Profile of a 4th density company: Valve

[Lavazza]

Hey friends,

I'm often too busy to post much these days but I ran across something this morning that caught my metaphysical eye. Since 4th density is beginning to dawn we're seeing more and more people doing the same things in new, open, love-based ways. Even the corporate world, to a degree.

Looks like Valve, the video game studio, has some interesting philosophies. If you have time take a look at the employee handbook that they made public, it's quite interesting.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http:...LowRes.pdf

A lot of it sounds "pie in the sky", but then again they've been in business for 8 years and are well known among game studios.

Much L&L,
Eric

[Oldern]

Wow, interesting document. I am personally preferring Blizzard, but I know that they have been accused of many things with the removal of offline features - I do not really care about that, and send them love anyway

But I love Valve games as well, have bought almost all of their games - even TF2 when it was not yet free to play... : )

[Liet]

Wow, interesting document. I am personally preferring Blizzard, but I know that they have been accused of many things with the removal of offline features - I do not really care about that, and send them love anyway

But I love Valve games as well, have bought almost all of their games - even TF2 when it was not yet free to play... : )

You know, blizzard... the original creators and team, sure, those guys are ok at heart.
But due to investors, they are forced to shove the game down into a pit of casual gaming...

The cataclysm Reeeeeetarding of the game..... No thanks.


"Valve is self-funded. We haven’t ever brought in outside
financing. Since our earliest days this has been incredibly
important in providing freedom to shape the company
and its business practices."

[Plenum]

Portal 1 is still one of my favourite all time games.

[godwide_void]

Valve wins. This reminds me of the times when my friends and I would spend most of our days after school duking it out in Counter Strike and Half-Life 2. Ahhhh, nostalgia.

BOOM, HEADSHOT!

[kanonathena]

Profile of a 4th video game

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_%28...eo_game%29

Promote cooperation rather than competition. I look forward to playing it someday.

[Parsons]

Portal 1 is still one of my favourite all time games.

Portal 2 dethroned 1 for me; fantastic games. I grew up on the first half life game making an enormous impact on my life. The audio quality always tied it all together.

[conscience]

Valve are fairly unique in how they treat their staff, all as equals with the responsibility to decide how they are of most value to Valve as a company and then go and do it. Peer review and encouragement is offered but it's still up to the individual to do what he/she thinks is best.

Like a breath of fresh air. There are others too, and I know Google have a similar if more limited policy where they giving their staff every Friday to work on their own projects, and many apps that you may be familiar with have grown from those free days. Microsoft's popular Kinetic motion controller addon for the XBox 360 was invented the same way too, through one of their programmer's own personal free time project. But they're not quite up to the level of Valve yet, with their wheeled desks that staff can place next to any group they want to work with.

They're all very smart people too, with an impressive history of successes.

But it's not all sweetness and light over there imho. They're (arguably) in a monopoly position with respect to PC gaming currently (over 80% was the last estimate I saw), and I'd say this is reflected in some of their practises concerning the treatment of developers and most noticeably - their prices. As a PC gamer on a budget I find they often charge approaching double what you can get the game for elsewhere, even though they have no manufacturing or distribution costs nor retail overheads to take into account. They do have very cheap headline grabbing sales at times which benefit the gamers, but then there's a downside for developers. Either way Valve take a cut.

For example, if you wanted to buy the Skyrim game for PC on say... Amazon, you get the full retail DVD mailed to you, that incidentally connects to Steam anyway for it's updates so essentially identical except you get a disk copy as a backup. The price? Amazon ask for just under £24, Valve's online distribution platform Steam asks for £35 without the DVD copy sending out. That's typical of the prices too in my experience.

Developers of all sizes have found Valve's policy, enabled by their monopoly, to be quite harsh. For example, in exchange for a front-page promotion on the Steam website, where big sales are almost guaranteed, the developers make no money from it because Valve keep it all - a crippling financial disadvantage for the smaller, independent developers.

All the agreements between Valve and games developers/publishers are top-secret too, so developers are in the dark about what the going rate is regarding a fair percentage for Valve to take, and have no ideas what other developers are paying for the privilege of being available on Steam. Even the largest publishers have withheld their games from that platform too, due to the price-fixing requirements involved, because Valve won't let them sell the game cheaper elsewhere or they refuse to allow it to be available on their Steam sales platform... which can be significant due to it's domination of PC games sales.

Electronic Arts famously withheld some of their biggest games because of the restrictions that Valve tried to impose, though reportedly (and unconfirmed by me) EA made as much profit from one sale on their own as they would have from two sales on Valve's Steam.

So while I'd agree they treat their employees with the utmost respect, unfortunately that seems to be used entirely in pursuit of business domination. Just thought I'd put this information out there for those who are interested.

[Plenum]

that is a fantastic overview mr conscience.

but even despite the monopoly exploited position that Steam has in pc gaming (much like Microsoft has in pc os's) it has been a HUGE factor in keeping this platform relevant in the face of console gaming growth. And I am sure the nvidia and amd (graphics card makers) are glad that Steam is so successful too

I have noticed the price gouging too (I live in Australia), but I have heard that steam is not responsible for that; the publishers insist on tiered pricing depending on country so that they the digital distribution doesn't undercut their physical sales. Australia is the worst place for that kind of thing btw.

- -

however, the steam sales on bundled packs (esp for older games, 2 years+) is just unmatched.