Valve Software handbook for new employees [pdf] (2012)

However, non-hierarchical structures are often open to manipulation and land-grabbing (see Tyranny of Structurelessness, etc.) so I am also skeptical that a company may have continued with this practice.

This comment is literally the first search result of "Chet Faliszek Valve employee handbook" for me. I've waded through several pages and haven't found a credible source of him saying that.

When smart people say ads don’t work on them - this is a counterexample. It’s just that different groups respond to different branding. And this was highly tuned to Reddit interests.

I'd agree it's a meaningful distinction if the company wasn't actually as written... but it sounds like everything in there is accurate?

I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments

That is debatable. For one thing, Steam is partly (mostly?) built off the backs of games marketing their games and providing a Steam link (marketing costs money for the devs). Steam kick started this chicken/egg problem by creating their own great games first.

Second, Steam does not provide your game any marketing (algorithmic visibility) unless it's already successfully marketed outside of Steam (marketing is not free), and again later once it hits a certain number of sales.

Third, per Tim Sweeney, games during the retail era had a bigger margin for the the studios than they do today [1]

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/19_NC1ZskeN47LHaYJziotbA0sqL...

edit: So I do feel a little upset that Steam gets free marketing for every game put on the site (important note you can (and should in most cases) place your game up on the site long before its ready to purchase, and steam will advertise other games on your page), doesnt provide any marketing in return (via the discovery queue) unless you bring in tens or hundreds of thousands of clicks, and then turns around and skims 30% of all my work which they are greatly benefiting from (e.g. what if the customer goes to my page, wish lists my game, then purchased a different game in the mean time? At least e.g. amazon has referral links)

Despite that gamers think it's worth the convenience and utilities steam provides to keep shopping there.

Steam isn't dominant because it's strangling competition like the app store and similar. People can trivially download alternatives, but they choose steam anyway.

This is probably true on balance, but needs to be tempered with the reality that they also pioneered or popularized many of the worst parts of modern gaming. Always-on DRM, paid DLC, loot boxes and exploitive monetization, esports gambling (indirectly, they were complicit until legal pressure forced them not to be), FOMO monetization, "early access" and launching incomplete games, etc. All exist in their modern forms at least in part due to Valve.

Disclaimer: I'm a valve fanboy who buys all their first party software and hardware. They still put out great products despite the ways they've changed gaming for the worse.

  1 - Let's say you invested $100,000 of your own money for vertical slice and managed to find a publisher to give you $200,000 to complete the game.
  2 - Ignore that you had some failed games before, but this time you let's say sold 100,000 copies for $10 each average. 100k sold is a big success really.

  1 - Valve got $1,000,000 as gross revenue for 100,000 sales.
  2 - Usually 16% is VAT and immenient refunds. So now $840,000 left.
  3 - Now Valve took their 30% cut. $588,000 left.
  4 - Now your publisher took $200,000 to recoup invested money. $388,000 left.
  5 - Now publisher split remaining $388,000 by honest 50/50.

So you did all the work, somehow managed to fund it, worked on game for a year and got $155,000 while Valve made $252,000 for payment processing and CDN. Steam do not provide marketing - it only boost already successful products.

PS: This is best case scenario. Usually your publisher will also recoup whatever expenses they had on their end for marketing and whatever.

A HL3 team could essentially function as an independent studio using the Steam platform, with some funding thrown from Valve. Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274 (23 August 2024 | 112 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960473 (27 April 2021 | 7 comments)

And because self managing people do not automatically organize to achieve the same goals.

EDIT: Another comment mentioned Chet Faliszek, he was probably the source.

Gamedev is also very stressful industy because both constant crunches and job instability. So you not only paid worse, but you'll work 2-3 times more that average SWE. And often fired when project is complete regardless of success.

So working at Valve is somewhat like a pipe dream for many people in the game industry. Especially because whole Valve is under 500 people which is like 10-20 times less people than work for Epic, Ubisoft or EA.

Source: I work in indie game company.

They're the idealized version of what a small company making a shitton of cash would be. They can afford plenty in terms of work-life balance.

Now, the game isn't exactly out yet, but it is pretty widely accessible, and the core of the game is just fantastic. They really cooked with this one, especially the movement system.