There's an interview
on Rock, Paper, Shotgun talking with Valve employees Jan-Peter Ewert, Jeff
Cain, and Louis Barinaga. Whatever the pretext of the conversation, RPS chose to
focus on communication, which they suggest is often a one-way street, noting the
company is often silent on questions about topics like the delayed Diretide
event for
Dota 2, company layoffs, and the long-overdue
Half-Life 2:
Episode 3. When asked specifically about the lack of information about
whether there would be a Diretide this year, Ewert and Cain defend their
silence, saying:
Jan-Peter Ewert: I don’t think there is a lot of
improvement to be made there. The thing is, if you feel something is wrong and
your customers tell you something should be fixed, the right response is to fix
it – not to tell them, “Yeah, at some point in time we’ll fix it.” Because
that’s expectation. And if you’re ultimately not able to fix it, then that only
makes people even more angry.
So I think the right response around SteamOS or anything we do will be what we
did with Diretide, which is to bring out the thing people want [if it works out
behind-the-scenes], not just tell them we’ll fix it.
Jeff Cain, business development: Reactions start even if people don’t hear
anything. We’re listening. Things happen.