The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[HeatEXTEND]

So-called self-organizing companies have a corporate arm somewhere controlling the entire operation from “above”. Find them and their friends to figure out who has the real power.

What you’ll find is that the corporate arm influences, controls, and “anxiety spikes” the self-organizing arm nearly constantly. It’s not self-organizing, it’s a company with opaque managers ruled through mass anxiety and fear.

If you’re at a place like this, you must learn who the corporate managers are, who are their friends, and the cliques. They are the ones with real power and everything else is an illusion.
At self-organizing companies with bonuses, workers will watch for rivalries between other coworkers to exploit. They will team up with one dev to bring the other (disliked) dev down a notch in some way. (I’ve seen this several times.)
At self-organizing companies, coding must be done super defensively as anyone can come in and “turd up” the code you’re working on. You must design your systems for this inevitability.

Related: At places like this, you dare not depend on other systems actually working for any period of time. Copy/paste/rename the helper functions you depend on so others can’t quietly break or jankify your systems and make you look bad.
On a competitive team within a self-organizing company, avoid asking for help unless you absolutely, positively need it. Any information you receive may be purposely distorted in some way. If you do ask for help, gather consensus from multiple devs.

Related: Route around problems vs. asking for help or modifications on these teams. Once you ask for help the other dev(s) have control and may purposely send you down a blind alley.

On teams like this, it’s the Wild West. The devs aren’t working for the greater good of the company, they are working for good bonuses. This is one reason why bonuses in this type of environment are a really bad idea.
At self-organizing companies you must be very social. Early on you need to identify who is closely interacting with the corporate arm, who their friends and cliques are, and what they find valuable. If you fall outside this group’s favor be prepared for pain.

Related: You need a powerful “Sponsor” or “Baron” to back you. Figure out what they want and like. Watch or read “Hunger Games”. Once you get to this level you are almost untouchable.
At a self-organizing company you must pay attention to subtle hints from the corporate arm. They just won’t come to you and say “work on this”. Events will just happen and you need to be wise and realize that nothing happens by accident at places like this.

Your mental model should be a hierarchical corporate arm with a self-organizing layer underneath. The corporate arm will reach into and influence the self-organizing arm using various tools.

Some tools are key strategic hires forced into the system, random firings, hints placed with devs that something is valuable or interesting, exposing devs to extra resources like the ability to pay contractors, destroying resources like test labs, or bonus payouts.

You can also just reach in and grab devs and force them to a new team. (That’s why you have wheels on your desk.)

If at one of these companies you find yourself in the basement with a stapler, working alone: be prepared to be fired unless you have a strong Sponsor and are taking an approved break.
If you’re running a self-organizing company, you need to have a measure and understanding of the current average and peak Anxiety Level within the self-organizing arm. Or it blows up and talent walks.

Random firings, messing around with key resources like test labs, encouraging toxic behaviors through massive bonuses, and forcing devs to move around randomly are all anxiety increasing/morale decreasing events.

And this is why I walked away from a self-organizing company 1 week after being given options. It was just too unhealthy a workplace, and it impacted my health too much. I would say most of my coworkers where ridiculously stressed out (I learned some had to go on meds to cope).
Another type of temp strategic hire you can make is to recruit a well-known author, a famous dev, or a person with specialized skills (like an economist). Have them write gushingly about their amazing experiences at the company. Once you’re done with them quietly let them go.

And so this is a form of Developer Marketing. Hire some key person, push them to write or blog, then once you’re done with them let them go. The “pawn” won’t complain too much as their career will be enhanced by being associated with your company.

What the developer actually writes is actually consensus based mumbo-jumbo. It’s just marketing. It’ll be based off the version of reality the corporate arm wants to market to developers they haven’t recruited yet.
If you run a self-organized firm and you have turned up the anxiety levels too high, your company will become brittle and prone to mass talent flight. Wealthy competitors can come in and make offers and basically steal all your tech and devs right out from under you.

Corporatism at it's best, sounds exactly like my workplace lmfao

 

[gaussgunner]

Weren't these "self organizing" companies supposed to be a dream workplace scenario? Google, Valve, etc. with no set hours or tasks. I suspect it takes a certain mindframe to work in a place like that. I know I couldn't do it. If no one told me what to do I'd just sit around all day.

Yeah, don't I know. That's the big challenge as you move up from peon employee to project lead then maybe go independent and ultimately become the boss. You just get more and more random people trying to tell you what to do, underlings with questions and problems, and high-pressure snap decisions falling on your shoulders. Then you realize why your bosses acted like dumb fucking assholes. I'm glad I worked for those fuckers all those years and learned to be ruthless. Not just telling people to fuck off and work harder, also canceling time-sink projects, making things deliberately shitty to ensure they don't take forever, etc. If I went directly to some "dream job" in my 20s, I could be some butthurt narcissist loser who worked on a failed dream project for 5 years only to get thrown out on my ass when the company ran out of money.

I finally did read Rich's TL;DR about working at Valve. Sounds like every place I've ever worked at with more than 5 employees. Job titles are pretty meaningless.

I guess the only difference at Valve is everyone's job title is "dev" and they report directly to HR? Heh, that's nice. No bosses who know you and your work who'll pull for you if you're any good. Just you and HR. Do they judge everyone by analytics and ratings? "1/10, deplorable intolerant shitlord, would never let him code again."

 

[Lutte]

I guess the only difference at Valve is everyone's job title is "dev" and they report directly to HR? Heh, that's nice. No bosses who know you and your work who'll pull for you if you're any good. Just you and HR. Do they judge everyone by analytics and ratings? "1/10, deplorable intolerant shitlord, would never let him code again."

There's still a hierarchy, they just pretend there isn't and make it unclear who actually has influence until you've worked for them long enough to notice all the 'hints' :

Some tools are key strategic hires forced into the system, random firings, hints placed with devs that something is valuable or interesting, exposing devs to extra resources like the ability to pay contractors, destroying resources like test labs, or bonus payouts.

You can also just reach in and grab devs and force them to a new team. (That’s why you have wheels on your desk.)

The level of passive aggressiveness is over 9000.

 

[schru]

The idea that Valve has a completely flat structure of management and that its employees can work on whatever they like was also in part created by the press and its fans. I remember reading an article about it in 2010 or 11, before information about the handbook was spread, in which the journalist was singing praise for Valve's system and saying that ‘workers own the means of production’ there or something to that extent.

Mean while, people from Valve always tended to point out that Newell has the ultimate say in everything and that there are other senior employees who carry more weight. There was also that one situation with the augmented reality team which was dissolved and fired overnight at the senior staff's discretion, because it wasn't meshing with what they considered their company's culture. The main thing that older Valve employees always said about their way of doing things is that they wanted to preserve how it was when they were small, but that might just be impossible when they've grown to number around 500 people now.

 

[gaussgunner]

‘workers own the means of production’

Like every bullshit co-op and 'employee owned company' these days. Workers' savings held hostage in company stock while fucking committees control the means of production.

And if you think about it, the 'means of production' is a PC/desk setup that only costs $5000 including a brand new Mac, some commercial software, wheelie desk and aeron chair. And if you're a cheap ass you can cobble together a decent workstation for $500.

 

[schru]

Well, in case of Valve they don't have to contribute any money. The capital was supposed to be their time and work, but that was idealised by the journalist.

 

[Average Manatee]

Weren't these "self organizing" companies supposed to be a dream workplace scenario? Google, Valve, etc. with no set hours or tasks. I suspect it takes a certain mindframe to work in a place like that. I know I couldn't do it. If no one told me what to do I'd just sit around all day.

It's a lot like Socialism/Communism. It's the best idea ever until someone actually tries it, at which point everyone hates it. It's also similar in that it can only survive on massive constant inflow of free cash from a golden goose somewhere, like Steam is (for Google this is search). When 90% of company value comes from something that is basically done and can't be improved upon

The ideal of having no bosses ultimately falls apart as soon as you realize that everyone is potentially the boss and pissing them off can lead to you being fired. Worst of all you can't know who matters and who doesn't, because even a seemingly low-level person could be friends with Gabe or something, so it's always a tense environment where no one is willing to stick their head out. Could just as well have a photograph of Chairman Mao hanging in the office with the notation "Remember to report all suspected persons engaging in anti-company culture to your nearest commissar!"

 

[LESS T_T]

Sandbox toys? Check. CS:GO? Check. GTA V? Check. Battle royals? Hey, there's a new one. Anyway, check. Pre-order of a new AAA game on the top? Check!

#10 - Planet Coaster
#9 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#8 - Monster Hunter: World - Deluxe Kit
#7 - Raft
#6 - Jurassic World Evolution
#5 - Grand Theft Auto V
#4 - Event Pass: Sanhok
#3 - Islands of Nyne: Battle Royale
#2 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#1 - Monster Hunter: World

Clicker enters the chart, the Hunter stays on the top:

#10 - Raft
#9 - Enter the Gungeon
#8 - Jurassic World Evolution
#7 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#6 - Clicker Heroes 2
#5 - Event Pass: Sanhok
#4 - Islands of Nyne: Battle Royale
#3 - Grand Theft Auto V
#2 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#1 - Monster Hunter: World

 

[Outlander]

Surprise, surprise. Let a bunch of people on their own and they eventually degrade into backstabbing, shit-flinging monkeys.

 

[Latelistener]

This is all a GLaDOS experiment.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamesradar.com/half-lif...ion-to-publish-fanfic-vision-for-half-life-3/

Half-Life 2 writer surprised by former colleague’s decision to publish ‘fanfic’ vision for Half-Life 3
Bossa Studios' Chet Faliszek on ex-colleague Marc Laidlaw's decision to share a plot outline for Half-Life 3 - and why he won't speak out on history's most-anticipated sequel

In August 2017, former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw shared - in his words - a ‘fanfic’ plot outline for Half-Life 3. Code-named Epistle 3, the story swapped a few names around (Gordon Freeman was replaced by a female character called Gertie Fremont), but to all intents and purposes this is the closest we’ve come to resolving the events of 2007’s Half-Life 2: Episode 2. With its cliffhanger ending, Valve have left fans guessing at Gordon Freeman’s fate for over 11 years. At the recent Develop conference in Brighton, we caught up with Marc’s former Valve colleague – and fellow Half-Life series writer - Chet Faliszek, creative director at Bossa Studios. Was Chet surprised that Marc would choose to go public with his vision for a Half-Life sequel? “I’ll let Marc speak for that”, says Chet. “I… I was surprised by it coming out”, he adds, “I’ll let Marc speak for that”.

Chet also wrote for Half-Life 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead. Had he ever felt the need to comment on how Half-Life might resolve? “No. I think one of the things when you’re working in a company [like Valve] is the realisation that there’s a whole bunch of people working on things, and sometimes people would falsely equate me [as a spokesman] since I was out doing press or something and that’s BS. There’s a whole bunch of people working on it, and it’s their group ownership of it that keeps it going. A million people with names you don’t know, that are more instrumental on that game that made it better, funnier, more interesting. At this point, I’m a fan, and waiting to see whats going to come out of it”.

Chet’s comments do little to confirm that Half-Life 3 (or indeed, any Half-Life sequel) will ever see the light of day, but don't misalign with rumors that a Half-Life sequel has been worked on at Valve over the last decade under different groups of developers. Fans have tracked a surprisingly elaborate ten-year history of Half Life 3 for a game that may never exist. Back in 2011, Chet had noted that Valve is ‘not prepared to talk about it [episode 3] right now’. In a 2017 Reddit AMA Valve owner Gabe Newell was asked if there was any chance of a new IP that takes place in the Half-Life / Portal universe. “Yep” was his simple reply.

In January 2017, Game Informer tried to investigate the status of Half-Life, claiming to speak to former Valve employees who suggested the company’s unusual development culture contributed to the sequel’s limbo. A recent Reddit thread about the difficulties of working in a ‘self-organizing company’ (believed to be barely disguised shorthand for Valve, given more credence by the 'desks on wheels' reference, a famous Valve motif) might shed some light on the challenges. “If you’re dealing with a self-organizing company it’s more complex. You will be triangulated against multiple people and you’ll have to deal with group consensus”, alludes one Reddit poster.

Chet was – unsurprisingly – diplomatic when we asked what internal hurdles might need to be overcome for Valve to finish Half-Life. “I’ll let them speak to that”, he said. Did Chet feel that there was a popular misconception about Valve that he wished fans understood? “Well, I guess I hate to talk about Valve, since they still exist and they can talk for themselves. I prefer not to make a projection there.”, he said. “Actually, my answer to that is: games are really easy to make, there’s a button on Unity, on Unreal, that you press and you finish your game. That’s it.”. Unless there genuinely is that button, which would be some secret to have kept all these years, it seems safe to infer that Half-Life is a more complex project than many believe.

For now, the wait for Half-Life 3 goes on, until Valve’s internal G-Men feel the need to reactivate one of the most-anticipated, but least likely, sequels in history.

 

[Anthedon]

The chat update seems to be live now: https://steamcommunity.com/updates/chatupdate

 

[unfairlight]

They've polished basically everything up already. I've been using it in beta for a while and it works fine.

 

[Infinitron]

Summer culling: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-07-22-valve-issues-95-000-bans-in-just-seven-days

Valve issues 95,000 bans in just seven days

Valve has stepped up its anti-cheat measures and issued almost 95,000 bans in the last week alone.

In July 2017, we reported that on 6th July Valve banned over 40K Steam accounts for cheating, making it the single largest banhammer the company had ever deployed.

Emphasis on "had", though.

According to SteamDB, on Wednesday 18th July, 2018, Valve handed out a stunning 61,439 Valve Anti-Cheating (VAC) bans and 27,403 game bans, making it the platform's most hefty ban spree yet... and given Steam DB can't check every single Steam profile every day, that is supposedly a conservative estimate.

Source: https://steamdb.info/stats/bans/

Totted up, that means - at the time of writing - 92,409 accounts have been banned in just the last seven days, taking down thousands of dollars worth of CS:GO skins, too (thanks, PCGamesN).

Why now? Valve hasn't elaborated, but it's likely VAC has uncovered a new cheat method - or methods - across one or more of the games it monitors, such as Ark: Survival Evolved, Left 4 Dead and L4D2, the Call of Duty games, the Counter-Strike games, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2.

 

[Latelistener]

Technically Valve didn't do anything, since VAC is an automated system.

 

[Gerrard]

It just works!

 

[unfairlight]

An automated system that they iterate on and improve, now supported by big data, VACnet and machine learning. Nice banwave though, Valve has really been improving on VAC although this still hasn't stopped the endless amounts of Slav cheaters in CSGO.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Do they expect everyone to view chat windows in fullscreen or what? Is that a thing people do?

Half the fucking bar taken up by useless icons. A fucking submit button??? If there's an option to lower chat text size, why not resize the buttons and/or the text entry font too? Also they got rid of default smileys for some reason, so you'd better buy some off of the market or something.

WE DISCORD NOW.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

This new chat styling is fucking vile.

 

[Gerrard]

Yeah, but you can post images and shit.



I'm sure some of those new features might be useful for people who have hundreds of "friends" on their lists.

 

[Alienman]

For some reason the new chat makes my computer stutter after a while. I didn't notice the memory or cpu getting overloaded so no idea what is causing it.

 

[unfairlight]

Works on my machine™
They sorted out all the issues I have and I don't know what you guys are complaining about.

Also they got rid of default smileys for some reason, so you'd better buy some off of the market or something.

I have them.

I found that the optimal way to use it is as such.

 

[Infinitron]

The new interface is nice but why the fuck am I getting Chrome push notifications from Steam now? Especially when the Steam client is running and showing the exact same alerts? lol.

 

[unfairlight]

Might have to do with the fact that the new Steam chat is quite literally just a embedded Chromium web interface so they are communicating for some reason. Switching from Chrome would be a good idea, considering that Chrome is fucking garbage and Firefox is better in every way nowadays.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

More bullshit: There's no longer an offline option for friends, only "Invisible mode". Invisible mode will still display notifications and chat messages and shit though, so if you want to stream or just ignore people for a while, you have to go and manually disable all notifications, then turn them back on again later. I can't find any option to have friends start up invisible/offline either. Also, it seems to group people playing the same game together, making the separators take up even more room and making it more difficult to find a particular friend, since they could be listed pretty much anywhere depending on what game they're playing and if anyone else is playing it.

Oh, and if you don't want Steam to automagically re-open friends and whatever on startup, append "-silent -nochatui -nofriendsui" to its command line.