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Valve developer Aaron Nicholls joins Oculus VR
- Thread starter ComputerMKII
- Start date
IllumiNate
Member
Once FB purchased Oculus. Valve made the decision to cancel all VR hardware R&D indefinitely. They can't really compete with both Sony and Oculus now that FB bought them out. So the talent got scooped up by FB. VR is still a major part of where steam wants to be. They will make sure Steam will be VR compatible while also selling all forms of VR content.
Turin Turambar
Member
If FB value goes up in say, two or three years, it's actually more than 2 billions!
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
That's just you seeing what you want to see
In the last three years, Valve has done the following:
Released DotA2
Released Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Released Portal 2 (just barely less than 3 years)
Announced Steam Machines with a wide array of partners and a constantly updating controller
Introduced Steam Greenlight
Made a variety of other improvements to Steam (e.g. big picture mode)
Made very significant updates to older games such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2.
All with an estimated total of 330 employees. I have no idea how much you want 330 people to get done in that time frame, quickly.
amstradcpc
Member
They only have Richard Marks and Anton Mikhailov left...
Shin-Ra
Junior Member
Fightin'Ball Oculus exclusive.
I'm sorry but this is bullshit. If anything Valve completely outpaces any other studio of comparable size I can think of, both in terms of pace of releases (huge, themed content updates across multiple titles which often include completely new game features, alongside critically acclaimed new game releases either annually or every other year since 2004), as well as the variety of work their employees can involve themselves in (game development, OS development and collaboration with GPU vendors, literally the cutting edge of VR SDK development, massive content delivery and community infrastructure on Steam, film and animation production, user generated content and monetisation for users that is basically nonexistent at any other games company right now, game controller R&D/production/manufacture).
But yeah, tell us more about the unfulfilled achievements of frustrated Valve employees.
zephervack
Member
Plus....
The remote play feature
Getting Source engine to Android (Portal 1 is coming out for nVidia Shield tomorrow)
Very underrated stuff but incredibly useful and im sure it was hard as hell to get going.
As I've stated previously, I think a lot of people are really Half Life fans, and perhaps tangentially are Steam fans, but have little interest in Valve's multiplayer games or expanded focus on things like Source engine or Android support or Linux support. Further, I think a lot of gamers suffer from a narrow field of vision, where anything they don't really care about (e.g. iOS games or 3DS games) is basically invisible or does not exist.
From that particular perspective, almost everything Valve has done for the last generation (let alone last 3 years) is basically invisible.
From that particular perspective, almost everything Valve has done for the last generation (let alone last 3 years) is basically invisible.
flyinpiranha
Member
I definitely am not in the "they haven't done anything" crowd, but I am seriously positioned in the "they haven't done anything I want" crowd.
Basically I liked Valve because of Half Life. While I don't think their current output isn't of 'value', besides Steam Sales and using Steam as my 'PC Gaming Hub', they are a storefront and organizational software company. Not a gaming studio I am interested in.
1. One game a year on average, plus updates to older games and a nebulous console plan isn't very impressive to me, sorry. And in general the Steam Machine plan seems unfocused and poorly managed.
2. Three years is an unfair comparison. I specifically used two years since that is how long Oculus VR has been in existence (and with only 50 people), but whatever.
3. Also during this time (we can safely speculate) Valve killed their own internal VR and AR development. Now they are going to sort of partner with folks like Oculus VR, rather than lead the way.
I'm not really a fan of Valve or Oculus though. I was just explaining why an employee might be more excited to work at Oculus VR than Valve.
One game a year, plus supporting Steam, plus supporting older games, plus supporting source, plus starting a whole new hardware department, all with 330 people? Just for comparison, Bioware's Mass Effect team has ~250-300 people and produces a single game every two years and does nothing else.
What you're suggesting is objectively wrong unless you think no one is productive, because Valve is considerably more productive than anyone else of their size. If you compare them to any similarly sized peer (Bethesda ES team, as another example) their output is immense. The only team that even remotely compares would be Dice.
That's completely fine. I'm only frustrated when people equate "not what I'm interested in" with "doesn't exist," which is far more common than most realize and isn't specific to Valve.
In discussions about the gaming industry broadly, iOS is often conveniently forgotten, handheld games are sometimes mentioned only as an aside, and Facebook is typically not to be spoken of in polite company. I think people are often incapable of distinguishing between things they like and things that objectively matter in the industry.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Am I alone in finding this ironical?
you have to add in a line of speculative bullshit or else it ruins the whole point of making a satirical gaf post
OldAsUrSock
Banned
When was this announced?
One release and plenty of added content every year is unimpressive compared to who, Gameloft?
ashecitism
Member
At Nvidia's GTC keynote last week: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/25/portal-shield/
also according to Polygon Nvidia themselves are porting it
Weird how people are reading into this.
Valve has said multiple times that they don't intend to release their own VR headset. They're experimenting with VR and have deliberately shared their research with Oculus. They view it as a benefit to the entire gaming ecosystem - on which Valve will benefit because they're working to natively support VR in every way.
So when the most promising VR company in the world gets a massive influx in cash, quite obviously that's where the VR-focused people at Valve will go. Not because they're "defecting" or whatever, but because Valve's part in VR research appears to be mostly done, and now it's onto the development phase where Oculus will excel.
Valve has said multiple times that they don't intend to release their own VR headset. They're experimenting with VR and have deliberately shared their research with Oculus. They view it as a benefit to the entire gaming ecosystem - on which Valve will benefit because they're working to natively support VR in every way.
So when the most promising VR company in the world gets a massive influx in cash, quite obviously that's where the VR-focused people at Valve will go. Not because they're "defecting" or whatever, but because Valve's part in VR research appears to be mostly done, and now it's onto the development phase where Oculus will excel.
VisceralBowl
Member
Valve owner Gabe Newell joins Facebook.