"And there are people [at Valve] who were like, ‘I just want that for me.’ The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it. It was just, let’s see if you can actually make something that I would want to use for that purpose.”
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time and money to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing…
Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time and money to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing…
This actually is basically how Valve works.
They have a pretty small team, and Steam is a fucking money printer.
They are a private company, not public.
That means no shareholders. No need to jam out a product to keep stock prices up, no boards of directors that also sit on 12 other boards that are all scheming to figure out how to push the whole industry toward stupid bullshit like NFT game items or ‘replace all our employees with AI’ or ‘every game is actually just a marketing tool for MTX or battlepasses.’
(The entire idea of loot boxes and in game microtransactions was basically just another ‘i wonder what would happen if, or if it would even be possible to…’ and then the steam marketplace of ingame items was born, and then basically every one else copied them, poorly.)
(Fuck, its basically the same with modern in game achievements as well.)
…
They could do nothing other than maintain their existing products and basically just coast on that forever, remaining profitable.
Because they have essentially no hard deadlines to put out some new product… this enables them to have a very loose, very voluntary, workplace culture which emphasizes quality over quantity, creativity over ‘its the same game in a new setting’, as well as not rushing anything.
A whole lot of their projects in the last decade are just people saying ‘I’m gonna do this’ and then if anyone else thinks its cool or neat, they work on it too.
People are allowed and encouraged to contribute to any project, at any time, as opposed to basically all other corporate software studios that have very rigid and defined roles.
Sure, but anything that “The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it” is 100% definitely a waste of resources. So either they’re intentionally throwing money in the garbage or the intent absolutely was to make a product out of it…
thats called R&D. I don’t personally spend millions of dollars, but I do spend money on things that never pan out but teach me a lot of lessons I can apply to my next project
It’s not a waste of resources if you learn something. Think of this as research rather than product development. You can try many things (from VR, to miniaturised computers, to cloud gaming, controllers with wonky form factors…) to see what results in a good experience. You don’t need to get anywhere near a full fledged product to understand those things, so the waste of resources isn’t massive anyway.
I’d bet at the moment people decided “this is useful, I even want this for me, so let’s turn it into a product” the steam deck looked more like a screen, a gamepad and a raspberry pi all taped together or jammed into a 3d printed prototype chassis.
If people have spare capacity to work on these projects, the material cost at such a point can be under <5k which is peanuts for a company like Valve.
Do you really, truly believe that everything that’s never been done before is a 100% sure bet to invest time and money into?
Do you really have no idea of how complex, untested, but potentially viable ideas come to fruition, come to be found out as coherent and workable vs incoherent and non workable?
… You are aware that matchsticks were essentially invented by the scattershot approach of a man who just had the time, funding, and materials to just basically randomly test a whole bunch of chemical compounds, and he just happened to accidentally drag a stick covered in concoction #38 or whatever against a hearth, whereupon it burst into flame?
… Do you think the Wright Brothers, or any other early experiments of developing flying machines… or all those involved in early rocketry… do you think all of those people were 100% sure that each of their designs would work?
Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.
You say this as if all the money goes into to pockets of the devs and engineers to fuck off an do whatever they want. I ask again how this explains why Valve would throw money away.
They make approximately $15 million in profit per each of the roughly 360 employees.
That’s after wages.
Nobody knows exactly what an average Valve salary is (they’re a private company, they have no obligation to disclose that), but they almost certainly just continue to accumulate a stupendous amount of money, which they can then throw at any ideas that require all kinds of potential material or licensing or technical costs.
The employees are not making $15 million dollars a year. Probably more like 1/10 to 1/100 of that.
When you have a stable business with a guaranteed source of huge amounts of revenue, that all you have to do is basically maintain at a very low cost…
Most other revenue can be thrown at whatever, in a how ever long it takes to do well and properly timeframe.
Actual innovation requires a series of creative ideas that are explored thoroughly, without overwhelming pressure or influence on decision making, or timetables.
Valve’s position allows them to do this.
Lots of those things go no where, but a good number of them work out, and basically revolutionize the industry, more than making up for the projects that do not work out.
The more I learn about Valve culture the more I realize they definitely have teams just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. I bet there are some really wild prototypes that we never get to see.
You would be surprised how much companies experiment behind the scenes, that you never see. Prototypes aren’t actually the most expensive thing, so its totally doable, especially if you have lot of engineers hyped for that. Given that the teams at Valve produced hardware before, its only normal to get money for new experiments. Also the structure at Valve is a bit different than most companies.
Plans change and evolve. After the experiments looked good, more and more people got interested. Maybe the one guy who was successfull with previous hardware got involved and they started to see something bigger than anticipated. Its an organic growth. I mean I don’t have any internal knowledge or anything, just trying to think how it could have went.
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time and money to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing…
This actually is basically how Valve works.
They have a pretty small team, and Steam is a fucking money printer.
They are a private company, not public.
That means no shareholders. No need to jam out a product to keep stock prices up, no boards of directors that also sit on 12 other boards that are all scheming to figure out how to push the whole industry toward stupid bullshit like NFT game items or ‘replace all our employees with AI’ or ‘every game is actually just a marketing tool for MTX or battlepasses.’
(The entire idea of loot boxes and in game microtransactions was basically just another ‘i wonder what would happen if, or if it would even be possible to…’ and then the steam marketplace of ingame items was born, and then basically every one else copied them, poorly.)
(Fuck, its basically the same with modern in game achievements as well.)
…
They could do nothing other than maintain their existing products and basically just coast on that forever, remaining profitable.
Because they have essentially no hard deadlines to put out some new product… this enables them to have a very loose, very voluntary, workplace culture which emphasizes quality over quantity, creativity over ‘its the same game in a new setting’, as well as not rushing anything.
A whole lot of their projects in the last decade are just people saying ‘I’m gonna do this’ and then if anyone else thinks its cool or neat, they work on it too.
People are allowed and encouraged to contribute to any project, at any time, as opposed to basically all other corporate software studios that have very rigid and defined roles.
I don’t know what any of that has to do with throwing millions in the garbage can…
Some projects will end up being a waste of resources, but others end up printing a ton of money.
Sure, but anything that “The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it” is 100% definitely a waste of resources. So either they’re intentionally throwing money in the garbage or the intent absolutely was to make a product out of it…
this is how I know you’ve never created anything, lol. lots of times, you fail at making something, but you learn from those failures.
who knows what other projects they threw money at and failed, the only one I can think of rn were the steam machines.
I’m sure they learned from those mistakes, tried again, and here we are with the steam deck
So I suppose you spend millions funding engineers to create products as personal toys with no intention of selling any of them?
thats called R&D. I don’t personally spend millions of dollars, but I do spend money on things that never pan out but teach me a lot of lessons I can apply to my next project
Found the Buisness major
That user legitimately spends all day posting pedantic BS lmao, this is hilarious.
Literally the archetype of le Reddit neckbeard to a tee, Christ what a loser
It’s not a waste of resources if you learn something. Think of this as research rather than product development. You can try many things (from VR, to miniaturised computers, to cloud gaming, controllers with wonky form factors…) to see what results in a good experience. You don’t need to get anywhere near a full fledged product to understand those things, so the waste of resources isn’t massive anyway.
I’d bet at the moment people decided “this is useful, I even want this for me, so let’s turn it into a product” the steam deck looked more like a screen, a gamepad and a raspberry pi all taped together or jammed into a 3d printed prototype chassis.
If people have spare capacity to work on these projects, the material cost at such a point can be under <5k which is peanuts for a company like Valve.
Good thing you weren’t working at steam, huh.
Is there a point you’d like to make or did you just come to here lob personal attacks?
Do you really, truly believe that everything that’s never been done before is a 100% sure bet to invest time and money into?
Do you really have no idea of how complex, untested, but potentially viable ideas come to fruition, come to be found out as coherent and workable vs incoherent and non workable?
… You are aware that matchsticks were essentially invented by the scattershot approach of a man who just had the time, funding, and materials to just basically randomly test a whole bunch of chemical compounds, and he just happened to accidentally drag a stick covered in concoction #38 or whatever against a hearth, whereupon it burst into flame?
… Do you think the Wright Brothers, or any other early experiments of developing flying machines… or all those involved in early rocketry… do you think all of those people were 100% sure that each of their designs would work?
I’m sure 0% of them did but 100% of them were researching to find products to sell.
Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.
They have infinite money forever.
Gabe Newell runs a biotech company as well.
A couple million on a blue-sky product development pipeline is an incidental cost for the most part.
You say this as if all the money goes into to pockets of the devs and engineers to fuck off an do whatever they want. I ask again how this explains why Valve would throw money away.
… What?
It… it goes into the company.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/13/24197477/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-payroll-redacted
They run an absurdly profitable business.
They make approximately $15 million in profit per each of the roughly 360 employees.
That’s after wages.
Nobody knows exactly what an average Valve salary is (they’re a private company, they have no obligation to disclose that), but they almost certainly just continue to accumulate a stupendous amount of money, which they can then throw at any ideas that require all kinds of potential material or licensing or technical costs.
The employees are not making $15 million dollars a year. Probably more like 1/10 to 1/100 of that.
…what? How…does fucking around researching and developing products for their team members benefit the company?
When you have a stable business with a guaranteed source of huge amounts of revenue, that all you have to do is basically maintain at a very low cost…
Most other revenue can be thrown at whatever, in a how ever long it takes to do well and properly timeframe.
Actual innovation requires a series of creative ideas that are explored thoroughly, without overwhelming pressure or influence on decision making, or timetables.
Valve’s position allows them to do this.
Lots of those things go no where, but a good number of them work out, and basically revolutionize the industry, more than making up for the projects that do not work out.
As a certain wise old man once said:
“These things, they take time.”
The more I learn about Valve culture the more I realize they definitely have teams just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. I bet there are some really wild prototypes that we never get to see.
Sure, with the intention of finding a product to sell. But the whole point of this article is that they never intended to sell it:
You would be surprised how much companies experiment behind the scenes, that you never see. Prototypes aren’t actually the most expensive thing, so its totally doable, especially if you have lot of engineers hyped for that. Given that the teams at Valve produced hardware before, its only normal to get money for new experiments. Also the structure at Valve is a bit different than most companies.
Sure but they’re saying it wasn’t a prototype. At least not intended to be.
Plans change and evolve. After the experiments looked good, more and more people got interested. Maybe the one guy who was successfull with previous hardware got involved and they started to see something bigger than anticipated. Its an organic growth. I mean I don’t have any internal knowledge or anything, just trying to think how it could have went.