zlacker

>>thecal+(OP)
This thing has always been a treat to look through; it's made with so much effort and care. I haven't read through it in a bit though and don't plan to read through it again currently so I may be off in some of the rest of my comment.

I think Valve's flat structure strategy has mildly failed and they should try something else. Unless they still desire to all-in on the strategy of creating products and hoping to land a another billion dollar baby, then sure, this strategy is good for that. However Valve kind of advertises itself as a video game company, and if someone is interested in making video games I feel like they'd actually be a bit disappointed after a while of working at Valve, simply because it seems so unlikely for them to actually ever release a video game.

And the bonus structure that I recall also seems dated. iirc it was setup in a way such that delivering new projects would land you a bonus. But this incentivizes creating things, but there is no incentive to continue supporting or updating or iterating on it. In my opinion the bonus structure should be done in such a way so that if you deliver something new, you would land a bonus, and then you'd get larger bonuses at the 1 year mark, 2 year mark, etc, if that thing has been updated and improved.

Many things these days are not just a single product that you release and that's that. They continually live on, they're a service, they're interacted with for years. Valve has fallen behind in this regard. Even smaller things like mini-features in Dota 2 for example would be released, which likely earned someone a small bonus, then left by the wayside to fall apart.

I love Valve conceptually but I really wish they'd iterate on their company design instead of thinking they've "solved it" I guess. I wish they were more video game focused. Obviously I don't know how it actually is in there these days, but things like this manual and other hearsay / rumors are the best I have to go off of.

>>aaarrm+Q4
It depends how you frame success. Game development seems to have slowed in the post-Steam boom world, but it's still there! DotA2, Artifact, Alyx, and currently Deadlock are all examples of relatively recent gaming products.

From a purely financial perspective, they SHOULD continue to focus on marketplace dominance via STEAM. Whatever game is made for HL3/TF3 will ultimately fail to meet fan expectations (Duke Nukem anyone?).

>>slumbe+w6
Deadlock is awesome. I'm in the alpha and I've been totally hooked on it. It's the first multiplayer FPS game that my friend group and I have been excited about in probably a decade.

If the reddit rumors are believed to be true, the former leads of DotA (Icefrog?) and TF2 (Robin Walker) are heavily involved in it's development.

>>boredt+ub
Isn't deadlock just Valve's take on Valorant?

It will need to do something very fresh if it wants to compete.

Valorant felt extremely fresh and slick compared to both CSGO and Overwatch while fitting nicely inbetween. They brought innovation and UX improvements to the format that even CSGO ended up copying after it had been resting on it's laurels for too long.

>>xnorsw+De
Valorant just felt like CS to me. Hated it for all the same reasons I dislike CS.

Deadlock is more like a moba shooter.