>January 6, 2016
>Marc Laidlaw, writer for the Half Life series upto HL2, leaves Valve
theverge.com
>February 17, 2017
>Erik Wolpaw, writer of the Portal games, Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2, and the Left 4 Dead games leaves Valve
growngaming.com
They're done.
It usually takes a few years of having money rolling in while not actually doing any development work before the boredom sets in. Obviously it was time.
valve are irrelevant, soulless jews
The script is probably already written, but as someone who unashamedly used to be a Valve fanboy pre Steam and the 'PCMR' destruction of the PC platform yes, they ARE done.
Kelly Bailey (Composer for Half-Life 1+2, Portal) left in 2014.
Seems like I've been waiting half my life for this game.
Meanwhile
phoronix.com
That's three driver developers now in the last few months, Valve are clearly up to something big.
Kind of feel bad for him. Probably spent a long time doing shit he didn't like as Valve transitioned from a company known for making great and original games, to a company that just sells games.
What's the point in working for a company like that?
whatever they make it will be full of micro-transactions and cosmetic items.
>two people left a company after working with them for a number of projects
IT'S OOOOVER THERE'S NO COMING BACK FROM THIS
VALVE UR FINISHED BRO
RIP
END OF AN ERA
Valve is no longer a videogame making company. They sell and distribute, and occasionally make something on the side. It's been that way for a long time now, and Valve themselves don't deny it at all.
A writer staying with a company like that is simply stupid.
I can't understand why any dev would want to work on Valve. They don't fucking make anything anymore.
No, Valve is going to create the tools so modders can produce and sell content to other users, and then Gaben will take his cut.
Valve's end game is turning every game they can into Second Life. This is why they're hemorrhaging godo staff.
>lowering the barrier to put games on the store
>incentivizing people to use their "workshop" and "market" features
>paid mods
Well people should understand that Valve is not a video game developer they are a distributer with 2 cash cows dota 2 and CS.
Valve isn't over. Valve will keep on doing what they're doing. Running the most popular platform for selling video games in the world, which will eventually stagnate due to a lack of any real competition. They'll also keep trying to push VR for god-knows how long.
You get paid ridiculous amounts of money to sit around pretending you work for the best dev in the business, except they haven't been good since The Orange Box. They literally do fuck all and get paid than most graduate engineers and/or doctors. rly mks u thnk
That would literally make them 100 times worse then EA in its worst time.
We can all shit on Blizzard,EA and the others but they actually put out games and sometimes just sometimes they actually innovate,Valve is just a factory of cosmetic items aimed at idiots.
and at some point its just gets boring, imagine how it is for this guy to sit with his friends and listen how their story's where successful or unsuccessful.
While he has no story at all to tell.
Its like sitting with a rich guy who does nothing with his life.
So far that hasn't been true, Valve have been out exploring new markets for a while now that companies like EA for all their screaming and crying about 'monopoly' haven't even dreamed of.
I'd gladly buy games from Origin or even Uplay if it was easy to get them on my Linux desktop machine in addition to my Windows tablet.
This is valves stupid ass 'its done when its done' BS.
Do they honestly believe their best talent us going to sit the fuck around and do nothing? It's probably why Valve doesn't even make video games anymore, all of the hard workers left.
Imagine working on something that may, or may not, see the light of day because of someone elses laziness.
Infuriating
>Haven't made a game for fucking years
>Have no announced games since said fucking years.
They've stopped making games, their devs understand this and are moving other places. It's not rocket science.
>Not a video game developer.
>Cash cows are video games.
Look I know it doesn't matter to Windows users, but you do know that they've been doing a massive amount of work on games right?
Dota2 was ported to the new engine, then updated with support for the new Vulkan graphics API.
Plus we know that they have at least three new games in development.
>lowering the barrier to put games on the store
Literally nothing wrong with this.
Expanding their business on to new platforms isn't going to stop stagnation. Name the last big thing Valve has made in the last 3 years that doesn't involve some form of gimmicky hardware.
Name the amount of things they started, never finished, and then pushed out in a semi-broken state.
The post you replied to is implying that the line of reasoning is fucking moronic, but it is pretty revealing that a post as transparently sarcastic and fundamentally retarded as Is unironically taken at face value on Sup Forums
>Erik Wolpaw leaves Valve
Holy shit this is amazing news!
Finally Wolpaw can stop writing fucking TF2 comics and DOTA 2 manuals and focus on writing an actual game!!
>(((Laidlaw)))
>(((Wolpaw)))
Sup Forums is very inclusive, especially to the mentally challenged.
I can only imagine what a mess that place is to work at.
>Anyone can work on anything they want
>No due dates or project milestones to meet
>literally no planing during development
>The project you're interested in working on is not as popular as another project so you could possibly end up working on something that'll never be released
Fucking mortifying. I'd rather have a job as a janitor at valve.
>Name the last big thing Valve has made in the last 3 years that doesn't involve some form of gimmicky hardware.
Rocket League for Linux
>Name the amount of things they started, never finished, and then pushed out in a semi-broken state.
Valve's process is to release early and constantly iterate, and so far they've done just that. Valve's recent hires, and some of their not so recent hires who have been with the company for a while now all point to them working on something major. Driver developers for instance aren't cheap, and if you're giving their work away for free that indicates they're confident they'll be making a boatload of money off of whatever it is that they're working on that needs newer better graphics drivers.
Valve is still very much a video game company, they're just not a Windows video game company anymore.
>They're working
>They just have no proof to show they're working
Would you believe your child if he said he got good grades but didn't want to show you his report card?
>lowering the barrier to put games on the store
That's the exact opposite of what they just did. They are raising the standard at which games do go to market now by making the buy in more legit rather then having a bunch of joke games on steam.
>big thing
>Valve has made
>Rocket League
Did you even try?
>no proof
You realize that this work is happening in the open right?
You can check the Mesa mailing list and the git repository and you can see the work that's going into it.
The developers that Valve hired to work on it have been fairly prolific.
>What's next? You tell us...
>5 years
>Just find the work yourself
:^)
Yes, Valve developed the Linux version of Rocket League internally. Like it or not they're acting more like other platform holders now and developing the internal capabilities to better support third party developers and provide technical assistance to them.
Valve's developers actually just submitted a patch to Mesa that increases performance of the game on the open source RadeonSI driver for AMD cards substantially.
Most people leaving valve are in their late 40s early 50s, its time to retire.
Moralfags who didn't like receiving cash for doing nothing...plebs
Rocket League for Linux is just expanding their business on to other platforms. It makes them money, but it does fuck all towards actual innovation.
Valve's process is all fine on paper, but in practice it's a complete fucking mess.
Steam screenshots can't be searched by game, only date uploaded.
Steam streaming is barely functional and requires lots of restarts.
Steam's in-game web browser is slow as fuck and prone to crashing Steam overlay.
Steam Link is trash that got dropped long ago.
Finding friends on Steam through the find a friend tool is nearly impossible.
Steam Greenlight is an absolute mess with almost no real moderation.
The list goes on because all Valve does is implement borderline functioning features, then forget about them completely as they move on.
Well they released a controller
that flopped
Those prebuilt steam machines
that flopped too
And they adopting VR technology
Three guesses what happened
And your coworkers decide your bonuses. Senior Valve devs regularly pull in >$2m.
People still think Half Life 3 is a thing, let alone ep3
You will get something vastly different which will be complete shit. The fat fuck named gabe newell can just get a heart attack now and no one should care (even though people will).
They haven't even decided on a price yet. Greenlight was $100. Steam Direct will probably be ~$300 after the feedback they got when they floated the idea of $5k.
The only people that would care at this point are nu-Valve 'fans' the kind of retarded cunts who think CSGO and DoTA2 are the greatest games ever made.
>spoon feed me senpai!
lists.freedesktop.org
ctrl+f
Valve Employees
Timothy Arceri - 149
Samuel Pitoiset - 42
External developers known to have received hardware/software from Valve but signed NDAs (they're the original authors of the RadV Vulkan driver)
Dave Airlie - 90
Bas Nieuwenhuizen - 58
And that's just so far this month. That's a lot of activity submitting and reviewing patches.
Amazing they can even 'float' the idea of $5k, they've really lost their way, they're not even Valve at this point.
In what sense is a port of a game that they didn't make for a platform no one uses "big"?
So your proof of games being made is just people are working
no videos
no screenshots
not even concept art
you're pretty much just asking me to believe you
> it does fuck all towards actual innovation
Not everything a software company needs to do is sexy innovation. Sometimes its working out how to fix your problems, and building mundane stuff that will let you do the sexier stuff down the road.
its big when you've done nothing else for the past five years
still waiting on that jugg arcana that you promised five months ago fatty
>Sometimes its working out how to fix your problems
Too bad they aren't doing that either.
>Valve
>fixing problems
my sides have left orbit
>Patches to Vulkan driver
>That will increase performance of something
>That will fix stuttering issues in something else
Like it or not they're not going to name drop unreleased games on public mailing lists but at least some of the work on what they're doing is very public.
I'm no Valve apologist, but so what if some big names left the company? Isn't that a good thing? Now those guys can go work somewhere else where they'll actually get to make games again. And it's not like Valve absolutely cannot replace them, there's plenty of other people out there who could potentially be just as good, if not better than these guys.
HL3 would be perceived as a disappointment, no matter how good it was. I wouldn't be developing it either
>were working on shit no one cares about
woooo
how many people even use vulkan man? less than 100k, for sure
meanwhile issues like in affects EVERYONE who uses steam
It's obvious they've finished their work on Episode 3. You're all just a bunch of sheep faggots thinking otherwise.
Even if HL3 sells fairly well, it's not going to be the money maker that Dota/CS:Go is, and Valve has a toxic competitive culture (you get financial bonuses based on how your coworkes evaluate your "contribution" to the company's earnings).
>were working on shit no one cares about
Essentially. They're nerds autisming out on vulkan.
Why, though? I don't understand this. Time does not necessarily equal quality. It's unreasonable to expect something groundbreaking just because a large period of time has passed between two games. Even more so when there's no reason to believe the game was being actively developed. All Half Life 3 has to do is wrap up some loose ends and not be too streamlined.
They were done since 2012 after they officially stopped releasing video games.
>Gabe leaves Microsoft because he wants to make games rather than work on operating systems
>few decades later
>they don't make games anymore
>working on dumb shit like SteamOS
Pottery
take that back!
Valve confirmed that they are working on three full-fledges games. However, they're VR games so the majority of us won't be able to play them.
>However, they're VR games
I don't think this has been confirmed, has it? Would be heavily cancerous if they did. Volvo is toeing a fine line of public favor.
dude cosmetics lmao
dude drones make cosmetics and we get the cut lmao
>its all VR shit
how fucking hilariously tragic
five years for shit like that
No, they've left it too long now. Half-Life 2, while not superior to HL1 in a lot of ways was supremely different and arguabley groundbreaking (the facial animations still look better than most triple A trash released today).
If Valve wants to finish the series with and semblance of respect it needs to be just as groundbreaking as HL2 was when it was released,
They know this and that is why they have been delaying it, unfortunately for them however they have left it too late, every year that passes makes their fans assume they've spent another year make the game well... Another years worth of innovative I suppose.
Valve wouldn't be paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to 'autism out' if it wasn't to directly benefit their work on other things.
>how many people even use vulkan man? less than 100k, for sure
It doesn't matter how few developers are using Vulkan so far, what matters is how many of them are inside of Valve and working on games. Clearly there's enough of a need internally for more work on Vulkan that Valve have been hiring Vulkan driver devs, or getting them to sign NDAs left and right.
'Support VR' doesn't mean 'VR exclusive'
le anti-intellectual "where are my video games valve xd" poster
No, they're not done, they're more successful than ever as a company. They just don't make game any longer and haven't done so in years.
They still employ lots and lots of staff who are supposed to be making games. Of course "Flatland" is a PR and HR term to spin a company with a complete lack of capable leadership. Artistic dreamers full of huge ideas and a total lack or organisation and leadership is just an expensive cluster fuck. Vision without action is just a daydream.
>Valve wouldn't be paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to 'autism out' if it wasn't to directly benefit their work on other things.
You can work on whatever you want at valve. if you want to nerd masturbate pointlessly with vulkan, you can, no one will say anything.
youtube.com
its in here somewhere, dont know the exact timestamp
Just working on VR Drivers I bet. Nothing actually useful. I'd be surprised if they even last though considering HTC is in major trouble and Valve's burning money keeping the lights open in the Vive spin-off company since HTC has none.
If they didn't put such an emphasis on the story with Episodes 1 and 2 this wouldn't be an issue. HL2 finished the same way HL1 did and would've been a fine way for them to leave it open for a HL3 whenever they wanted. Unfortunately, Episode 1 happens and Freeman escaped from G-Man's clutches and we're stuck on a cliffhanger from Episode 2.
>Dota 2 release: July 9th 2013
Valve is infamous for washing people out who don't live up to the work ethic, and they're also famous for hiring people who want to work on something specific. Gabe isn't paying people to just sit around and jerk themselves off.
The people I'm talking about were hired to support their work on a specific open source project, and you can track their activity on it if you want.
It's like a university or research position. I can't understand why people think they literally don't do anything at Valve. Shit still gets done, they still have performance reports and the pay is based on that. People work, most of it is stuff you can't see. Even in a video game most of the work is stuff you can't see but it's definitely improvements.
You mean like the AR team who were let go because they weren't fast enough? Or the Linux team who were let go because Gabe's saber rattling worked and Valve was given an advisory position on Windows 10?
>Just working on VR Drivers I bet.
You don't have to bet, the work is there in the open for everyone to see. We know what Mesa is, and we know what RadV is. Its work that is relevant to VR, but not exclusively restricted to VR.
It's like a minute and 15 seconds in.
>So you might be wondering why on earth we are working on hardware
>Right now we are working on 3 VR games
>loud snort from someone in the room
Oh no, we see it alright. They're constantly churning out new Dota 2 and CSGO skins.
They should've written a fucking novel clearing the story before quitting. They way this company handled episode 3 is some of the most irresponsible shit.
don't forget Kelly Bailey, who was the sound design lead of HL2
>You mean like the AR team who were let go because they weren't fast enough?
I don't think that was a 'fast enough' issue, more just an effort to concentrate on their core competency. Getting into the HMD market themselves would have been very different for them.
>Or the Linux team who were let go
They weren't, Valve has in fact been hiring more people on to work specifically on Linux. Have you followed the thread?
Kek
You know, I've been getting fed up with a lot of companies lately and boycotting. Maybe my one vote doesn't count much, but it's about the principle.
Valve is getting there for me.
Agreed. I lost any interest in the company years back and they have only continued to show that they don't give a shit about consumer base other than how much money they can make.
Shame Valve is in a position to continue being shitty all they want, with Steam to keep them afloat.
I'm still doing the same, It's been so long now I'm not even bothered, this isn't the same Valve we came to know and love.
Yeah no. I'd rather have them release nothing but keep the option for them to release something when they feel they're ready. Half Life's story really wouldn't be all that spectacular outside of the games if you think about it. The game is what makes it work in the first place.
Why? It's not like Valve are directly doing anything wrong. It's just massively wasted opportunity is all
Hubris. They don't respect their old fans, it's an insult they refuse to work on HL3 when they have all the resources possibly needed.
Wolpaw's style works really well with Double Fine games, Psychonauts was amazing. Isn't he working in Pyschonauts 2?
Wait why do people think the story of half life matters?
it's average at best
and you can figure out what'll happen in episode 3 anyway
alyx and gordon go to the north pole
find the borealis
do something
win
there you go
They're never going to do it. The creator of Shenmue was forced to leave the series in limbo for 15 years but finally set the gears in motion to barely cobble together funds via kickstarter for the third game. The people in Valve's office just don't have the passion.
Would you rather have a half-heartedly rushed out Half life game to finish the series?
And even if that's what will happen I'd still prefer that over having Valve let someone else finish the story in a non-game format.
>half-heartedly rushed out
Episode 2 came out 9 years ago. They have had plenty of time to fully develop HL3, the only reason it's taken this long is because they are plainly not working on it and haven't for years.