• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Valve Laid Off 13 Employees, including those from the VR Hardware Team

Deleted member 2840

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,400
13 people, to be more exact.
Video by VNN(I know, I know, but there are actual sources now):

And Article by UploadVR: https://uploadvr.com/valve-employees-vr-2019/

Valve Laid Off 13 Employees, VR Engineers Among Them

Thirteen employees at Valve Corporation were let go recently, including people working in VR.
Images leaked late last year show what appeared to be a Valve-built VR headset. We heard from sources at the time the plan was to ship the headset early this year, potentially with a Half Life prequel game. We don't know if those plans are different now after recent employee departures.
A statement I received from Valve:
Last month, 13 full time employees were let go and a portion of our contractor agreements were terminated. It's an unfortunate part of business, but does not represent any major changes at the company. We thank those affected for their contribution and wish them well in future endeavors.​
I emailed Valve founder Gabe Newell for comment prior to receiving the statement. Valve continues to hire for a number of positions related to VR.

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


On Twitter, Nat Brown said he stopped working on VR at Valve on February 7. He had been key to Steam supporting external GPUs. Rob Rydberg was listed by Valve as an employee in January. On LinkedIn, now, he said he left in February after developing "an FPGA-based VR system architecture, allowing for a tethered or untethered VR experience, to make feature and tracking research more cost-effective, while enabling a faster path to productization."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

More info at the article and video.

Fire my Knuckles if old.
 
Mobu

Mobu

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
5,932
Hardware people fired but not software people...

old writters coming back..

Portal 3 confirmed
 

Deleted member 3897

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,638
Yukinari

Yukinari

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,538
The Danger Zone
I remember when their SFM team got hit i said a hardware team would be the next to go. Specifically for stuff like steam machines, link and controller.

Did not expect the VR team to be cut down.
 
Dest

Dest

Has seen more 10s than EA ever will
Coward
Jun 4, 2018
14,038
Work
Fired and laid off have two totally different meanings. It's likely because their work on a project they were hired on for was done. VR is such uncharted territory moving forward that I can't blame Valve for not wanting to spend too much money before they're for certain able to turn a profit on that product.
 

Deleted member 12790

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
24,537
Static said:
The video is making the claim that the 13 people fired are half of the full-time employees at Valve working on VR hardware, specifically. Is that not the case?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What does it mean to "work on VR hardware"? Many people who work on the Steam Controller, for example, have contributed to VR hardware. Several of them are still there right now. Valve doesn't have a dedicated "VR Hardware" team. Their VR prototypes are fabricated in their in-house lab using 3D printers.
 
DarthBuzzard

DarthBuzzard

Banned
Jul 17, 2018
5,122
Misleading title. They fired half of the hardware team which could mean absolutely nothing at all for the company direction.
 
spad3

spad3

Member
Oct 30, 2017
7,122
California
This day extracts a heavy toll

5f4hpewqx1l11.png


What did VR cost?
"Everything"
 
1-D_FE

1-D_FE

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,252
BernardoOne said:
the whole title is some dumb clickbait garbage that isn't accurate at all.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Exactly. What kind of shit title is that video? Valve fired 13 engineers. We have no idea what's what. There were Steam controller guys fired. It seems like a hodge podge of guys were let go. I also assume he was sourcing back to upload which is just a Nazi site that slurps off to Facebook. So nothing of value is ever gained from going there.

Is Valve shifting directions? Were these guys just going in the wrong direction? Was this another one of Valve's purges where instead of saying they fired people for performance, they just did a mass layoffs of people they didn't want?

I'm not overly optimistic about what just happened (since the hardware division, IMO, is the only cool thing Valve has done in the past 5 years IMO. I love how these small teams are doing such awesome work in a lot of areas.) But we have no clue on anything right now.

One of the guys let go was helping work on an HMD that was both tethered and untethered (also working on the wireless codecs). So if Valve is still working on an HMD, at least we know it's going to support wireless. Feels like we need to hear something about this HMD at GDC or I'm going to assume that HMD is dead.
 
Arthands

Arthands

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
8,039
Heard rumor it is linked to the leak of the VR headset but I am not sure how true is that

Also title need amendment. Should read "half of hardware team including VR" since Valve has got other hardware initiatives too
 
Adnor

Adnor

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,957
Wait 13 people were laid off, including members of the VR team, so was half the VR team let go or is that just a clickbait bad video title?
 
skeezx

skeezx

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,126
that wraps it up for VR. unless they make Artifact compatible with Vive it may have a chance
 
1-D_FE

1-D_FE

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,252
EDIT: And what's with the Nintendo troll posts? That Labo VR is gonna suck on a hardware level! Wanna kill off VR? Let people think VR is like Oculus DK1 and a vomit comet.

Anthony Hopkins said:
Hopefully replacing them with people to work on half life 3.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm sorry, but this is just stupid. The hardware teams are all really small. Like a fraction of Valve's 400 members. IMO they're the only group punching their weight. The rest are just sucking on the Steam teet.

You want HL3? UBi's games and Resident Evil 2 have teams of 900 members. Literally over 2X the size of Valve's entire company. That's why you're never getting HL3. Because the employees ain't diluting their cuts so they can expand to a massive size necessary to fund AAAA games. It'd have to be a lootfest anyway. So it should stay dead. That game can't be made any longer in today's market.
 
BernardoOne

BernardoOne

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,289
1-D_FE said:
Exactly. What kind of shit title is that video? Valve fired 13 engineers. We have no idea what's what. There were Steam controller guys fired. It seems like a hodge podge of guys were let go. I also assume he was sourcing back to upload which is just a Nazi site that slurps off to Facebook. So nothing of value is ever gained from going there.

Is Valve shifting directions? Were these guys just going in the wrong direction? Was this another one of Valve's purges where instead of saying they fired people for performance, they just did a mass layoffs of people they didn't want?

I'm not overly optimistic about what just happened (since the hardware division, IMO, is the only cool thing Valve has done in the past 5 years IMO. I love how these small teams are doing such awesome work in a lot of areas.) But we have no clue on anything right now.

One of the guys let go was helping work on an HMD that was both tethered and untethered (also working on the wireless codecs). So if Valve is still working on an HMD, at least we know it's going to support wireless. Feels like we need to hear something about this HMD at GDC or I'm going to assume that HMD is dead.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Gaben already said they were wrapping up their hardware efforts as they've achieved all goals they had set, and that they were ready to ship games again. So their VR hardware is probably near (well, Valve time applies) near release/announcement. They are not abandoning VR (and have several VR titles being developed), it's just that they don't need as many people when the headset is nearly finished
 
Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins

Banned
Feb 10, 2018
17,534
1-D_FE said:
EDIT: And what's with the Nintendo troll posts? That Labo VR is gonna suck on a hardware level! Wanna kill off VR? Let people think VR is like Oculus DK1 and a vomit commit.



I'm sorry, but this is just stupid. The hardware teams are all really small. Like a fraction of Valve's 400 members. IMO they're the only group punching their weight. The rest are just sucking on the Steam teet.

You want HL3? UBi's games and Resident Evil 2 have teams of 900 members. Literally over 2X the size of Valve's entire company. That's why you're never getting HL3. Because the employees ain't diluting their cuts so they can expand to a massive size necessary to fund AAAA games. It'd have to be a lootfest anyway. So it should stay dead. That game can't be made any longer in today's market.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's not stupid, your post is stupid.
 
Arthands

Arthands

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
8,039
Adnor said:
Wait 13 people were laid off, including members of the VR team, so was half the VR team let go or is that just a clickbait bad video title?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Valve does VR software too.

13 people got laid off and all of them are for hardware projects. Among these 13 people, some worked on VR headset, some worked on Steam controller, some (used to) work on Steam Link, some probably works on some prototype hardware for something, some worked on combination of those stuffs
 
WieDerrickWie

WieDerrickWie

Member
Jul 4, 2018
650
Really should take anything by VNN/Tyler with a grain of salt.

That said, since other sources reported it, I wonder what the reason for the layoffs were?
 
1-D_FE

1-D_FE

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,252
Anthony Hopkins said:
Ok, thanks for telling me you don't agree.
You really think I care to know "I think your wrong"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You mean how I responded after you called me stupid? Sure. I don't agree I'm stupid. I said the logic that firing 13 people and hiring 13 people to make HL3 was stupid, and it is. And obviously you do care, or you wouldn't be firing off these troll responses, bro.

You're not getting HL3 unless Valve radically re-organizes. No need to enter a firing thread and gloat about people getting fired and then talk about some fantasy that's not happening (and most importantly, is not the reason it hasn't gotten made.) Hardware Valve is 0 reason HL3 hasn't gotten made. So direct the anger elsewhere.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.