

Gabe Newell on Valve's business model - tanoku
http://www.develop-online.net/features/1192/Gabe-Newell-on-Valve

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corin_
What I love about Valve is how little bullshit comes out of there.

Gabe's talking about how much everyone loves working at Valve, and what a
great environment it is, and with so many companies you'd know that was just
spin for the interview. Having involved Valve in a few things I've done in the
past, their staff really are loving their jobs, and everyone I've dealt with
there, from support technicians up to executives, just lets that fact leak out
of them, all the time. It even makes it enjoyable to work with them.

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jpadvo
"But, seriously, if fifty awesome people knocked on the door, we’d hire them
all. We don’t hire to specific positions, we hire to standards."

This is how Andrew Carnegie ran his companies. He didn't hire when he needed
employees, he hired when he found someone worth hiring. And then he would find
them a job to do.

It's interesting to see this particular hiring strategy applied in companies
with such extraordinarily different structures otherwise.

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skizm
From the article: "So, in practice, a really likable person in our community
should get Dota 2 for free, because of past behavior in Team Fortress 2. Now,
a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full
price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice."

Wow, if this gets successfully implemented I can't wait! Especially the part
about a jerk having to pay an extra hundred bucks for voice! haha

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pstack
That would probably make COD/MW playable.

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Xurinos
I found the game really enjoyable when I did not have to listen to people
making remarks about my playing...by lowering the voice volume all the way. It
also saved me from having to listen to random strains of someone's music or
breathing.

~~~
pstack
My problem with it (to various levels on other games, but COD/MW is the worst)
is that you really need to communicate with your team in these games.
Unfortunately, you are likely to hear hundreds of extremely racist and
homophobic slurs in a single gaming session. When you're not being subjected
to the dregs of society through their racism, you're having your ear drums
blown out by ten year old kids screaming random noise into the microphone
(because they can, I guess) or teenagers rapping or playing music loudly like
they're a fucking DJ. Oh, and don't forget the jackholes who can't be bothered
to mute their mic, so we all get to listen to their forty minute conversations
with someone on their cell phone.

They need to require DOB for an account on consoles (guess you can't do much
about it on PC) and then give people an option to say "don't match me in games
with people under the age of X". The 360 has an option that lets you choose
what "community" you want to be part of, but it ignores it completely. If it
actually worked, it should keep the twelve year olds playing with the twelve
year olds. Not that half the racists and inane idiots aren't in their 20s and
30s, of course. . . :/

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julsonl
I've pretty much refused playing on public servers now (on the PC of course),
and just stuck to a serious semi-roleplaying community focused on shooters,
because of exactly this.

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aaronbrethorst
_We constantly ask ourselves the question, how can we make our fans happy
every day, and what are the different ways we can do that._

Ship Half-Life 2 Episode 3 already, that's how!

edit: pstack makes an excellent point. Instead, perhaps I should say "Ship
something with 'Half-Life' and '3' in the title already, that's how!" :)

~~~
pstack
I suspect that will never happen. At this point, I'm almost certain whatever
they release will just be titled HL3.

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ender7
One the most impressive aspects to this interview is Gabe's lack of dogmatic
prognostication. They're not into something because "mobile is the future" or
"the PC is dead" or "social gaming is taking over the world." They're looking
into things because they seem like a good idea, but it's clear that they're
equally open to discovering that they weren't that great an idea after all.

That last part - a form of idea edit and review - is something that I see a
lot of companies lose very quickly. They get so caught up in what they think
they _should_ be doing (or how they define themselves, e.g. "we are a social
media company") that they lose the ability to let go of ideas that just don't
work, even when it seems like they should. Apple is really good at this. For
every product that Apple actually announces, there are hundreds that never
make it off the ground. The iPad idea had been floating around Apple for
_years_ , but it wasn't approved until mobile technology had come far enough
to make it actually a practical idea, not just a good idea.

There's a saying that behind every great poet is a great editor. I suggest
that behind every great tech company is (at least one) great idea editor.

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orls
Valve consistently anger or frustrate their core fanbase (e.g. the hot-air
boycott over Left 4 Dead 2, the almost decade-long whining about Counterstrike
game mechanics, and of course the frustration over HL3 / HL2:ep3).

But the fans never seem to leave, and their zealousness and numbers only ever
grow. Even with the historically poor SDK support and release cycle, there's
still has a solid, active modding community even as the Source engine starts
to look a little tired.

And at the same time they're pioneering digital game publishing and
distribution, providing really interesting services _to their competitors_
(Steamworks), pushing the frontiers of their core game niches, and are
astoundingly profitable.

That's an amazing example to aspire to.

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pstack
The reason Valve doesn't lose angry and frustrated fans is because it's anger
and frustration over something they love. It's the _"damn it, why are there
only six episodes of Walking Dead in the first season and then I have to wait
another year?!"_ kind of anger and frustration, for the most part. That's the
kind of reaction most companies would give anything for.

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windsurfer
Every time I read or hear more about the internals of Valve, I want to be
their employee more and more.

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thebigredjay
That sounds like a really great place to work and a good guy to work for.

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drawkbox
Any place that has stuff like 'Valve Time' :
<http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time> posted in the same public
wiki as 'Lag Compensation':
[http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_N...](http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking#Lag_compensation)
seems like a good culture mix.

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tobylane
They care, we win. There are some losing edge cases, the lack of Source SDK on
Mac is the only thing I would use Windows for. There are so many content
producers on Macs, so much could be done with a cross platform SDK (plus we'd
get another 20 free games).

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FrojoS
Really great interview! Thanks for posting this. I love how he seems to care
about his employees health. Taking everyone and their family to Hawaii once a
year sounds not just great but smart also.

Do they really pay some gamers 20k per week? I haven't played online games in
years but my first thought was "This can't work for Valve. How can a gamer
produce so much value for the community in a FPS." But then again, people were
making tons of many back in the days of UO and Diablo II by selling virtual
items. So, these people already provided a value for hard money, too.

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InclinedPlane
Valve isn't making a decision to pay a specific player 20k a week, it's merely
a consequence of the economy system that Valve has created. It's the players
paying other players 20k a week, not Valve per se.

~~~
FrojoS
Thanks for clarifying! I used Steam when it came out but didn't know about
this feature.

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Ntagg
I love the concept of different monetezation strategies for different types of
players. That's a game-changer (pun!). Love to watch how it's executed.

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pstack
I was beginning to think Valve's business model was to _never ever get around
to releasing the next Half Life_. :)

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knodi
"how can we make our fans happy every day..."

Don't fuck with me Gabe put out HL2 Episode 3 already!!

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zbowling
TLDR; I'm just going to assume that hats in TF2 makes up 90% of their profit.

