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Valve developer Aaron Nicholls joins Oculus VR

C

ComputerMKII

Banned
Buy me for $2 billion if old

Valve developer Aaron Nicholls joins Oculus VR

Developer Aaron Nicholls is the latest Valve employee to leave the company for Oculus VR, according to a tweet sent from the official Oculus VR Twitter account.

"We're thrilled to welcome Aaron Nicholls to the team!" the tweet reads. "He'll be working out of the Bellevue R&D lab with Atman and crew."

Nicholls previously worked as a manager and coder on titles like Gears of War, Halo 3 and Jade Empire. He joined Valve in 2010 where he worked on design, gameplay and systems. Prior to joining Valve, he worked at Microsoft Studios.

The announcement comes only three days after Valve developer Michael Abrash announced that he too was leaving for Oculus VR. According to the tweet, Nicholls will be working with Atman Binstock, who was previously lead engineer on Valve's virtual reality project before he join Oculus VR as chief architect.

Oculus VR recently made headlines after social networking company Facebook acquired it for $2 billion in cash and stock. Company co-founder Palmer Luckey said on Reddit this past weekend that members of Oculus VR received death threats following the announcement of the sale.
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http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/1/5568750/valve-developer-aaron-nicholls-joins-oculus-vr
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
I like how his list of projects ends when he started at Valve.

Facebook is splashing that money around.
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
BennyBlanco said:
is valves "working closely" with occulus the last year or so backfiring?
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They need OR to do well if they want their own internal dabbling and development in the VR space to be relevant. Valve seems to want to just ensure that they're ahead of the curve on software development aimed at VR, not produce their own hardware.
 
BennyBlanco

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
MightyHedgehog said:
They need OR to do well if they want their own internal dabbling and development in the VR space to be relevant. Valve seems to want to just ensure that they're ahead of the curve on software development aimed at VR, not produce their own hardware.
Click to expand...

but at the cost of losing some of their best talent?
 
De-mon

De-mon

Member
vc7e5w4.jpg
 
S

spwolf

Member
MightyHedgehog said:
They need OR to do well if they want their own internal dabbling and development in the VR space to be relevant. Valve seems to want to just ensure that they're ahead of the curve on software development aimed at VR, not produce their own hardware.
Click to expand...

yeah, no... nobody wants other companies poaching their employees.
 
G

Guevara

Member
I can imagine being a talented person, working at Valve and just being incredibly frustrated by the glacial pace. You could be there for 2 years and accomplish almost nothing.

Then you see a company like Oculus VR that has achieved so much in 18 months. It would absolutely be tempting to leave.
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
BennyBlanco said:
but at the cost of losing some of their best talent?
Click to expand...

There's talent everywhere. Why do they need these guys to be at Valve when they're obviously better positioned to do more productive work in that space by being there at the ground level of its foundations rather than just producing software after it's ready for primetime? Seems apparent that Valve doesn't want to take on the risk at such an early stage when eager hardware partners can. Either way, Valve wins because they focus on software and dominating the digital retail space for PC and while their former employees can take the lessons learned with internal VR work with them to OR to better-implement its first generation of consumer offering.
 
J

Jb

Member
Guevara said:
I can imagine being a talented person, working at Valve and just being incredibly frustrated by the glacial pace. You could be there for 2 years and accomplish almost nothing.

Then you see a company like Oculus VR that has achieved so much in 18 months. It would absolutely be tempting to leave.
Click to expand...

On the flip side I imagine the pay and job safety is pretty good.
 
F

flyinpiranha

Member
Jb said:
On the flip side I imagine the pay and job safety is pretty good.
Click to expand...

If you're being poached and/or even were hired at Valve, job security might not be your biggest issue. You'll probably find work elsewhere.

My guess is these guys were working on a secret VR project and now Oculus can afford them.
 
M

MaLDo

Member
Facebook will make a new IP (fps) as big AAA exclusive for Rift and this man will work in that game.
 
F

FACE

Banned
Guevara said:
I can imagine being a talented person, working at Valve and just being incredibly frustrated by the glacial pace. You could be there for 2 years and accomplish almost nothing.

Then you see a company like Oculus VR that has achieved so much in 18 months. It would absolutely be tempting to leave.
Click to expand...

I have no idea why people keep saying that Valve isn't doing anything.
 
O

Orayn

Member
FACE said:
I have no idea why people keep saying that Valve isn't doing anything.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure you could use GAF threads about Valve to conduct a high quality academic study on confirmation bias.

The narrative of Valve doing nothing is strong enough that some people are willing to bend over backwards to repeat it whenever possible
 
N

Nzyme32

Member
BennyBlanco said:
is valves "working closely" with occulus the last year or so backfiring?
Click to expand...

Well since no one really knows the nature of the partnership or the nature of the changes of employment of staff and their circumstances or the projects valve required them for in the first place and if there are any changes there - its pretty difficult to make any conclusions.
 
W

wrowa

Member
Well, since Abrash left Valve, I doubt that they are still actively working on VR technology at Valve. He was the one who made VR a topic at Valve and since he left, it's only logical that a lot of "his team" would follow him.
 
F

FACE

Banned
Orayn said:
Pretty sure you could use GAF threads about Valve to conduct a high quality academic study on confirmation bias.

The narrative of Valve doing nothing is strong enough that some people are willing to bend over backwards to repeat it whenever possible
Click to expand...

Yeah, if some gaffers are to be believed those developers that were involved with a VR prototype going to a VR-focused company has nothing to do with said company receiving a huge influx of cash. It is a result of Valve being complacent even though they've released one game a year since 2007(or even earlier).
 
K

kick51

Banned
Half Life 3/Ep. 3 is simply Valve's Shenmue 3. A comparatively small number of people want it compared to the money they can make on everything else. Why make Shenmue 3 when you can crap out a high selling Sonic game? Why make Half Life 3 when you can work on DOTA2? Making the game would be a favor to a small group of hardcores.

sort of april fool's. sort of.
 
D

Dachande

Member
I don't think this is "backfiring" on Valve at all. Valve were never going to get into the business of selling VR hardware - all their R&D into it was based around the concept of getting a common API off the ground for all VR hardware to use through Steam, but to do that you also need to know what the optimal hardware is.

This is basically a transfer of Valve's VR hardware R&D over to Oculus. There's no reason why Oculus will stop working with Valve on the software API side, but now all hardware knowledge is being consolidated into one building. Considering that knowledge wasn't really going to go that much further within Valve (if they're not going to monetise it, they have to hit the stop button eventually), this is the best situation for everybody.
 
Z

zephervack

Member
Abrash is probably hiring all his team back at Valve, this wont be the last.

Also, in the hiring page of Oculus they say that every employee gets stock from the company, so yeah, huge incentives everywhere.
 
KaiserBecks

KaiserBecks

Member
I'm surprised to see so many talented people from the games industry being interested in working on some cheap Facebook VR pop-up ad HMD thingy, amiright?
 
H

Hindl

Member
I'll admit, I bought a dev kit 2 and was really pissed when Facebook announced the merger not a week later. Not calling for blood and ready to cancel the preorder, but pretty damn upset. But seeing all the Valve talent going to Oculus and their position, my faith has been somewhat restored. Good to see this isn't simply going to die.
 
M

Mondy

Banned
kick51 said:
Half Life 3/Ep. 3 is simply Valve's Shenmue 3. A comparatively small number of people want it compared to the money they can make on everything else. Why make Shenmue 3 when you can crap out a high selling Sonic game? Why make Half Life 3 when you can work on DOTA2? Making the game would be a favor to a small group of hardcores.

sort of april fool's. sort of.
Click to expand...

Uhhhh.......I believe you're mistaken somehow. April Fools won't save you here.
 
I

Iced_Eagle

Member
Great news for Oculus. They have the best VR team that you could assemble today. I have a lot of faith in the Rift.

Can't wait to get my DK2!
 
A

Agkel

Member
Shouldn't non compete clauses prevent all of this jumping around? Or does the employer (valve) has to enforce said clauses?
 
D

DeBurgo

Member
BennyBlanco said:
is valves "working closely" with occulus the last year or so backfiring?
Click to expand...
Losing employees doesn't have to be zero sum. If these people were at Valve working there mostly in a VR capacity, it probably makes more sense for both companies for them to be over at Oculus than Valve, especially since Oculus can actually pay these people, now.

Now, of course, FB could turn around and use their social networking platform to blow Steam out of the water, but as of right now that would be pretty far-out speculation. They aren't a direct competitor, yet.
 
Z

Zia

Member
At least Valve recently scooped up Rob Briscoe, who is probably already hard at work on some sweet Dota 2 store banner art.
 
R

ryamkajr

Banned
For those of you who keep noting the impact on Valve's HR tech - they stated and have always stated their work was for internal use/purposes only. THEY NEVER INTENDED TO GET INTO THE HARDWARE MARKET.

There was never going to be a Vale HR kit.
 
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