Quoting: TrainDoc

Quoting: Kristian

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: EikeI can understand frustration there. Imagine you were a software developer working for a cool company with some of the coolest franchises out there - and you're not allowed to work on them, for years, for decades maybe...

As I understand Valve's corporate structure, it's the employees who more or less decide the direction of the company. So it's not like there are a bunch of people champing at the bit to make new games but the bosses won't let them. If enough people got together and decided they wanted to make Half-Life 3, or Portal 3, or whatever, Gabe wouldn't stop them. The real question is why there's no momentum internally to get those projects rolling.

There is the infamous Valve employee handbook [External Link].

Total PR stunt btw. No such document existed before or after and is just a recruiting tool. Valve's problems is it's rockstar developers lead the charge on everything and juniors who don't fall in line risk termination.

At least one former Valve employee has gone on record to say that the handbook is real. However, she does agree with you that there are people within the company who have managed to acquire quite a lot of internal influence which rather defeats the purpose of a flat management structure.

https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/ [External Link]

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: sub

Quoting: BeamboomImagine sitting on a *guaranteed* multi million seller game franchise and choose NOT to release a sequel.
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.

Well, I guess we're easy to overlook the numbers.
While it seems to be big money, it's actually significantly less compared to Steam sales
and putting all your resources in there.

The estimates for Valve's annual revenue is like 7-10 billion USD.
Compare that to the total of sold Half Life copies (~ 9 million) over many, many years -
even if you assume they were all sold at max price (they weren't).
In particular, if you consider how much pressure it must be for Valve always trying to keep
or surpass their standards for their games (I can only imagine). So there is a risk for reputation loss.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Valve getting back to their franchises.
And there IS room for hope. And I'd also claim there is way more value for Valve having those franchises alive
with recent high-class releases than "just" what they directly earn from them.
I just hope they see this.

Yes - but if they weren't developing games anymore, why employ them? They earn good money at Valve and they aren't doing nothing.

Positions are not as clearly defined at Valve as you might expect, and employees can freely move from one project and position to another depending on their interests. So just because someone might have the job title "level designer" doesn't necessarily mean he spends 40 hours a week designing levels for games.

Point is, you can't look at job titles at Valve and get any idea of what is happening inside the company.

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Quoting: EikeI can understand frustration there. Imagine you were a software developer working for a cool company with some of the coolest franchises out there - and you're not allowed to work on them, for years, for decades maybe...

As I understand Valve's corporate structure, it's the employees who more or less decide the direction of the company. So it's not like there are a bunch of people champing at the bit to make new games but the bosses won't let them. If enough people got together and decided they wanted to make Half-Life 3, or Portal 3, or whatever, Gabe wouldn't stop them. The real question is why there's no momentum internally to get those projects rolling.

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Hooray! It's the year of Linux! \o/

Again.

How many times have we heard this story? While Linux is never going away, I have given up all pretense that it will ever be a dominant operating system on the home computer. The Steam Deck is explicitly a Linux device, so of course people who try to put Windows on it are going to have a bad time, but I really don't see this leading developers to broadly embrace Linux. Most of them seem content to let Valve do the heavy lifting to get their games working in Linux via Proton.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Mountain ManIf only Razer hardware wasn't trash.

I've had my Razer mouse for over four years still going strong.

For whatever reason, their mice seem to be halfway decent. Just about everything else they make is garbage attached to a USB cable.

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Quoting: PinballWizardI made a similar transition from Gentoo; a hard drive died and I decided rather than the laborious install I would install Ubuntu and call it a day.

Curiously, I started using Kubuntu for a similar reason. I was actually in the middle of a college project when a Gentoo update decided to render my computer unbootable (yes, I know, I shouldn't have updated a mission critical computer that was working just fine), and since I didn't have a week to spend recompiling the whole thing from the ground up (this was about 15 years ago), I installed Kubuntu and was back in business in about 20 minutes.

I was very happy with Kubuntu for a very long time but recently switched to Manjora for reasons I don't entirely remember. I think I just wanted to get away from the lengthy upgrade process every six months, and I liked the idea of always having the most up to software available. Manjora has been rock solid, too (not that Kubuntu was ever unstable).

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If only Razer hardware wasn't trash.

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Have a lot of spare cash?

No. :sad:

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So is this just a graphics overhaul of Portal 2, or is it going to be an entirely new game?

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Quoting: wit_as_a_riddle

Quoting: Mountain ManI have almost decided to get a Steam Deck, but that's quite a chunk of change to throw down.

No harm in reserving a spot in line for the small fee, it'll be many months before yours would be available so plenty of time to set money aside bit by bit. If when your time comes you decide against it, you can get your deposit refunded. Go for it! 😎

Definitely wouldn't be an impulse purchase. :grin:

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