More Valve Layoffs

Gamasutra expands upon the story of Valve's firing of engineer Jeri Ellsworth with the report that as many as 25 staff were fired by the developer yesterday. Details are scarce, though after contact with some of those involved, they say: "the impression we get is that these cuts were driven more by company challenges than by individual performance issues." They also have a speculative list of those who may have been let go by comparing the company's employee directory to a cached version from last month. Following up, Engadget has a statement about this from Valve Managing Director Gabe Newell:
"We don't usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I'd take the unusual step of addressing them. No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We're not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn't working here."
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Re: More Valve Layoffs
Feb 14, 2013, 14:41
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Re: More Valve Layoffs Feb 14, 2013, 14:41
Feb 14, 2013, 14:41
 
ASeven wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 09:48:
Beamer wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 09:17:
Captain negative. Companies never let people go unless something is wrong!

For one, Jason wasn't the head of steam, he was the head of business development. Yes, this put Steam deals on his plate. It also put engine licensing on his plate.
If you're looking for an issue, Steam isn't signing companies up very quickly these days. They're somewhat saturated, and larger companies are trending towards leaving and opening their own store.
Then there was the WarZ failure.
And how successful has engine licensing been?

There are reasons you can find other than "OMG VALVE IS FALLING APART!"

Captain apologist. Go back to basic school and learn how to read!

I said something is very wrong, I didn't say Valve is falling apart. Go back to basic school and learn to read a message before you reply to it.

And yes, there's a lot of reasons for Jason to be fired, still news of firing at Valve are relatively unheard of. There may be something wrong at Valve, there may be not, however Valve is far from falling apart.

Yes, I'm mocking you. You've been trumpeting the industry collapse for like 3 years.
So I'm mocking "very wrong." It's very early to say this is a sign of things being "very wrong." We know Valve is valued at over a billion dollars. If they actually accepted a buyout, especially at less than that, things would be "very wrong."

Go back to school and understand being made fun of. Well, my guess is that happened to you plenty at school, so you probably do understand.

But my point was that it's so ridiculously premature to sit here and say "clearly something is very wrong." It isn't clear at all. In fact, there's plenty of discussion in this very thread about how it may not imply things being even kind of wrong, let alone very wrong.


Tell me, though, what the hell am I apologizing for that you call me an apologist? Especially weird that you call me a corporate apologist and backing you is RollinThundr, who calls me a bleeding heart liberal. Those two are diametrically opposite, so you two should get some kind of conference and decide which I am.
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