on cosmetic items and "the economy" of the three big games (DOTA, CS:GO, and TF2). One very senior employee even said that Valve would never make another single player game, because they weren't worth the effort. "Portal 2," he explained, had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it, when you could make 100s of millions a year selling digital hats and paintjobs for guns (most of which are designed by players, not the employees!)

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In theory, employees are allowed to (supposed to, even) work on whatever they think is valuable. In reality, you should be working on whatever the people around you think is valuable or you're gonna get fired really quickly. (Fewer than half of new employees make it to the end of their first year.) This usually means doing whatever the most senior people on the team think is important, both because they should know if they've been there for a while, but also because they wield enormous power behind the scenes.

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The problem with a company with no defined job titles or explicit seniority is that there is still seniority, but it is invisible and thus deniable. An example: in my first few months, I was struggling to find a good project and a very senior employee (one of the partners, actually) took me aside and recommended I leave my current team since my heart was clearly not in it and take some time to think about what I really wanted to do, or else I'd get let go. I took his advice seriously, came up with a couple ideas, and then approached him a week or so later to pitch these projects. He got _angry_ at me, stressing that he's not my boss, and that it showed a remarkable lack of initiative that I'd ask someone else at the company what I should work on.

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So: he has the authority to fire me (or at least to plausibly threaten to fire me) but the moment that authority would mean any responsibility or even the slightest effort to mentor someone, he's just another regular Joe with no special role at all. Similarly, there's no way to get meaningful feedback because nobody really knows who's going to be making the performance evaluations. Sure, you can take advice from someone who's been there for ten years, but if they're not included in the group that's assembled to evaluate you then their guidance is worth nothing.


I worked with some very smart people there, but it was the most dysfunctional and broken work environment I've ever witnessed.

 

 

I wonder if the RetardEra clowns will hate them now ?

[DynamiteCop 2,108]

I could have written this, anyone could have written this. 

 

Everything about this is hamstrung to previously known information about their operations. 

[Remij 4,823]

I hope more shit about them comes out so that they maybe at least try to address it and change.  They had the ability to be THE premiere PC AAA developer creating the best games on the platform... but they lost their fucking way with Steam and just making money off selling bullshit.

 

This is why I want Epic to do some damage to them... force them to get better and DO BETTER for PC.. which is their fucking platform.  They've done nothing to really represent PC at anything.  No games to push the boundaries, no building of new studios and franchises to bring more people into PC gaming.  They are content to just have console shit, and asset flip shit shoveled onto their platform.

[Teh_Diplomat 2,054]

Yeah the amount of money they pull in from cosmetics in those games must be astounding, and given that the communities now make the majority of them, that allows them to collect the bulk of the money. Then all they really need to do is look at the submissions, and approve them, which saves an huge amount of time (and thus money), since you don't need to plan, design and scrap any of the ones that don't make the cut..

[DynamiteCop 2,108]

3 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

I hope more shit about them comes out so that they maybe at least try to address it and change.  They had the ability to be THE premiere PC AAA developer creating the best games on the platform... but they lost their fucking way with Steam and just making money off selling bullshit.

 

This is why I want Epic to do some damage to them... force them to get better and DO BETTER for PC.. which is their fucking platform.  They've done nothing to really represent PC at anything.  No games to push the boundaries, no building of new studios and franchises to bring more people into PC gaming.  They are content to just have console shit, and asset flip shit shoveled onto their platform.

Valve while being a forced to be reckoned with in the PC space at one time never actually created original games. The only game that was actually brainstormed by Valve was Half-Life and even that's questionable given everything else they've done. Everything else was mods of other games, small projects and teams they bought etc.

 

Half-Life: "Original" concept

Counter-Strike: Mod

Day of Defeat: Mod

Team Fortress: Mod

Portal: Team and concept acquisition

Left 4 Dead: Team and concept acquisition

Dota: Mod

Artifact: Hearthstone ripoff

 

They were never anything special ideologically, they were just exceptional at guiding the existing.

 

 

 

[Remij 4,823]

Just now, Teh_Diplomat said:

Yeah the amount of money they pull in from cosmetics in those games must be astounding, and given that the communities now make the majority of them, that allows them to collect the bulk of the money. Then all they really need to do is look at the submissions, and approve them, which saves an huge amount of time (and thus money), since you don't need to plan, design and scrap any of the ones that don't make the cut..

It ridiculous.  And they don't put any of that money back into making PC focused shit to get more users to come to the platform.  It literally takes then AGES to get anything done to Steam.  I appreciate the amount of work changes to Steam is... but these guys constantly start shit and either never finish or just half bake it.  The only things they actively work on are little fucking systems designed to get people to spend more fucking money on useless shit.

 

They are completely resting on their laurels... and everyone knows it.  They have been for years.  Make some fucking deals, build some fucking teams who's jobs are to just make PC exclusive games that bring value to the platform you cowards.  

[Remij 4,823]

2 minutes ago, DynamiteCop! said:

Valve while being a forced to be reckoned with in the PC space at one time never actually created original games. The only game that was actually brainstormed by Valve was Half-Life and even that's questionable given everything else they've done. Everything else was mods of other games, small projects and teams they bought etc.

 

Half-Life: "Original" concept

Counter-Strike: Mod

Day of Defeat: Mod

Team Fortress: Mod

Portal: Team and concept acquisition

Left 4 Dead: Team and concept acquisition

Dota: Mod

Artifact: Hearthstone ripoff

 

They were never anything special ideologically, they were just exceptional at guiding the existing.

 

 

 

I know, and I don't disagree.. but that was when they were coming up.  They have the influence and ability now to build world class teams.  Instead their culture is so fucked that nobody can get things done there and the only things they focus on are how to rip people off.

 

It doesn't matter how they acquired the talent.. or that they didn't have the original ideas themselves... they brought in the people who did... and made something awesome out of it... they don't do that shit anymore.

[102020393023445948594 2,223]

nobody likes where they work.

 

this gob is probably making  a handsome salary, has health care, and a ton of benefits. fuck off with this shit. get back to work.