Steam Box controller designer Jeri Ellisworth was fired from Valve, and possibly 24 unconfirmed others.
Gamasutra reports that Valve Software may have cut around 25 of its staff. Reports of the firings began to emerge on Tuesday with an indication that the company is making "large decisions" and going through a "great cleansing." Affected departments include Valve's Android and hardware development efforts.
According to the report, affected employees were asked not to speak about the specifics. But there's speculation that the cuts weren't made over performance issues (as in Valve is cutting the slackers), but that the cuts are driven by "company challenges".
One of those that were fired was Jeri Ellsworth who at one time was publicly talking about Valve's hardware efforts. She worked in the studio's year-old hardware division and indicated that hardware testing would actually begin in 2013. This division was working in tandem with Steam's Big Picture Mode, creating a hardware solution to the control-based limitations found in many titles offered on Valve's Steam platform.
But on early Wednesday morning, Ellsworth confirmed via Twitter that she was fired by Valve without offering any additional details. "Yep. Got fired today," she said. "Time for new exciting projects."
Another victim of the Valve layoff may be Ed Owen, former senior mechanical engineer at Valve. His LinkedIn profile page reveals that his tenure with the studio ended this month, and that he's now moved on to a product development consultancy.
PC Gamer points out that while layoffs happen from time to time, the words "layoff" and "fired" are normally not associated with the popular Half-Life developer. Valve's reputation as one of the most secretive and lucrative studios in the business "underscores this peculiarity of this development."
Agreed. Stay tuned for more as the details continue to slither across the newsroom floor. So far Valve has remained silent on the issue.
Gabe is too busy planning on how to cater to the console market with the steam box.
Steam is not just popular because of a few AAA titles. It is by far the best client to use for PC games (way better than Origin). It has decent sales often.
The only real issue with it is that it still is a form of DRM.
Black Mesa is superior to HL for the simple fact that a dedicated mod group recreated HL using the Source engine...something that Valve offers free to all owners of their games (something many other developers are taking mod support away from games).
For its time (1998), Half-life was among the best games around.
Now tell me which other developers make it
TF2 is one of the better multiplayer shooters out there. Unique, well balanced, and frequently tweaked. The cartoonish graphics are deliberate, as it's supposed to be whimsical.
Unlike many other games, you cannot "win" by yourself. Good teamplay is pretty much forced.
Also, I think the whole "no 3" business at Valve might be a marketing thing. Look how much interest there is because of it (think "meme").
Steam is not just popular because of a few AAA titles. It is by far the best client to use for PC games (way better than Origin). It has decent sales often.
The only real issue with it is that it still is a form of DRM.
Black Mesa is superior to HL for the simple fact that a dedicated mod group recreated HL using the Source engine...something that Valve offers free to all owners of their games (something many other developers are taking mod support away from games).
For its time (1998), Half-life was among the best games around.
Now tell me which other developers make it
Gabe is too busy planning on how to cater to the console market with the steam box.