Yes, with the information we have right now is hard to speculate but if I had to guess right now the most plausible explanation will be performance review.
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Gabe: 'We aren't canceling any projects'
- Thread starter MRORANGE
- Start date
Yes, with the information we have right now is hard to speculate but if I had to guess right now the most plausible explanation will be performance review.
soxinthebox
Member
reptilescorpio
Member
Gabe has been saying recently in interviews that they have been to easy on people in terms of firings and that they were going to be more aggressive now in cutting people who aren't working out right now.
rakkadakka
Member
In a way, we were all fired from Valve today.
Felix Lighter
Member
If that's the sole explanation for this, Valve needs to find a happy medium. A mass firing is going to bring some likely unwanted attention.
Thats the beauty of being a private company. Unwanted attention from who? They have no board of directors, no parent company, no shareholders to please.
flyinpiranha
Member
While your enthusiasm for Valve is noted these are somewhat big changes for a company that seens to have little turnover.
Voice of Reason
Banned
I'm glad the Steambox isn't canned, although that was an irrational thought to have from the beginning.
Felix Lighter
Member
They are freer than a public company to make quick decisions but they are a platform holder as well with publishers, developers and customers that are going to ask question.
SteveWinwood
Member
We don't know how many people have been fired in years past, just that people probably weren't looking for them or they had less twitter followers.
Who is? Stop making shit up.
Felix Lighter
Member
What? This thread is about a response from Gabe directly because people were asking questions.
NeededSleep
Member
I need Morgan Freeman to explain to me in his calming voice What The fuck is happening at Valve.
Its really disturbing to me that they would let this many highly talented people go.
Its really disturbing to me that they would let this many highly talented people go.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
What a dumb comment.
"We don't address personnel matters... unless people are actually curious, in which case we'll address them... to say we don't comment on the reasons behind our decisions... except to say that it's not any of the reasons you think"
*rolleyes*
"We don't address personnel matters... unless people are actually curious, in which case we'll address them... to say we don't comment on the reasons behind our decisions... except to say that it's not any of the reasons you think"
*rolleyes*
Felix Lighter
Member
I wasn't trying to suggest that anyone would be truly concerned after a single incident and no publisher or dev would be looking to jump ship in fear of the future of Valve. I was just saying that platform holder like Valve has to be more careful about PR like this than your standard private company.
I have a friend at Valve. There is no target date, but I've been assured that they are of course working on
Left 4 Dead
It's kind of funny. He feels put upon and doesn't really give a shit, but made the statement anyway. I like it.
Booter
Member
looooool. he should have just not said anything. what the hell did he think he would accomplish?
shinobi602
Member
Genuine question, what games does Valve have in the pipeline? Besides DOTA 2 if you count that...
Err.. should he have specifically said why they fired each person? That would have been... an interesting approach.
I guess saying nothing at all is what you're suggesting would make more sense? Or saying what their overall reasoning is behind firing, which assumes there is an overall reason... couldn't that be damaging to the people concerned, though?
Ravensmash
Member
What is DOTA 2 even doing at the moment? It's been in 'beta' for years seemingly, and they're handing out invites like candy (heck, I've got over a dozen and I've played it for 2 hours).
I'm sure they've got stuff lined up though, I'd like to see a L4D3.
Also, while it definitely raises curiosity seeing so many people let go, what do you expect Gabe to say? He's got no obligation to disclose reasons for terminations, that's internal business.
...maybe he really started thinking about Valve's 'soft' approach to firing, let someone go, and now is getting addicted to it!
Man, I hope whatever's really going on is as simple as cutting out specific projects or teams.
Working in single-owner small businesses in the past has me half-convinced all small business owners are paranoid egomaniacs who are periodically swept up in the need to stamp out perceived disloyalty based on thirdhand reports.
I don't think that's what's happening here at all, but it's my immediate go-to thought when I heard "Everything is fine! We fired a bunch of people for reasons we won't talk about, but it doesn't actually change what we're doing!"
Working in single-owner small businesses in the past has me half-convinced all small business owners are paranoid egomaniacs who are periodically swept up in the need to stamp out perceived disloyalty based on thirdhand reports.
I don't think that's what's happening here at all, but it's my immediate go-to thought when I heard "Everything is fine! We fired a bunch of people for reasons we won't talk about, but it doesn't actually change what we're doing!"
RustyNails
Member
Ice cold.
You know what I think could've saved those peoples' careers? Half Life 3.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Commenting to say no comment is not commenting. Commenting to say "no comment except for any of your guesses are wrong" is also not commenting. Either don't comment, or comment substantively to end the discussion on the subject.
It's got about a dozen heroes left, will probably have a tutorial by the time it's "fully" released, and Valve is working on increasing server capacity to handle more players. Apart from those things, it's very close.
suddenlyissoon
Member
It probably boils down to complacency. If you work in a place long enough with no structure or requirements I'm sure there's bound to be a number of people who just decide they can get away with doing nothing. I imagine it's just removing redundancy and trimming the fat.
While it's nice to know what he says is not going to be affected, I'd really like to know what was affected. There's no way you can let go of that many people without it having an impact on something.
Future employees, current employees, customers, business partners.
Future employees, current employees, customers, business partners.
Ravensmash
Member
Well he can't really come out and say these people were sacked because they were shit (not implying they were btw), that'd be a horrible move which would ruin careers.
He's simply coming out and saying that the company is carrying on as normal, due to speculation surrounding cancelled projects - it seems perfectly fair.
Maybe they weren't the right people for the roles? Maybe there were internal disputes? Maybe Valve are simply re-evaluating how they approach projects and realised they sadly don't need the staff at present?
Could be anything, but it's not really our business as consumers.
I admit, my mind goes to the exact same place. I guess that's the problem with a benevolent dictatorship -- there's always the chance that benevolence turns nutty, or that it always was nutty and it was just that no one from the inside got their voice out for a while. So it's tricky to know how things are from the outside. It would really suck for Valve and Steam to implode though, with the way recent pc games and indie games have flourished out of that infrastructure being there. I hope everything's ok!
Sentenza
Member
Yep, i wrote pretty much the same thing in the other thread.
I don't get all these complaints about how "He didn't explain shit"
What did you people expect? A detailed explanation of all the (real or perceived) shortcomings of everyone fired so far?
P.S. Just for the record, that's the post I was talking about:
Are you saying that you don't have enough to go on to believe him when he says "we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]"?
Personally, I get from that that they're still working on whatever steam box thing they've talked about recently and I still expect to hear about it sometime this year (valve time), that they also didn't cancel any game projects, and that Valve and Linux still seem to have a potentially healthy future ahead of them. Taken together, this suggests to me that there was no major strategic shift at valve, at least in any of these categories, which were exactly the things I was wondering about after hearing the recent news about firings (steambox and linux, anyway).
So it seems like substantive information in that it addresses what I was thinking about, but now you're making me wonder if there's some reason to doubt what I was hearing? Or maybe those just weren't the things you wanted to hear about?
I bet it was something petty, like gossiping in the valve hq jacuzzi about gabe's choice of polo that particular day
ThaiGrocer
Member
OrangeYouGlad
Banned
You think people being laid off from Valve is going to deter future employees in the video game industry?
Current employees got an email explaining exactly what happened or why they shouldn't be concerned.
No customer really cares and neither do their business partners who have probably laid off people too. They were also likely given some explanation if it affected them.
GAF is being GAF. This is business as usual for a company. Just that people here are aware that people are being laid off.
shinobi602
Member
Well, I can't say this news really bothers me to be honest. For all I know, Valve's not even developing any games right now, so it makes me go "huh?" when all these employees were fired/laid off/resigned.
What were these employees even working on?
What were these employees even working on?
While it is impossible to know for sure, Gabe Newell sort of hinted at why this happened about two weeks ago:
Gabe Newell: Reflections of a Video Game Maker
http://youtu.be/t8QEOBgLBQU?t=25m13s
+
Report: Valve letting go of several employees as part of “great cleansing”
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/report-valve-letting-employees-part-great-cleansing/
Valve designer Greg Coomer:
"The short answer of how we handle terminations, really, is the same as we approach all other decisions at the company. It is a peer driven process."
Gabe Newell: Reflections of a Video Game Maker
http://youtu.be/t8QEOBgLBQU?t=25m13s
+
Report: Valve letting go of several employees as part of “great cleansing”
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/report-valve-letting-employees-part-great-cleansing/
Valve designer Greg Coomer:
"The short answer of how we handle terminations, really, is the same as we approach all other decisions at the company. It is a peer driven process."
Probably steambox / new source engine / crazy restructuring of steam with prediction markets etc. etc. they've been talking about, but honestly I have no idea
Forsaken82
Member
Every company lays people off. Not every person that gets laid off is happy about it. Making it known on twitter when you have several thousand followers starts a flood
Despite what you might think, Valve isn't some company you walk into expecting to have job security through to retirement.
shinobi602
Member
Probably steambox / new source engine / crazy restructuring of steam with betting markets etc. etc. they've been talking about, but honestly I have no idea
Well, I'm mainly talking about games. Valve still makes games, right?
True, every company does indeed lay people off sometimes. Normal.
However, laying dozens of employees off, firing your senior hardware engineer, and having your Director of Business leave, all at the same time, is not normal.
shinobi602
Member
Edit: double post