So Valve is definitely idealized by people outside (and inside) the game industry, but definitely much less so by people who have worked there. The flat structure is sort of a pipe dream that leaves nobody actually in charge of important decisions, while hiding a de facto power structure that certainly exists despite being non-explicit.
The company has transitioned to being the company that owns Steam as a platform (including and subsuming Vive), and not much else. People that have joined Valve expecting to develop games there end up fired in less than a year, which surely is destructive but also serves a real purpose of perpetuating the Valve culture. A major shakeup is unlikely to happen; Gabe seems to be unable to decide whether he wants to be a super-public figure that is the face and decision body behind the whole company, or if he wants to shrink into a hole and rub shoulders with tech legends hoping to determine the future of everything. The company will make money for a while, but they are open to platform disruption, even in their VR space where they have (more than Oculus) tried to be the open platform. Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server. If this view is right right, Steam is about to find out that the PC world wants to be even more open than they are offering. Of course, the board of investors will certainly find a way to use Valve's intellectual capital regardless of whether they stay on top.
Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need
to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server
That's overly negative and pretty disingenuous. App developers for Android can sell their APKs directly and save 30%, but they don't because of the convenience of the market.
Similarly, I rarely buy games outside of Steam (or GOG) except in the cases of very indie developers who provide a steam key when I buy directly from them. The Steam service is a good one. When I build a new computer, I just need to install steam and my entire library is ready to install. Valve have rightfully found a gold mine from a service that they made that is a net value to consumers.
And even if Steam didn't exist, a non-publisher-specific store is still needed. I'd go to GOG (for similar reasons as I use Steam).
Yeah you're right, Steam does offer a lot more than just file hosting. They also do DRM, friends lists, games promotions, and modding marketplaces, although each of these things certainly also have cheaper/decentralized solutions.
The 30% number is one that they might start to get pressure on with competition. GOG now pulls something like 10% of steam sales on the games they curate (citation needed) and I believe they are working on a stronger community/online platform.
There are also more indie upstarts like http://itch.io, which are smaller but focus on developer outreach and close-knit community.
I have worked for a "flat" structure company and that is true. There is alaways a hidden power structure -- and it rewards those who know how to manipulate and scheme. I think some put more effort into that, than actually writting code. Heck, objectively I can't even blame them as it ended up rewarding them more than writting code.
Now I work for a company with a traditional power structure. There is a manager, he has a manager and so on. Things are simpler, less stressful, tasks are more clear. Manager is great a shielding us from the rest of the beaurocracy and letting us do our work.
Can you please elaborate as to what causes that hidden power structure (i.e. what goes wrong)? In your opinion, is the idea of flat management inherently flawed or is it just hard to execute? Curious to hear your thoughts as someone who's actually tried it.
> Can you please elaborate as to what causes that hidden power structure (i.e. what goes wrong)?
I think it is human nature to certain extent. Take any number of people, put them in a room give them a task. After a while you'd observe some will start to tell others what to do and so on. Sometimes it is those with experience, sometimes it is just those who are loudest. By default the groups won't necessarily settle into a democratic, egalitarian sort of state.
I imagine flat probably works for smaller groups. A few owners + a team of 5. Everyone works directly for the owners, they settle into a set of roles and so on. Everyone sees and communicates with each other often (ideally). There is no need to call employee #2 assistant general manager or employee #4 programmer V and make him report to #2 and so on.
But as the company grows, it stops being flat really. Owners start listening to employees they play golf with. Older employees want to feel special so they'd tell new employees what to do and act as managers. Potential candidates will detect this type of environment and if they are good at manipulation and social engineering will gravitate and want to work in such a place, because they'll know they'll thrive in there (so it attracts certain personalities perhaps as well).
On a more practical level. This system is also used as an advertising tool "oh look we are flat, we don't have titles, we are better than BigCorp". That has worked rather well at recruiting from what I've seen.
It also works in another ways -- such as to supress wages. Because everything is flat, it is easy to justify not giving raises.
That might sound overly negative but I just listed all the bad things I could think of. There were many good things too. I think it can work, but it requires a significant effort on both owners and everyone to keep everything in check, to have more communication, more transparency, and so on. It is a harder balancing act so to speak. That is why in most cases I can see this failing after a while.
Dota 2 isn't going anywhere. The current tournament has an $18+ million prize pool (and rising) - meaning Valve was paid about $72 million in compendium sales.
This is for a tournament that runs every year and is growing in popularity and size.
I think you're right but I also can't help but think how the very existence of Dota 2 underscores Valve's lack of innovation in the past half decade or so. They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor and basically recoded it on their own gaming engine (Yes, I know there's plenty of quality of life upgrades they brought to the series, but it was nothing that wasn't too obvious or already in place by another MOBA).
In a business sense, this was an innovative move only in that it made Valve tons more money, but from an industry perspective, they couldn't have done less to move the needle.
It's one of the most uninteresting safe bet moves I've seen a company make in the gaming industry since Madden.
It was the common sense thing from a consumers perspective to make DotA 2 into a product. It's just funny that Blizzard didn't manage to be the ones to do it. I remember that at the time when DotA was a popular Warcraft Mod me and my friends were often talking about how Blizzard should do what Valve did with Counter Strike and hire the modders. In the end Valve made that obvious move themselves, but maybe it's their flat structure that makes it possible for them to absorb external talent that way more easily.
The actual innovation in Dota 2 was on the esports side. From setting up the $1 million International before the game was even released spawned an industry of professional players, sponsors, casters, personalities and production companies. The competitive Dota scene before Dota 2 came out was tiny in comparison.
Twitch was central to this as well, bigger tournaments meant increased viewers, increased viewers meant that Twitch could in turn sponsor even more tournaments.
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't league of legends more responsible for building the robust esports scene for moba's? It was already there when DotA2 came around, wasn't it?
League's first championship was held in June 2011 with a prize pool of $100,000 [1], and the first Dota 2 International was held in August 2011 with a prize pool of $1,600,000 [2]. Not that big of a time difference, and the difference in prize pools has only increased since then in favor of Dota 2.
Twitch was in baby shoes back in 2011 as well. Game streaming overall was still really small, and sites like own3d.tv held a large market share back then.
In addition, Valve built in-engine spectating into the game since day 1. You can watch other games live, or download replays and jump to any moment in time. League doesn't have similar tech even in 2016 [3], they are definitely far more focused on their casual players. League does have an extremely large playerbase in total, so their esports achievements are still remarkable due to sheer scale, but it's much more of a side-part of League than Dota.
[3] From what I understand there is no replay system at all, and the League spectator mode is very basic and lacks most of the features that Dota 2 has.
Per point #3, it's even gotten as far as becoming a meme in the League community. It's one of the most talked about missing features other than a sandbox mode, which Dota also has.
Any time a new feature is released, especially smaller ones, there's usually a good number of 'We got this but no <replay|sandbox> mode' comments.
So what? They bought Counter strike from Gooseman, they outsourced half life blue shift and opposing force, they bought the team behind team fortress, they bought the team behind left 4 dead, they bought the team behind dota, ...
I think everyone that plays dota is actually happy about that.
That comparison isn't completely fair: CS and TF were in their infancy when Valve got involved and Valve took big risks developing those games. Valve taking over DotA after DotA had existed for nearly a decade felt more like them trying to play catch up to LoL in a genre (market) of games that they had nothing in. Agreed, great for DotA players - but it didn't strike me as being a particularly impressive or interesting contribution to gaming.
I think it's pretty fair, CS was already popular (and played in tournaments), DotA was also just a mod for warcraft 3, far from being a real game, just maps you could play on.
I think your point of view is biased by the fact that you do not play dota, or do not like this genre, etc... It was a pretty big revolution in the dota genre.
No, that's incorrect - counter strike was first made in 1999 and purchased just one year later by Valve. Whatever tournaments there were they didn't look anything like the esports scene of today.
That's nothing like the DotA acquisition - DotA was more popular as a custom game than WC3 was itself and had been for nearly a decade. DotA is pretty much the genesis of the entire MOBA genre. There's no way you can discount that just because it ran on top of another game.
I played DotA for many years and am a huge fan of MOBA's. I don't disagree with you that it was a big revolution in the DotA genre, but if that's as high as Valve was aiming with the game, it's very disappointing given Valve's history of doing so much more than that. That's my point.
It was a boring, uninspired safe bet by a company that can do a lot better.
>They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor
What.
DotA is older than League of Legends, Icefrog was even screwed over by Pendragon (Riot Games cofounder) and Pendragon replaced the DotA-Allstars website with a LoL ad. Riot are also known to have taken many ideas from WIP heroes from DotA. If anything, Riot themselves surfed on the popularity of DotA and innovated very lightly.
I'm not saying Valve innovated by picking up Icefrog and making Dota2, but it's laughable to think that it was built on the back of LoL.
CS:GO is in a similar situation, Valve may not be making new games any more but Dota2 and CS:GO aren't going anywhere and continue to give Gabe an even bigger pile of money to sleep on.
> they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server
Publishers have tried to avoid this and people have whined endlessly about how horrible their alternatives are (eg. origin) while steam continues to be a mediocre at best experience.
>... while steam continues to be a mediocre at best experience.
Steam Chat exemplifies this.
Despite the fact it's been around for 12 years, there's no file-based logging capability. When adding mobile clients into the mix, message delivery becomes abysmal. As of nearly a year ago, one rather infuriating bug was introduced that causes chat buffers to sometimes truncate at random.
Add to this a privacy policy[0] that considers none of your private communications to be private:
"Any information that is disclosed in chat, forums or bulletin boards should be considered public information,"
The fact Steam is well north of 100M active users, and yet they allow certain critical aspects of their platform to not only retain their abysmal quality, but even regress—is simply mind boggling.
I don't have enough information to place the blame squarely at the feet of Valve's flat organizational hierarchy, but it seems likely that it's a contributing factor.
Dota 2 and CS:GO are the only titles Valve has put out in some time, and I'd argue they're not the best examples.
Valve has been throwing money and man-hours at Dota 2 relentlessly, but the game's playerbase is still tiny compared to LoL. I imagine they have only a couple more years to try to figure this out before the gaming zeitgeist moves away from traditional MOBAs completely.
CS:GO has been in an alternating state of either complete neglect or completely tone-deaf changes. Most patches from recent memory have been despised by the community and quickly reverted. The game seems to be the red-headed stepchild of Valve properties, run by a skeleton crew of people who don't really understand the game.
Meanwhile, Blizzard just blew the doors off the market by revitalizing a game format that Valve invented. I suspect there is a huge internal struggle at Valve right now to determine whether the company will be a content producer or a platform.
You are hugely underestimating the size of Dota2. It is insanely profitable and benefits from having a more mature playerbase, which comes with disposable income.
I disagree at least on one point - I've also played Dota a fair bit in the last few years, and as for Dota, I think parent might be pretty on the money when they say games are moving away from traditional MOBAs. The format is great, but in its 'traditional' form (three lanes, jungle, etc), there's only so much you can do with it. I think the market is pretty ripe for innovation on that format, and Dota won't be able to keep up when it happens.
I also agree with parent in that 'Blizzard just blew the doors off the market by revitalizing a game format that Valve invented' - I honestly think it's hard to argue that point. Overwatch is conceptually very, very similar to TF2, and must be doing some damage to its playerbase (though I haven't checked any stats on that at all so I might just be talking shit).
True, but I still think it can be done better, and the time will only get more ripe for it as more longtime players quit (source: all my friends quit Dota and we've been playing since beta or soon after).
I don't play TF2 much these days, but from what I've been hearing/reading, a lot of people in the community are dissatisfied with the recent update and yes, some are leaving TF2 to play Overwatch.
Dota is over 13 years old by now and still growing. It may have less players than League, but it's by far the most popular game on Steam. I've played it for over 10 years myself, and I have a very long friendlist of similar people. Dota is a lifestyle, it's more addictive than any other game and people keep coming back to it even against their own wishes. Valve has been drip feeding people with Dota updates since its launch and I don't expect it to stop anytime soon. Claiming that dota will die in a couple of years should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
The company has transitioned to being the company that owns Steam as a platform (including and subsuming Vive), and not much else. People that have joined Valve expecting to develop games there end up fired in less than a year, which surely is destructive but also serves a real purpose of perpetuating the Valve culture. A major shakeup is unlikely to happen; Gabe seems to be unable to decide whether he wants to be a super-public figure that is the face and decision body behind the whole company, or if he wants to shrink into a hole and rub shoulders with tech legends hoping to determine the future of everything. The company will make money for a while, but they are open to platform disruption, even in their VR space where they have (more than Oculus) tried to be the open platform. Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server. If this view is right right, Steam is about to find out that the PC world wants to be even more open than they are offering. Of course, the board of investors will certainly find a way to use Valve's intellectual capital regardless of whether they stay on top.