I hope he has some sort of contingency plan. Perhaps he can find a successor.
If you’re reading this GabeN, make Valve a non-profit.
He’s on 4chan last I heard
He’s been on 4chan since before he started the company. Why do you think they got so popular so quick?
Worker co-op. Non-profits are pretty easy to rig for the benefit of the C-levels.
Easy-peasey to rig. Worker co-op isn’t a bad idea.
I vote that as a second to finding a successor, and giving the whole thing to them, sans whatever kickbacks to family etc that he wants.
Well I’m glad we’ve all found an equitable and legally binding way to divide Lord Gaben’s assets on his death!
And they say the Internet never solved anything.
Honestly, an open letter couldn’t hurt.
Not sure why this would happen when Valve doesn’t need any extra money from the markets, and is privately owned. Gabe owns >50%, rest is apparently Valve’s employees and execs. Gabe is divorced, has two sons, so I suppose that 50% goes to those guys. So I guess it depends how much the brothers think they need cash.
I don’t see how they could make it any worst, Valve main product is a useless proprietary walled garden launcher that spy on its customers
Comment straight out of 2004.
True then; true now. People who asskiss Valve (and Gaben by extension) are victims of years of effective marketing. Valve is as greedy and duplicitous as any other corporation. You’re just looking at it through rose colored glasses because it’s the primary mechanism by which you access your hobby.
@Custoslibera
I think Robin Walker would be a fantastic successor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Walker_(game_designer)It needs some legally bulletproof foundation structure to own the company and continue with his values. Not easy but possible.
Lemmy: Corporations are terrible. None of them have your back. They’re all just out to make money and the only reason they pay their employees is because slavery is illegal.
Also Lemmy: Step on me harder, Daddy Gaben!
Shit has some real Tesla-bro circa 2013 energy.
I know right, its almost like the dumbass in charge at Tesla is a different person than the one in charge at Valve!
Look, despite Musk’s PR, I never read a story about Musk like this:
In 2004, Wolpaw was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. Expecting his condition to require a departure from the company, he spoke with managing director Gabe Newell, who surprised him by offering an extended leave with pay. “Your job is to get better,” Newell said. “That is your job description at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you are better.”
Gabe Newell isn’t some kind of saint, but he does at least treat his employees like human beings, unlike Musk who famously berates his employees and treats them incredibly badly, especially if they have to (gasp!) miss work for any reason.
So while people shouldn’t be praising Valve as some kind of panacea in the world, because they’re still just a company, the reality is things like this have endeared Newell to the gaming community and made them believe he did care about a quality work environment.
A reminder, 2004 was before Wolpaw had written for multiple hit games from Valve. Portal came out in 2007 with Wolpaw as one half of the writing team. A few years later he would be head writer on Portal 2.
Those games would not have been the same if he had been let go from Valve when he was sick with ulcerative colitis.
Just a different perspective, I think it’s unfair to compare Newell to a fucking slave drive apartheid fuckhead like Musk.
The problem is not Gabe. As far as i can tell, Gabe actually cares.
The problem is the CEO that comes after Gabe. Will your games still be available then?
Valve has been compared to Lord of the Flies because of its corporate structure by multiple people who worked for them. The company has an internal ranking system that determines compensation. It’s also one of the least diverse workplaces in its industry, being overwhelmingly white and male.
https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-unusual-corporate-structure-causes-its-problems-report-suggests/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/
So, while I’m glad that Gabe was nice to one of his direct reports, the reality is that the president of the company being nice to one specific person doesn’t make the company good or ethically ran.
Yeah but it’s typical to spew negativity without having any solution
You really prefer amazon’s meat grinder policies?
No Corp has ever been good we can still hope and try
This is a genuinely awful set of takes.
Yeah but it’s typical to spew negativity without having any solution
Here’s a solution: wholesale reject capitalism as an economic system.
You really prefer amazon’s meat grinder policies?
Because that’s literally the only two options here: Valve’s way of doing things and Amazon’s. Really? Try again.
No Corp has ever been good we can still hope and try
I think you misspelled cope and cry.
I buy my favorite games from GOG when they’re so that I can keep the install files forever.
If Steam turns to shit I’ll just pirate all my games again. I’ve already paid for them anyway.
Hey now. A divorce could also sink things. He doesn’t have to die for things to go to shit.
(I know nothing of his personal life.)
Well his name didn’t show up in Epstein’s public records (unlike a certain CEO from a company Microsoft bought/CEO that founded/ran Microsoft) so we’re fine there.
And I did look. Extensively.
It’s a good sign because 1) He’s smart enough to not have a paper trail and/or 2) His hobbies are innocuous, like, I think he really only cares about submersibles and knives and he wasn’t stabbing people on some carbon fiber tube near the titanic so he’s not a dumbass either.
You know, I am glad you thought to check.
I’m actually pretty worried about him dying. Hopefully he has a chosen successor that he’s indoctrinated.
Tbf as long as it doesn’t go public it will probably be fine regardless of who takes the job. It doesn’t take a genius to keep up the good work in a company that can afford to plan long time.
I guess you’ve never had a “new boss” come in, huh? Even in a private company?
Man, new bosses love to shake things up, to “make the workplace theirs.” It’s literally one of the most common things to happen when new bosses come, and very often it results in a deep change in company interpersonal politics.
Barry used to be your go-to guy, but the new boss has decided they just don’t like Barry. Why? They couldn’t tell you, but Barry gets under their skin, so it doesn’t matter how he’s the best guy on the team who can handle whatever is thrown at him, his role is going to be dilluted and minimized and he’s going to be pushed and prodded by negative management to try to get him to just quit. Eventually, Barry will just quit because who wants to work under those conditions. He found a better job, and now he’s replaced by your new bosses 20-something nephew who doesn’t know what the fuck he is doing at all and everyone can’t stand. He’s a fucking loser who keeps getting promoted by the new boss.
I’ve been through that too many times to pretend it’s just “that easy.” No, generally the kind of people drawn to that role are controlling dickheads who have their own dickhead “vision” of being the biggest dickhead to ever dickhead.
Unless they fuck it up somehow in recruiting a new CEO, Valve really wouldn’t find it hard to ask a new CEO “Here’s our revenue, and our expenses, our profits. How would you keep this in place without crashing our revenue stream and maybe doing new greenfield stuff?”
From my understanding his son is set to take over when the time comes.
Because nepotism just works out gangbusters, every time. /s
Seriously, this is worse news than him not having a plan.
While nepotism is almost universally a bad thing, Gabe has shown that he does not subscribe to the “profit at any cost” school of business, but instead believes that if you provide a good service people will pay you for it. Hopefully he’s been able to pass those values on to his son.
My concern is his son despite having this shit DRILLED INTO HIS HEAD (which I can’t guarantee) will chase a cashout. That’s the one problem with nepos.
The other problem is if he’s qualified for the job. Which feeds into point 1.
I would rather hope that he legalizes and codifies the “flat” management structure, disallowing any one figure head from taking over and fucking things up.
Valve annoys people because it can be slow to choose to do something, because everyone works on what they want to work on, but it means average workers have a lot more agency in how they’re involved in the company.
I’m sure there’s till unofficial cliques and leaders, but having it in legalese for the employees post-Gabe would be nice.
The problem with that is that they’re a private company so that can just be undone by the largest share holder, unless that codification also splits up his equity across the employees.
I would argue the flat management makes it hard for Valve to produce things and they should re-evaluate it, but you can do this while also not turning into a rank and yank shit out fortnite clones 420 69 flossing scheme to fuck over users and line their pockets.
I think that’s a valid take, and I think Valve has sort of re-evaluated it, because if I recall correctly, they kind of had to “put on hold” the “do whatever you want” bit to get Half Life: Alyx out of the door. So, imho, it seems like they’re capable of doing both. They managed to produce a high quality VR game by putting the “flat” on the backburner, and them coming back to it later.
Although, to be fair, I hadn’t heard anything similar about the SteamDeck or any Valve hardware, really. So if they can make a SteamDeck from scratch, an entire new product category, with the flat management structure, I bet it’s not holding them back half as much as some folks at GlassDoor seem to think.
Its really hard to get a look inside Valve, because I can’t confirm/deny the Steam Deck came about because of the flat management. I’ll be honest, my apprehension about their management stems from the many failed attempts to conclude the franchise they started in Half-Life and how 20 different projects died to get to Alyx. Would a change in leadership get us more of the same? Maybe. It would probably be a substandard product, and i’m still recovering from Starfield being mid.
Starfield was Bethesda, though. Eons of distance between those two studios.
🏴☠️
I hope they keep with Linux…
If a game is on GOG, I’d rather buy it there than on steam. Steam is great and they do a lot of great stuff, but you don’t own the game if you buy it through steam.
I do the same. Just because the platform is great does not mean it will be in the future.
Noo, no rape please 😭
You know the Hedge Fund Fuckies are just fucking salivating at the thought of Valve being available to buy.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and Gaben will leave ownership of the company collectively to it’s employees.
That would be the best outcome, legal framework for the “flat” management structure, making it an employee owned company.
