Yea it's definitely not for everyone.I would totally fail in a company like this. At work I'm like a vine, I need structure or I don't get anywhere.
Apparently GAF likes to think making 1 game every 2 years (which sells ~3-4 million copies) means you can afford to give 250 employees an extra week-long fully comp'd holiday a year, have a free-form development environment free of pesky 'crunch' time and pay everyone much higher than average salaries.
Someone should really go and tell all the other studios they're doing it wrong.
Their games all have sold well over 4 million.
Bioshock 3 to take place in the ruined halls of Valve HQ after their descent into madness.
Apparently GAF likes to think making 1 game every 2 years (which sells ~3-4 million copies) means you can afford to give 250 employees an extra week-long fully comp'd holiday a year, have a free-form development environment free of pesky 'crunch' time and pay everyone much higher than average salaries.
Someone should really go and tell all the other studios they're doing it wrong.
It sounds like a really fun place to work.
Maybe a little hierarchy could get games released more than once a decade, though.
It's a model with similar roots.that it's not communism, but just another model.
But, if you were to be hired, you could get the ball rolling on a fighting game.
This makes it even more amazing.Valve confirmed it being real at their Facebook page. So...
@$4.99Their games all have sold well over 4 million.
Are you questioning the fact that they have an employee handbook like most established companies have in some form or another, or the fact they made and effort to make it fun to read.
No.More marveling that people are so stuck on valve's dick they squeal like groupies at a funny handbook.
It's not that drastically different from a lot of upper class companies, especially in the more tech/VFX oriented industries.
sounds like a mess to me
The whole desk-on-wheels thing is kind of silly. We have the same thing at the dev I work at... except we just ask IT/facilities to move our stuff for us. No hassle
I want to work there.
Everyone is thinking it...
Does anyone else find it just a little ridiculous that a group of people working on developing i'm assuming software would need an IT group to set up there stuff for em? Just saying..
Examples?
Pixar? Bluesky? Google? Rearden Labs? I'm sorry but this isn't that exclusive.
I don't think anyone here is trying to say that VALVE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN OR EVER WILL DO THIS. You might be projecting, a little.
Nobody's acting like anyone's saying that, either.
I don't think anyone here is trying to say that VALVE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN OR EVER WILL DO THIS. You might be projecting, a little.
But being critical of valve or anything they do isn't going to happen here. Instead we cry over a handbook.Great justification for shitting on everybody's fun and describing everybody here as 'groupies on Valve's dick.' We can't be interested because it's not unique?
The larger the company, the more it necessitates IT. I work for a fairly large dev (500+ people), and only 100-200 of them are actually working on the game. The rest are community, marketing, business, accounting, etc. Of the ones that work on the game, including me, many don't have backgrounds in anything remotely related to software.Does anyone else find it just a little ridiculous that a group of people working on developing i'm assuming software would need an IT group to set up there stuff for em? Just saying..
I think that's a stretch, or at least, you can't make that assumption. Valve is a small company, and it's more likely that they just don't see the need to hire dedicated facilities personnel. I asked my boss about why we need IT to move our shit around, and he said to me, "so you can spend your time doing something actually productive in the meanwhile"Well, that and it seems the whole idea with Valve's system is to make people take the initiative.
Saying it's your responsibility to move your workstation as needed appears to reinforce that...
Uhhh I'm not sure about all those companies but Google is not like this.Pixar? Bluesky? Google? Rearden Labs? I'm sorry but this isn't that exclusive.
God fucking damnit that's cool.The fact that everyone is always moving around within the company
makes people hard to find. Thats why we have http://usercheck it
out. We know where you are based on where your machine is plugged
in, so use this site to see a map of where everyone is right now.
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...
But being critical of valve or anything they do isn't going to happen here. Instead we cry over a handbook.
I want to work there.
Everyone is thinking it...
Where Will You Take Us?
Valve will be a different company a few years from now
because you are going to change it for the better. We cant
wait to see where you take us. The products, features, and
experiences that you decide to create for customers are
the things that will define us.
Whether its a new game, a feature in Steam, a way to
save customers money, a painting that teaches us whats
beautiful, something that protects us from legal threats,
a new typeface, an idea for how to be healthier while we
work, a new hat-making tool for TF2, a spectacular animation,
a new kind of test that lets us be smarter, a game
controller that can tell whether youre scared or a toy that
makes four-year-olds laugh, or (more likely) something
nobodys thought of yetwe cant wait to see what kind
of future you choose to build at Valve.
So how did this get out anyway?
Valve is not a very leaky ship.
Eh, Pixar and Google are pretty different from each other and both different from Valve. No idea about the other two, but if you're going take a "this isn't that special" dump on a thread, you're going to have to do better than that.Pixar? Bluesky? Google? Rearden Labs? I'm sorry but this isn't that exclusive.
"so you can spend your time doing something actually productive in the meanwhile"