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The Valve Employee Handbook

StuBurns

Banned
This is what it's come to? Really?

I'm fucking a nerd. I love to geek out on gaming shit, but an employee handbook? Coming from me it's ironic, but some folks need to get a life...
Mos def brah, who these mother fuckers think they're fooling being all friendly and shit.

Death to tyrants.
 

1-D_FTW

Member
This is what it's come to? Really?

I'm fucking a nerd. I love to geek out on gaming shit, but an employee handbook? Coming from me it's ironic, but some folks need to get a life...

Some people are inquisitive and like to learn new things. The Valve infrastructure leaks are a really cool peak into something that's radically different (and extremely effective under the right circumstances).
 

aeolist

Banned
That's the point I was trying to make.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter how Valve earns their money, but it does get very tiresome hearing gamers constantly sing their praises and wondering why other developers can't "be more like Valve".

You're confusing cause and effect though.

The point isn't that they can only sustain this company structure because of the support of Steam, it's that they came up with Steam and it turned out so well entirely because of their company structure.
 
This is what it's come to? Really?

I'm fucking a nerd. I love to geek out on gaming shit, but an employee handbook? Coming from me it's ironic, but some folks need to get a life...

Is he/she enjoying it? Tell me more.
Sorry, I had to do it.

I'll try to find time to read this, I've already chucked at some of the pages you guys have posted. Looks great!
 

Fersis

It is illegal to Tag Fish in Tag Fishing Sanctuaries by law 38.36 of the GAF Wildlife Act
A shame that they dont make fighting games... i would apply otherwise.

...

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lol
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;__;

This has confirmed my suspicions that Valve is the greatest company to work for ever.
Is not for everyone though, its hard to work without traditional organizational structures.

I am not worthy
From what ive heard from some devs that work there: They friggin' love it.

But, if you were to be hired, you could get the ball rolling on a fighting game. :p
* Applies *
* Fails *
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
A shame that they dont make fighting games... i would apply otherwise.

...

...

lol
..


..

;__;


From what ive heard from some devs that work there: They friggin' love it.

But, if you were to be hired, you could get the ball rolling on a fighting game. :p
 

Fersis

It is illegal to Tag Fish in Tag Fishing Sanctuaries by law 38.36 of the GAF Wildlife Act
Funny story: Ive mailed Valve about the idea/opportunity of making an #esports based Fighting Game.

Yes.. a competitive #esports fighting game made by Valve. BELIEVE.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Didn't they publish Rag Doll Kung Fu? Fersis, get right on that shit.

Yeah, it was one of first non-Valve-developed games to appear on Steam. Similarly, Darwinia has the honour of being the first self-published third-party game to appear on the platform.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Funny story: Ive mailed Valve about the idea/opportunity of making an #esports based Fighting Game.

Yes.. a competitive #esports fighting game made by Valve. BELIEVE.

A competitive fighting game featuring unused characters from Valve's catalogue, with Gordon's alter ego, Ivan the Space Biker, as the final boss of the SP mode? I'd buy it.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Funny story: Ive mailed Valve about the idea/opportunity of making an #esports based Fighting Game.

Yes.. a competitive #esports fighting game made by Valve. BELIEVE.
No genre is more ready for a Western rethinking. I'm surprised EA hasn't made some over the shoulder twin stick arm controlling dirty street fighting game.
 
That was a depressing read, I have to work in kitchen later on for minimum pay with a pot bellied man screaming at me to work faster :-(, sigh.

I wonder if this kind of working philosophy would work for all companies/business, even in my crappy work environment people tend to work better when left to their own devices but the manager/boss just doesn't seem to like allowing people to do that, even though it often increases productivity, they seem addicted to this militant hierarchy system.


What Motivates Us


But don't waste your time waiting for these kinds of changes to ever take place. Dogma is more important than results in this world.
 

Sentenza

Member
What Motivates Us


But don't waste your time waiting for these kinds of changes to ever take place. Dogma is more important than results in this world.
Ah! I was just thinking about this speech a few hours ago with all the replies like "it wouldn't work for most people".
Actually, it does. On a regular base. There's science proving it.
 

codecow

Member
The handbook combined with Michael Abrash's blog post will be great at boosting people's interest in working at Valve. I learned to program x86 assembly from his books back in the day, very cool.
 
That's the point I was trying to make.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter how Valve earns their money, but it does get very tiresome hearing gamers constantly sing their praises and wondering why other developers can't "be more like Valve".


They operated this way when they were making HL2 as well. Steam didnt even exist then. And Steam didnt sell anyone elses games until 2006. And they didnt start to see any real success with Steam until around 2008.

Kind of blows your theory out of the water.


Edit: Also the demo reel for that (sob?) game that was floating around recently was from another guy that left the company. He seemed to be really talented at handling large volume physics.
 

ASTROID2

Member
The picture on page 23 the guys wearing a half life 3 shirt. Hilarious.
j6OEg.png
 

StuBurns

Banned
It's looks like the same guy in the other two, but later, he's gaining weight. He was working on HL3, then Portal 2, now Dota 2.

We need to go derper.
 

1-D_FTW

Member
/\/\/\

That's my favorite pic. And I didn't even notice the car was tilted towards Gabe's side the first time. My focus was on all the steering wheels.
 

DarthWoo

I'm glad Grandpa porked a Chinese Muslim
/\/\/\

That's my favorite pic. And I didn't even notice the car was tilted towards Gabe's side the first time. My focus was on all the steering wheels.

I wonder if the cat is just random or a reference to Toonces.
 

Duderz

Banned
I plan to apply to Valve here pretty soon for their art department, but knowledge of Mudbox and 3DStudio Max is what makes me nervous. :/
 
Sounds like one of the few instances of communism done right. Kudos to Gabe for pulling it off.

sorry to break it to you, but this is the same model 'Gore' is described with in Malcolm Gladwell's "tipping point".

However, both companies are within high-risk, highly volatile industries that depend on creative innovation, where ranks and internal politics are an impediment to sharing ideas (you don't share good ideas with your competition) and this company structure is actually effective. With the additional comment that they control the full production process from idea to publishing.


Any other self employed or self contained autonomy experiments in various industries with less aspects of the full creation process have all been stopped, cancelled, or reincorporated at a later date without real exception.

If I'm not mistaken this was actually the idea behind EA's Visceral studio as well, which has since been closed. Quelle surprise.
 

codecow

Member
If I'm not mistaken this was actually the idea behind EA's Visceral studio as well, which has since been closed. Quelle surprise.

I can assure you we're still here, in fact I'm "working" right now in that I'm waiting for a build to finish.

Visceral has always been a great deal more hierarchical than what Valve describes although generally when new projects begin we somewhat live by the, "everyone is a game maker" statement from the old renegade team days. EA is a public company which in my view is a big difference.
 

Fjordson

Member
I have a question about HL 3,

how long has this whole Ricochet 2 = Half Life 3 idea been a thing? And where did it start?

(not to go off topic, but it was brought up in Gabe's podcast interview topic and I find it fascinating)
 

Draft

Member
It sounds like a really fun place to work.

Maybe a little hierarchy could get games released more than once a decade, though.
 

Sentenza

Member
Any other self employed or self contained autonomy experiments in various industries with less aspects of the full creation process have all been stopped, cancelled, or reincorporated at a later date without real exception.
Actually, no.
Also: Google internal structure for creative departments is based pretty much on the same philosophy.
 
I have a question about HL 3,

how long has this whole Ricochet 2 = Half Life 3 idea been a thing? And where did it start?

(not to go off topic, but it was brought up in Gabe's podcast interview topic and I find it fascinating)

It was an obvious joke. Nobody is looking forward to Ricochet 2.
 
All this joke talk about Ricochet 2 has me thinking Valve is totally making Ricochet 2.





sigh..... Day 1.

Also I really want them to have a making of Half Life 3 / EP3 close after release.

I wanna know what went wrong. I want to see what the original plan was. I want to know how many changes happened.
 

No_Style

Member
Loved reading through this. I even printed out a copy at work and threw it in a 3 ring binder to share with others.

Insightful and entertaining!
 
The scope of Valve's business, number of employees, and variety in creative, internal projects is hinged on overall revenue which, yes, includes revenue from Steam. But the idea that Valve could not abide by this business philosophy without the comfort of a cut from Steam games is very silly. It ignores the fact is and always has been a privately owned, internally funded hugely successful games studio. They weren't pressed for cash before Steam and certainly weren't afterwards.

I wouldn't go so far as to say their current model is only possible because of Steam. But your counter-argument ignores the fact that Valve's headcount before Steam was a quarter of what it is today and in a much smaller office, they did go through crunch time for HL2, and from what I remember were in a significantly less comfortable financial position before HL2 (though I don't think they ever went close to bankrupt, but Gabe had to personally fund the company after HL2 was scrapped and rebuilt). I don't think it's a stretch to say that Steam revenue is a large part of what has afforded them the ability to continue and refine their flat structure and comfortable position and make their company so attractive to work for.
 
Personally I'm curious to know what the hiring process is like for the various administrative people (accountants, HR, IT) I'm sure they must have, and if their roles are more formalized than what the handbook says.
 
A shame that they dont make fighting games... i would apply otherwise.
They never had a Dota division before. Maybe you could convince Gabe it's time to take a stab at fighting games and nail down the net code stuff.



Had fun reading through this earlier. It's written so enjoyably that I forgot it was really an employee handbook sometimes, haha.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I wouldn't go so far as to say their current model is only possible because of Steam. But your counter-argument ignores the fact that Valve's headcount before Steam was a quarter of what it is today and in a much smaller office, they did go through crunch time for HL2, and from what I remember were in a significantly less comfortable financial position before HL2 (though I don't think they ever went close to bankrupt, but Gabe had to personally fund the company after HL2 was scrapped and rebuilt). I don't think it's a stretch to say that Steam revenue is a large part of what has afforded them the ability to continue and refine their flat structure and comfortable position and make their company so attractive to work for.

I didn't ignore the headcount because that is a factor of size, which is relative to revenue. And as I said, that is helped by Steam. The business philosophy however can exist regardless of headcount.

And yes, pre-HL2 was a bit messier. HL2's crunch was what caused Gabe to axe crunch from all Valve products.
 

StuBurns

Banned
The claim they don't have crunch is strange, and countered by things Gabe has said in the past. For example, I remember he said the crunch on L4D was bad, and they decided to have short periods of crunch throughout the development of L4D2 so the final weeks weren't so extreme.
 
It is amazing how you can operate like this when everyone makes 100k or more on your payroll. I'm sure the cleaners, janitors, kitchen and/or cafe staff, etc. don't get to partake in this type of work environment free from management.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
The claim they don't have crunch is strange, and countered by things Gabe has said in the past. For example, I remember he said the crunch on L4D was bad, and they decided to have short periods of crunch throughout the development of L4D2 so the final weeks weren't so extreme.

Hmm. Weird. I could have sworn he said that he put in a no-crunch policy after HL2, as he felt the damage to staff moral was detrimental to Valve's operation and project health.

Maybe HE LIED.
 

StuBurns

Banned
It is amazing how you can operate like this when everyone makes 100k or more on your payroll. I'm sure the cleaners, janitors, kitchen and/or cafe staff, etc. don't get to partake in this type of work environment free from management.
Steam makes hundreds of millions every year, they only have three hundred staff or so, they could probably play everyone ten times that and still be in the black.
Hmm. Weird. I could have sworn he said that he put in a no-crunch policy after HL2, as he felt the damage to staff moral was detrimental to Valve's operation and project health.

Maybe HE LIED.

Maybe it's just a question of degrees. Portal 2 was finished ahead of submission though.
 
It is amazing how you can operate like this when everyone makes 100k or more on your payroll. I'm sure the cleaners, janitors, kitchen and/or cafe staff, etc. don't get to partake in this type of work environment free from management.

A lot of times these are outside companies who do this work, but I'd be willing to be they're treated very well.
 
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