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Valve Laid Off 13 Employees, including those from the VR Hardware Team
- Thread starter Deleted member 2840
- Start date
When I left, the VR efforts were in a messy place. It's worth noting that Valve does not typically hire/fire based on any kind of financial constraints -- money is not a limited resource at Valve. This is a direction adjustment/fix thing most likely, and without finer details on who was let go, it's hard to speculate on what decisions were made.
I think he's fairly spot on, and usually gets things right. Tyler is well known within Valve, FYI.
Reading the history of the future now, holy shit this is a twist in that experience lol.
Seems like Valve development has its issues from what I've been reading.
Seems like Valve development has its issues from what I've been reading.
It's not. It's a dumb hoax. Ironically the shit news reporting about the whole thing proved to be far more harmful
I'm sure it's been fun for them to experiment, but I really don't see why Valve would want to get into the VR hardware business. It's a major risk and heavy cost investment to enter into manufacturing. The hardware is currently an expensive, niche market. And it really wouldn't drive much additional traffic to Steam when there are already third-party HMDs that work with the platform. Besides, they've been burned on hardware many times before (Steam Controller, Steam Link, Steam Machines). They should probably stick just to their cooperative arrangement with HTC.
It'd be a shame if that Half-Life game project ended up being cancelled though.
It'd be a shame if that Half-Life game project ended up being cancelled though.
Labo perfected VR so Valve gave up.
On a serious note I hope they find a new job soon
More likely replacing them with people to work on Dota Auto Chess 2.
Apparently there has recently been some sort of suicide challenge based on the picture that may or may not be a hoax.
I don't really know why that would make the sculpture itself with no context taboo.
It was a hoax.
I don't think Valve is suited for what AAA single player experiences have become. I think they're going to stay in their lane.
Interesting, was this a long while back or recent?
And my thoughts are that this is probably the finalization of their VR hardware, no longer needing some of the engineers that worked on it. Thoughts on this?
The difference between a firing and a lay off is that in a firing, an employee fucks up and suffers the consequences.
In a lay off, the employer fucks up and their employees suffer the consequences.
It's baffling that somehow, we've made the latter more acceptable.
I don't wanna give away any particularly identifying info, so let's say in the last 3 years.
There was some discussion around which direction to take VR hardware efforts and how to proceed with certain hardware partners. I agree that their new VR hardware efforts, must, at this point, be close to completion. I don't think the layoff was related to being "done" though, I think they likely just picked one of the many outlined directions that were being considered at the time and, as a result, some personnel were no longer needed or aligned with the company's new goals.
Valve is ruthless with this kind of stuff, in case people haven't noticed. And, like I said, it's not about money. People who are let go are either not a good fit at Valve or not compatible with a particular direction the company has chosen. It's likely the latter here.
Firing means that the employer found some fault with the employee. Laid off means that their services were no longer required and speaks no ill of their performance.
In common parlance, fired is fine for the latter as well. "Laid off" is more of an euphemism.
I agree in his early days a lot of his content was rough but he's gotten a lot better.
He actually let me know on another forum that he spend 2 years waiting for confirmation on multiple sources for his L4D3 video which I think shows how accurate he's trying to be with his content now.
Sadly according to the L4D3 video the reason the version that seemed to be in pretty active development for some time was cancelled while being pretty far along because the team couldn't decide to port it to Unreal because Source 2 wasn't ready or continue working in Source 2. It's very frustrating things like that are allowed to happen by the higher ups at Valve.
Hardly anyone uses it that way though. Fired is almost universally seen as when an employee fucks up and the company terminates them with cause. Also means losing benefits and severance etc, whereas layoffs mean you get a package and paid out unused vacation time etc.
Not really, fired is commonly used for people that are let go. See also: The thread's title.
It should still be changed, the avatar is scary and creepy as hell.
Thanks for sharing. I suppose we'll find out more soon enough.
There was a article in the Post I think that said its nothing but an internet hoax and there are no children hurting themselves because of that picture. It's no different than the razor blade in the apples or poisoned halloween candy scare.
Hey OP.
You've railed on clickbait titles before: Hmmm
HMMMM????
The article the OP quoted literally says laid off. Nowhere in the article does the word "fired" show up.
OP
OP
I mean, I never said that the OP of that thread was clickbaiting, the article is. Just like VNN was clickbaiting, and the original thread title was copy-pasted from his video so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fair enough.
I just really think it is interesting that someone makes a post here on Era with an obvious clickbait title and then doesn't take part in any conversation / discussion in the topic at hand for about four hours until finally someone (me) calls them out on their heading. This shit happens so much on this forum. Folks are either quick posting in order to be the first topic on the subject or posting very questionable topic headings in order to bait them clicks while I guess they sit back and watch folks get mad? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's legally distinct though, and also really isn't used in the way you're saying lol.
Also, this topic definitely seems to be trying to find concern somewhere where there really isn't any
OP
OP
Is it somehow offensive or just too scawy?
It's creepy sure, but is there any more serious reason people are asking for this?
Look, I'm sorry that I seem to be nit picking something that some folks might think is petty. But stuff like this irritates me.
When you were laid off, would you have enjoyed a stranger posting on a message board about how you had gotten fired when that wasn't true?
OP
OP
Are you seriously, actually, non-ironically going through all of my posts to find a point in an unrelated argument? Seriously? At first it was just annoying, now it's kinda creepy mate.
The thread title is wrong and since this is about employees being laid off it's important to make a distinction between whether they were asked to leave because they were made redundant or whether 13 people were fired because they made a mistake. Big difference for anyone who is remotely interested in what's happening.
In terms of common use, I've never heard of people saying they were fired when they're laid off or made redundant.
The Labo VR thread was full of posters worried that Labo VR would make VR seem like a joke to the public and "kill" VR. Many others think this is a ridiculous position, and are using this thread to mock it.
That's a really stupid argument lol. If accessible VR will kill VR then those Samsung, Google and cheaper alternatives would have done it in already.
Confirmation from Gabe that this layoff means basically nothing for VR in both software and hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/vive_vr/comments/ayl7j1/gabe_newell_valve_still_working_on_vr_layoffs/
I think they're still in a bit of a precarious position there. Oculus is still the leader in PCVR mindshare with plenty of people having no qualms buying off their store and with the Quest they'll be pulling people even further in. Most of the other headsets are Windows headsets which are also slowly trying to pull people in to their own store. Even HTC itself is pushing the Vive store and Viveport subscriptions hard. Outside of that the biggest SteamVR headset is probably Pimax which is pretty niche at the moment. Without any new partnerships or a new headset from themselves, they're going to have a harder time against Oculus in the future. Maybe not any time soon, but eventually.
HTC is on the edge of bankruptcy and their Vive branch in particular has the poorest reputation in terms of support and reliability I've ever been aware of in major consumer electronics. They've also been trying to distance themselves from Valve/Steam since Vive launched, increasingly focusing on their own Viveport VR store and VR Gamepass subscription service (which has no ties to Valve/Steam whatsoever). Their next mainstream consumer headset (Vive Cosmos) doesn't even use Valve's Lighthouse tracking system and will likely "officially" have nothing to do with Valve or Steam VR (though Steam VR will support it, cause it's headset agnostic).
Valve absolutely expected the likes of LG and Samsung to release SteamVR/Lighthouse HMD's, but it never happened for whatever reason. Samsung of course makes Window MR headsets instead (probably money hatted by MS, or Valve was contractually excluded by their partnership with Oculus) and LG's "Ultragear" (that was demoed at GDC or CES 2+ years ago) is clearly dead and buried. Ultimately Valve either makes Steam VR HMD's themselves or completely abandons VR, cause the only consumer HMD's that will be officially available for their platform will be from the dubious Chinese start up Pimax. I fully expect the OG Vive will be discontinued this year following the Cosmos release.
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Valve is also working on three full VR games and Artifact will be the Half-Life 2 of TCGs.
They arent stopping VR. They have a new controller and headset coming.
Suicide isn't a joke, but people falling for a really dumb hoax and then getting indignant when called out on it sure is.
Excuse me but Gabe/Valve literally never lies or changes plans and VR is already mainstream or about to take off. Any day now. Nevermind the fact that nobody anywhere close to the mainstream still even really remembers VR is a thing and that Valve's statements are multiple years old and they're notorious for promising things and then never delivering (see Source 2).
e: I will clarify that I do believe Valve is still working on VR and that as far as I'm concerned, VR has every potential to reawaken at some point in the future when hardware catches up. However, given how slow it's been and how Valve generally operates, I'm not putting a lot of faith in Valve's efforts since they consistently fail to deliver on any sort of timely schedule, if at all. If VR succeeds, it'll be largely without Valve's involvement.
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