Sure, Valve puts a lot of resources and manpower into maintaining the Steam platform, and they also develop and launch hardware that Index and recently Deckbut when it comes to developing big games, something they have been very successful at in the past, they are not very productive.
In fact, many, many, many years can go by between releases, and there doesn’t really seem to be any pattern, or even any desire to develop more software. How can this be possible? Erik Wolpaw, who worked as a screenwriter on Portal, Portal 2 and Half-Life, explains. In the latest edition of the podcast My Perfect Console Wolpaw says Valve doesn’t actually have as many employees as you might think:
The real reason is that in a flat structure like Valve’s, there is an opportunity cost to doing anything. Whatever is going on at Valve right now requires the dedication and participation of the people working on it, and it is voluntary. I would like to make a Portal 3, but I understand.
He also pushes back against the argument that Valve is doing nothing, saying:
“I don’t think so. I mean, to whatever extent you appreciated Half-Life: Alyx, we released that. I think long tail games affected that in a way that is maybe more impactful than Steam. Keeping CS: Go and Dota 2 going, for a small company…The thing is, Valve is not a giant company. I think people sometimes think it is because of the outside influence of Steam, but it’s not really that many people. It takes manpower to keep CS: GO going; it takes manpower to keep Dota 2 going. And the freeform nature of Valve means there are a lot of experiments that simply fail. So, things are happening. If you were inside, you’d think stuff was always going on, because it is. It’s a manpower problem. You have to pick what you’re working on and time is limited.”
