your explanation brought to mind the design ideals behind the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) CPU architecture. Less complexity means higher throughput.
Hope its not a shitty simile lol
Comment on Valve runs its massive PC gaming ecosystem with only about 350 employees
nalinna@lemmy.world 4 months agoYep. But it also seems like people are so shocked by the data that maybe they’re missing the moral of this story, too? …sure it’s impressive that Valve has done so much with such a small workforce, but I think the reason they’ve been able to move so quickly is because they have such a small workforce. Companies get slow because they get big…I don’t care how much you tout your SAFe processes; you will always lose efficiency as you grow. It’s the difference between steering a canoe vs a cruise ship…the more you grow, the more you have to fight against momentum. So, my takeaway from this is that they figured out the secret to continued success as a maturing company, and good for them.
Now, I say all of this with sincere hopes that they don’t work their smaller number of employees to death and ask them to take on inappropriately burdensome workloads. Because if that’s the case, they should fuck right off with the rest of their peers.
foxymulder@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
scarabic@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Your point about agility is valid but Valve hasn’t veered and pivoted their way to success. Their core model and service have stayed pretty consistent for many years now. And while a cruise ship can’t steer quickly, it can move a hell of a lot more people much more fuel efficiently. They are just getting a lot done with very few people and it’s 100% worth of remark. I’d love to hear more about how they do it.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
Valve has done so much ?
Steam hasn’t been improved since 2012.
They’re clearly coasting.
They’re keeping their keeping the 30% cut and running away with it instead of hire people to fix stuff.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Since 2012:
- Linux support - I joined around 2013 because of that
- Proton - massive Linux compatibility upgrade
- Steam Input - along with big picture mode and whatnot
- SteamVR
- hidden games
- cart improvements
- mobile app improvements, along with MFA
- collections
That’s just what I remember off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more that I just don’t care about.
drasglaf@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Remote Play Together is another big one for many, I’ve used it together with Retroarch, so much fun.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Oh yeah, and I didn’t mention Steam Family sharing or whatever it’s called now. And Steam Link.
probableprotogen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Hell i use steam for proton and linux. It really makes gaming so much easier than other services
uis@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Proton and Steam Input are biggest. And while Proton is built on shoulders of giants(wine), Steam Input is something that didn’t exist.
Xer0@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
So what. It works fine for me.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 4 months ago
they take the whole company to hawaii most years iirc.
capt_wolf@lemmy.world 4 months ago
From what I understand, they basically have a very open work structure. People are free to work in what they want, when they want. They actually are against high workloads and do everything they can to prevent employee burnout.
Source
I can’t say if that extends beyond the development teams to other departments like server management, but everything I’ve ever seen about them says they’re all just in it to have fun, make cool shit now and then, and of course make tons of money. The fact that their sales platform basically just prints money helps support that culture, obviously.
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It didn’t work out
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capt_wolf@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That’s a bummer, but also not entirely surprising when you consider Half-Life 3…
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Yeah it’s great to think letting your employees do what they want is good, which it is, but yeah everyone’s going to have their own idea and want to work on it. So who gets funding, etc.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 months ago
I think it speaks to developing for gaming over developing for infrastructure. What does it say about gaming where, a company that has a healthy attitude about work in general, has staff that prefer to work on addressing Steam bugs over working on a prestige game?
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Do they? They have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now.
Its like people but their heads and ignore everything bad about steam/valve.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
If the alternative is making a half life 3 that people don’t have the passion for then imo it’s working.
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Or there’s not enough people with passion, since their passion is hats, or the higher ups have their preferred people they give funding too, part of the linked articles mention this stuff.
Vilian@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
They never fully abandoned it tho
nalinna@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That is absolutely fascinating, kinda disappointing, and a really good find.