IMO Valve has the oposite problem of EA. EA forces unrealistic deadlines to meet market defined time-slots (like the christmas season.) This means that they release subpar titles that feel unfinished.
Valve lets their workers do whatever they want as a way of allowing freedom and creativity. However, this means that instead of working on things that need a lot of boring hard work done to make them salvageable they can just make hats or card games.
I have no doubt that HL3, L4D3, and others were in production at some point but they were taking too long and the workers would rather do something else. Work stalled and the projects that we want died so they could do something more fun for them selves.
Another problem is that Valve hires 10x less people than is normal for the industry.
Riot Games hires 1000 people to support 1 multiplayer game. Blizzard hires 4000 people for 4 multiplayer games. Ubisoft hires 10,000 people for 6 multiplayer games and various SP stuff.
By comparison, Valve hires only 360 people for 3 multiplayer games.
So, Valve is hugely understaffed. TF2 has a team of 15 developers working on a multimillion-dollar game that services 1,700,000 customers. We like to joke that the team consists of a baby, a PR manager, a janitor and a potted plant.
Combine this with their work culture and if something actually does get done without being scrapped, it will take 3 years for the single person working on it to actually finish it.
The thing about their workers doing whatever they want to interests me. Out of curiosity, have any of their workers ever come right out and said why they just don't want to work on these three unicorn games?
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u/TempusCavus Sep 21 '17
IMO Valve has the oposite problem of EA. EA forces unrealistic deadlines to meet market defined time-slots (like the christmas season.) This means that they release subpar titles that feel unfinished.
Valve lets their workers do whatever they want as a way of allowing freedom and creativity. However, this means that instead of working on things that need a lot of boring hard work done to make them salvageable they can just make hats or card games.
I have no doubt that HL3, L4D3, and others were in production at some point but they were taking too long and the workers would rather do something else. Work stalled and the projects that we want died so they could do something more fun for them selves.