Several out of work as Valve makes 'large decisions' about its future

Several employees were let go from Steam and Half-Life maker Valve on Tuesday, Gamasutra can confirm.

[TurboGamer]

Maybe they should make a game and... idk, put a 3 in its name.
I bet you it will sell millions and then those employees could be hired back again.

Or these employees could have been fired for mentioning the number 3.

[Merrill]

I know eh, they use to make games. It may help if they did that again.

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

HL4 will come way before HL3 since 3s are newell's fear.

[Mcardle]

Valve makes more money from Steam than their own Game releases, So I doubt that They have been let go due to money problems...

[SilentNegotiator]

I disagree. They must be firing people because they're broke; I mean, they're only the top DD service for games on the internet.

/s

[Autodidactdystopia]

Here's my bet.

Those "Big decisions" were valve deciding that coming out with a hardware platform is a bad idea and scrapping the steambox project.

but thats just my bet.

[AzaziL]

And I thought the six year dev cycle for HL2 was bad, this one's already pushing on eight with no release date in sight.

[deadfrag]

SMEELS FISHY!

[cannon8800]

lol smeels.
I should name my pet snail that. .___.

[Saryk]

Not the whole story, but I don't feel the need to buy a large hard drive and start downloading my games!

[Irishguy95]

Why would you need to do that....ever?

[Saryk]

If Valve goes tits up. You will need to download everything you own. And for me, that would equal about 20 terabytes! I have a crap load of games!

However the likely hood of that happening would be like Bobby Kotick giving away COD and WOW for free!

[aliengmr]

I doubt Valve is hurting for money. Still, I'm interested to know whats going on.

One of the most frustrating things about Valve is how secretive they are.

[ApolloTheBoss]

I thought everyone was their own boss at Valve? Shouldn't they be able to re-hire themselves?!

[PirateThom]

That is an image Valve would love to maintain but they are still a business.

[OcelotRigz]

Yeah, if Gabe comes up and says "You're fired!", you just stand up and say "No, you're fired, ya bastard!".

But then that could just go on and on forever and ever amen.

[Psychotica]

Wonder what would happen to all the games people have bought from Steam if for whatever reason Valve went out of business?

[aliengmr]

Gabe has said that Valve would do everything it can to make the games you purchased available in some way. There is no binding contract that forces them to do anything, to my knowledge.

You can take that however want, but personally Valve hasn't given me any reason not to trust they will do just that.

[Pandamobile]

Valve's got billions in the bank, so they're not going under any time soon.

[Cam977]

How peculiar... I wonder what's going on.

[Knight_Crawler]

Well Gabe needs to maintain the high supply of Junk food that he consumes per day or else he will die.

It was let people go or watch Gabe die from starvation.

[Kingdom Come]

It would probably help if they, as a Videogame Development Company... Ya know, develop a game.

[KMCROC54]

To all those let go by Valve Tim Cook & company will give you folks employment. That would be a change of pace where you will see tons of medium size shirts & no one wears a 4xl clothing. Beside what a great way to say FU

[modesign]

guess the steambox is not going to happen.

[chasegarcia]

Someone will now spill the beans

[Captain Tuttle]

Somethings going down over there

[newsguy]

I never thought Valve would have layoffs