Not the most important takeaway, but the graphic design of this video is sooooo lovely

The reason Valve's Lawyer is reading the emails, is cause they nearly lost their court case in Australia by default cause they didn't read their email saying they were being served... so a judge ordered a press announcement and gave permission to proceed with the trial with Valve being declared absent, Valve learnt of the case from a games media blog that said they were being sued :P Now a lawyer reads all their emails :P

Valve learned a long time ago that, when it came to game development "It's better to say nothing and be wrong then say something and still be wrong." and have gone on to apply that mentality to everything.

It kinda seems like the incentive structure for employees at Valve could explain why they’ve developed a reputation for not releasing sequels. Why work on those when short-term projects are so highly rewarded?

Gabe`s biggest praise will always be keeping Valve a private company and being able of making his vision about a company a reality, for better or worse.

I like that you make the distinction that a Flat Style of management doesn't imply a worker cooperative or vice-versa. Ownership structure and management structure are separate things and can be mixed and matched to best fit the market and stakeholders.

I love the idea that "We have no boss" and the boss show up in a meeting and lay that law and acts like it is a collective decision.

Great presentation. I'm saying this as a black person who lives in the United States. I don't think it is Valve's responsibility to support political stances and certainty not organizations like BLM. Steam's regulation isn't perfect, but I also think that what you imply is similar to the arguments used to claim gun violence is linked to/caused by games which worries me about the precedents it would set to police these games in a market place as ubiquitous as Steam.

Wait. What's Gabe's beef with Sopranos? I think that's the most mysterious thing here.

That Valve's supposedly flat hierarchy leads to a dysfunctional, insular work environment should be no surprise to anyone who's worked at small, family-owned companies with no formal structure. What that actually means in practice is that the hierarchies are hidden and less accountable.

I'm not sure I like a lot of the reporting of this video. A lot of this video seems less about "this is what it's like to work at Valve" and more "This is how I personally want Valve to be run." Not that I generally disagree with your stance on a lot of things and a lack of diversity in a group consensus situation puts some people at a clear disadvantage. I just think this video could of been a lot more informational on a company with a unique but not flawless structure. Too much of this video is "here is me briefly explaining how the setup works with actions needing a consensus from people with differing opinions, and now let me spend 25 minutes saying they should only listen to the people I agree with." and I think that leaves a rather empty call to action on what they should do differently. Like overall this video came off as kind of a bait-and-switch to me.

I find it funny that they allow anything that they decide isn't "illegal or straight up trolling" on steam, meanwhile as a developer I know that they've got a complete list of things that they "won't publish" that they've just completely ignored I guess. It's publicly available in the steamworks documentation, and I guess it's worded as "What you shouldn’t publish on Steam", but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be self enforced if that's what they mean by that. Anyway's here's the list copy and pasted in case anyone's curious: Hate speech, i.e. speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation Nude or sexually explicit images of real people Adult content that isn’t appropriately labeled and age-gated Libelous or defamatory statements Content you don’t own or have adequate rights to Content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction in which it will be available Content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers Content that exploits children in any way Applications that modify customer’s computers in unexpected or harmful ways, such as malware or viruses Applications that fraudulently attempts to gather sensitive information, such as Steam credentials or financial data (e.g. credit card information) Video content not directly related to a product that has shipped on Steam. Non-interactive 360 VR Videos Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs.

The most damning thing about this video is that Gabe Newell seems to not like The Sopranos.

When it comes to game development studios valve feels like some ancient civilisation that’s managed to stay uncontacted for thousands of years. So interesting seeing what actually goes on in there!

IMO giving employees $10k to donate to whatever they want is better than any statement they can make "words are cheap" and all that. Sure someone can keep the cash for themselves but that isn't a reflection on Valve, that's on the employee.

The claim made in the video that "Valve's attitude towards BLM challenges the idea that Valve is a structureless company" is hilarious. No matter whether you think Valve should make a public statement about BLM or not, it is clearly stated in the video that there is no consensus in Valve about whether the company should say things about BLM. So the silence towards BLM is a direct consequence of the flat structure in Valve, not the opposite as the video suggests. Because there is no consensus, no actions are taken. It would however take strong management motives (which Valve clearly doesn't have) to make a statement about BLM under such circumstances. If you think it's a shame for Valve to not speak up about BLM, then you should also blame its "structureless". Just because the flat structure is something you don't want (or don't dare) to criticize doesn't mean you can just attribute the good things to it and bad things against it. That's not reasonable

Great video, but the bit about 3% of respondents thinking a 30% cut is justified is a bit duplicitous. The source reveals that 72% of respondents thought a lower cut was justified, not the implied 97%.

Can't imagine how many people must've started working on Half Life 3 only to hear about the dozens of projects that came before and got rejected and ended up not even presenting it :D

I like that you mentioned worker co-ops because it seems to me that Valve is trying to get the benefits of a co-op without giving the workers the benefits of a co-op. If your mission statement is about letting people do what they think is best for the company, but then your incentive scheme rates people individually then they're going to look at it individually and not as the company. They will do the things that lead to them personally getting the best outcome, and will burn out and leave if they aren't the type of person to do that. If you had a true structureless worker co-op where profits are disseminated throughout the work-force, then people would be more willing to do the things that benefit the company as that directly comes back to them. However currently it seems like the things that benefit the company and the things that benefit the individual are opposites.

The way diversity is discussed in this video is bizarre to me. One thing Valve does is it doesn't hire people straight out of college like tremendous companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, etc.). Instead, they only hire people with a ton of experience who have proven themselves already, perhaps with 10 to 20 years experience climbing high at another company. The simple fact is the percent of people who are women or not white working as a software developer 10-20 years ago in America was close to 0%, so yes, when they only hire people with 10-20 years of rockstar performance, they're going to have a vast majority of white men. In another 20 years, I'm sure the ratio will get a little better. It will really depend on how many highly successful women there are with that much experience who want to work at Valve. Even just about 10 years ago at my college, there was about 2 women total over all my courses, and the rest were all white men. It has gotten better more recently, but like I said, Valve doesn't hire recent graduates. It will see improvements in diversity by a lagging factor of 10-20 years due to its high standard of entry. This isn't a problem with Valve. If you think it's a problem at all (women are free to pursue whatever profession or lifestyle they want), the problem is with parents, schools, government, the attidue of a woman's friends, etc. The end result of a company picking from valid candidates is not the problem. This is being conflated with stuff like racism in the 60s where being black actually meant, no matter your qualification, you will not get hired at many places. I'm sure people in power sometimes decide things either consciously or subconsciously based on gender, but you have to demonstrate that has happened. Valve hiring mostly white men out of a group that is comprised almost 100% of white men is not evidence of that.

I was wondering why this video got a decent amount of dislikes, but at 18:00 I knew why...

The reason why Valve is considered so separate from EA, Epic games, Ubisoft, etc is simply because they don't make themselves stand out when it isn't needed. They don't make stances on controversial topics if they don't need to, they don't get in controversy publicly when they can help it, and they definitely don't make their internal problems public unless rogue employees try to. Valve sits there in the back doing its own thing privately and quietly which is how they rarely gets the ire of their users but obviously that doesn't make them immune to any criticism / problems as some of the more egregious things in this documentary has shown.

Personally I think that companies shouldn't have any responsibility with regards to societal messaging they don't directly influence. When companies put out any kinda of statement it always comes out as virtue signaling.

A private company hired the very best employees it could, and chose to remain mostly apolitical, except for giving $10,000 to every employee to donate as they saw fit. Steam is incredibly successful with incredibly talented employees cobbled together in a unique structure. This video is a miss.

Definitely shows a lot of the flaws within Valve's structure, but them not virtue signalling for stuff like BLM is hardly a cardinal sin or mortal crime. Especially considering stuff like business lip service only depreciates such things, as Malcom X warned about.

Now I'm really waiting for a Riot Games video.

Well, steam has the most 3rd world country friendly prices, and that's not even mentioned here. That alone, combined with discounts offered frequently and a LOT of games available, makes it a lot better than any other store

Why does a video game studio need to make a statement about BLM? Why does any company need to? Do shoe companies need to make a statement? What is the point? Watched the rest of the video, I believe this was most of their points 1) no statement about BLM 2) flat structure bad, people need to rate each other :( 3) Valve allowed every employee 10k dollars to donate to whatever they want, some may support things they agree with and not what we agree with :( 4) Diversity is low and they tend to just keep employing white men 5) They take a 30% cut of all profits when other companies don't take as much :( It's a private company and one of the more successful ones out there, if they were really doing badly they would change. Business is just about making money and they are doing fine, what's the problem. I think the 10k to every employee is a great idea. Some can be selfish and keep it but how do you know they don't actively need that money? Others can donate it, it's a win win. You shouldn't dictate where the money goes, they don't even need to donate anything. 30% cut has been the norm for a long time and it's probably due to the fact steam has the highest users and can afford to do so. It's just part of the price of doing business. If it failed them, they would change it. Epic games haven't really made a dent despite taking (12%?). Seem it's not a problem. As for the diversity, diversity shouldn't exist for diversities sake. There's going to be plenty of talented game devs that aren't white men and they will find a job somewhere. Talented people will get hired. This will become Valve's jobs when these people help create a fantastic product that outshines them. They can hire whomever they want and if they suffer, they suffer. We don't need to put pressure on them or any other company to change just because. Honestly the worst thing about this video was finding out Gabe thinks the sopranos is shit. He has such poor taste. Rest of the video is the usual garbage but come on Gabe.

I kind of like Valve more for not putting out a "Black LIves Matter" statement like many other companies did at the time. It's not like most of them cared about the actual issues, they just put it out to curtail to current opinions and thus perhaps sell more products. In very few cases do I really believe that large corporations actually bother about such things when they make statements, they do whatever makes the most profit. It actually got to a point where it was laughable, like they just suddenly crawled out under a rock and just made a "#BLM!" and then disappeared again on social media etc.

I think the central issue here is that valve is structurally averse to taking action in any direction. This is partially because any employee who tries to get the ball rolling will be held responsible for how it goes, regardless of whether its their fault or not.

I've recently been picturing Valve as the Oldest House from Control. They've always been so mysterious.

I don't know if I can really get behind the criticism of their $10k donation stipend. I feel like there are plenty of arguments against a more strings-attached approach, including them spending a long time coming up with a list of acceptable charities, leaving off charities that may be most important to certain employees, and the factor of your employer being aware of and tracking your philanthropic spending. It just feels like a stretch here to bash Valve for treating their employees like grown ups while giving a really hefty sum for charity.

Hiring based on the idea of diversity requires that you consider a candidate's skin colour. But if you hire someone based on their skin colour then doesn't that make you a racist?

Gabe's "I am definitely not your boss" t-shirt raises a lot of questions already answered by the shirt

Honestly this video was a bit of a miss for me. It could have been a really interesting look into how Valve works internally, and you guys touch on that a bit like with things like the stack ranking system. However I feel I didnt really learn much about how Valve works from this video, it focused too much runtime on the diversity aspect. I will praise the animations though, they were top notch.

What's wrong with a company wanting to remain neutral on an issue outside their industry?

NGL, but I got no problems with a company just saying nothing.

Stack ranking sounds like my corporate nightmare. Also, a company without hierarchy is a wonderful way to avoid responsibility.

I didn't realize at first that some of the animations I'm looking at aren't by Valve but by Anni. Nice job!

As many other comments have pointed out, taking interviews from mostly former employees may have skewed your view a little, although I know you just worked with what you had.

"no no no why isn't valve like the other companies" This is a good thing even though I still have problems with them.

So glad you do what you do. The video games industry is in desperate need of some high quality investigative journalism. Been here since the early days and it makes me very happy to see you growing so much covering such important topics. Keep up the good work friends!

Thoughtful analysis regarding the benefits and drawbacks of Valve's flat structure, the video production was fantastic too! However, I find your arguments regarding Valve's politics heavily flawed. I agree that Valve should have clear policies about what is and isn't acceptable on Steam and within Valve's development studios, because their customers (both consumers and developers) and their employees need to know where they stand. What I don't need is for Valve to make political statements about things they are not responsible for. That is why we (hopefully) have democracy, and platforms where we can speak our minds. We can choose to make our own statements as individuals, and Valve's employees are free to do so on their own social media accounts among other venues. Valve even gave their employees money with the specific purpose of letting them make a difference as they see fit, as highlighted by your investigation. Where should Valve draw the line? There are countless topics that they could make statements on, why stop at BLM? They would have to make statements every single day to comment on everything that's wrong with society. There is also no guarantee that you would agree with the topics they took stands on. It seems more like you want them to make statements on what YOU think is important, and I doubt you would ever be completely satisfied. It simply doesn't make logical sense for them to spend energy satisfying the daily whims and demands of political activists when they can focus on what they're good at; making games and services. Valve is not flawless, every company has structural strengths and weaknesses. However this video did not convince me that Valve is in crisis, it did the opposite, and though I agree that they need to work on their weaknesses, I would work for a company like Valve without hesitation.

My experience with Valve as a security researcher has essentially been what you expect. Be ignored for a few months, post the issue to their forums, get my steam account banned, wait another 3 months for my complaint containing "I told you about this half a year ago, this is your fuckup" to be read and getting my account silently reinstated. Also, they didn't fix the issue (would have been trivial), they simply removed the entire feature.

Something that always bothers me about people on the side of censorship is that they claim the people against censorship "aren't taking a moral stance" it shows a complete lack or inability to understand the other person. It shows an incredibly narrow view of what morals actually are. One's personal morals are not the only morals in existence and are not automatically the best options. For the people that believe strongly that censorship is an evil act refusing to censor what isn't illegal is a moral stance. You can absolutely disagree with someone elses morals but don't dehumanize them by claiming they don't have any.

I don't understand criticizing Valve for not being openly pro BLM. Why does every public company have to be outwardly progressive? The Valve employees that were against a public statement make a really strong point about where to draw the line. Besides, I'd argue that the majority of companies that look progressive are simply virtue signaling and just doing it for good press. Does Nestle really care about BLM when they go and enslave children to make chocolate? Valve paying employees to donate as they saw fit is miles better than most companies, and it makes complete sense given their company philosophy, although I agree that the money should've been required to have been donated. The idea of a closeted racist pocketing 10k off the murder of a black man is gross.

Serious question, why do Valve need to make reference to BLM or any other demographic? They haven't done anything for any group if I remember correctly? I fall in the LGBTQIA+ and I don't expect anything from Valve just a good gaming platform!

Really enjoyed the in-depth look into Valve's structure but this one felt much more a critique than a journalist report. A lot of statements that were made painted the picture way darker than it would've come off if you just stated the facts. This type of approach takes away the viewers capacity for judgment. The idea that big companies are morally responsible to be the guiding forces in our societies came of as a given but I don't think this is an outlook that everyone agrees on and if they do there are a lot of views as to what degree of responsibility. I really appreciate the honest work but I this time I felt like I was not allowed to make my own opinion based on the facts presented, the opinion was already made for me.

I agree some parts are meh and not good about valve. But about politics, i agree with valve here. Its a video game company and a video game distributor. It shouldn't matter much for it. What should is profit and adequate work environment and pay.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this before but these voice actors in these videos are incredible, like truly amazing job!

god I've been craving this video subconciously. been getting into tf2 again and wanting to know why nothing ever happens

We can criticize “the fit” but if you do operate in a largely self-motivated structureless operation, (for example volunteering) You will realize that certain people need to be told want to do, they won’t decide to go do some thing they’re always looking for someone to tell them. Those don’t work in a company like that, and that’s really what this is targeting. If you want to run an organization, any organization, you need to identify employees that will work with your way of working. The army wants people who will except orders even if they lead to death. Valve wants the opposite they want people to think for themselves and make intelligent decisions without being told what to do. Most companies are somewhere in the middle. And honestly I think it’s OK that not everyone is able to work at valve or in the army, or any other business. I wouldn’t want to be in the Army, I wouldn’t listen and I certainly am not going to run into military gunfire, And by not doing that I would endanger many more other people, I think it’s acceptable to see the way we work requires a certain type of employees and so we hire for that. I presume that at people make games you have standards you hire for, and those standards by definition excludes some portion of the population. But someone who doesn’t have an investigative mind probably isn’t a good fit in your company. And thats ok.

Valve is a private company and doesn't need to change its structure to accommodate being more diverse. If you don't like it then you've already self selected yourself to not work there 🤷‍♂ Same with Valve's treatment of BLM, it's a private company, they don't need to make a statement about something that has nothing to do with the work they do. Valve has no obligation to be a platform for politics, I think giving employees money to donate to the political cause they care about is much more democratic and actually representative of Valve's employees.

The idea, that in a sea of gore and violence, nude bodies and sex would be harmful is so truly american, it hurts. Of course Valve should sell them. its art nepotism to not grant eroticism its fair share. And its immature.

Ngl it sounds like a great place to work if this is all you found from a months long investigation and 16 interviews. If you asked 16 ex employees their anonymous thoughts about any company on earth you’d end up with worse feedback than this. Well made video though.

I feel like you just made a video about difficulties of owning a successful company in the video game industries. At the end you didn't even talk about the Streisand effect or whether those harmful games were successful or not or and whether Gabe was right. I trully believe you should do an investigation about the horrors that happened in Blizzard for the past 10 years, or about how EA, Bethesda treat their employees... You'd be surprised of how good of a company Valve actually is.

The funny thing about the concept of Valve’s lack of quality control is that they’re actually incredibly inconsistent regarding this. They’ll straight up ban games that got ESRB ratings and are sold at Walmart or GameStop if someone at the company has a personal distaste towards it, while they’ll allow low-brow stuff like Cuckold Simulator, Omon Simulator, and Sex with Hitler. Of course there’s also the entire discussion around the lack of quality control (in the correct way) on Steam resulting partially in the problem of bad game releases, there has been cases where games are still sold on Steam despite missing an executable file as an example. Or any of the Arkham Knight situations that Valve seemingly hasn’t learned from. They’ve fairly recently been starting to raise eyebrows, and that’s even without the other things in this video.

Man - I despise "stack ranking" so much. This is such a weird technique. I can't imagine my office job with such a system in place.

Fascinating video. I can only help but wonder what happened to stack ranking / salaries of the team that made Artifact given how that game turned out financially

I think giving your employees the money to donate to causes (perhaps controlled) by the company is a much better way to do it than the normal model. And the part later in the video that critiques it be because "they may give the money to groups I don't like" is a bit silly.

Valve isn't evil for not wanting to get political. Lots of BLM protests took things too far, and it was smart of Valve to stay silent on the matter. A company isn't required to be diverse either, even though it is rude to cherry-pick employees based on things they can't control. In the end, things have been good with Valve, and people shouldn't force their opinions onto a company.

I'm not really into the idea that the company should be penalized for being "hands-off" and "libertarian" simply because the expectation is that they should take your side. I want my video game company to be a video game company and stay as apolitical as possible because ya never know when the other shoe is gonna drop. I should also note that you just advertised "Tyrone vs Cops" or whatever it was called to half a million people in the first five hrs this video has been up, a far greater number of people than would have found it if it were just left to collect dust in the catacombs of steam's enormous library.

I’d start a ‘Richochet remake’ team, now that’s valuable 🤣

Another thing to note is that structure of the company kind of limits the size of the company. You can only spread so far laterally in this kind of distributed manner until you face some very serious inefficiencies. This is why they focus so much on the hiring process. I'm honestly surprised they aren't in crisis over how many people quit or get fired. edit* i guess that sweet sweet steam revenue makes that a moot point, though lol. still, considering their absolute focus on profit over people, it seems surprisingly inefficient.

American culture around not talking to colleagues about pay & conditions is why bosses have been rorting the absolute living shit out of you for 40 years.

Sounds like a fantastic company to work at! Right values that you should be a high performer and not focusing on energy draining stuff like diversity or political stuff, focus on the core to build a good business

Im not finished yet but it seems like instead of the intended idea of something like a woker’s co-op where everyone works together, its more like a system in which everyone is working for themselves

Company makes shitloads of money, doesn't want to change the way it works. Shocking. Well not that shocking. In fact, kinda makes sense. You can't argue with results

if you are not allowed to have a nuances political opinion then its best to just not say anything. good job valve.

Good video, but some small constructive criticism. Valve is a private company, it does not have shareholders and a reputation to maintain and it doesn't need to release yearly statements about commitments to issues such as sustainability and diversity. If valve was public then it would 100% have greater commitment to some of these issues (and would need to be transparent about these commitments). It's a bad look for shareholders otherwise. Private companies like Valve tend to stay in their own lane. I will agree that as a giant in the games industry it does have examples it should be setting, but these are things the company has chosen not to get involved with. Instead they showed their commitment to their business structure by turning the power over to their employees (to spend $4,000,000 on a charity they wish) rather than have heads of the company decide.

There was some good information here and this video helped debunk the idea that Valve is some literal utopia but the bulk of this video seemed politically driven and took issue with the fact that Valve isn't. The firing process does seem like it needs to be fixed but I personally take no issue with how they handle/handled pretty much everything else. Big props to the artist for this video though, amazing graphics 👍

This video, with a whole section dedicated to stack ranking, released *days* after Activision Blizzard stack ranking became a major news story. Iconic

idk about the black lives matters thing. is it really a company's place to take a stand here? if they do it's just saying that it's financially beneficial for us to take this political stance. anything a COMPANY could say is just soulless virtue signalling. even if they have noble goals it literally can't possibly come out as anything else because it's a company not a person. maybe it's because i'm not american but i seriously don't get the huge contention here. putting up $4million seems like a way bigger deal than throwing around clout on twitter

"One of Gabe's arguments was that these games will make a bigger splash if we say no to them, rather than if we say yes and then nobody buys them." There is enough history of that seemingly happening (As far as I saw it, anyway) to compel me to find agreement with that as I almost feel that more people know about the game 'Hatred' because not only did it get the rare A for Adult by the ESRB (Which is a distribution death-sentence compared to other regional equivalents like the more confidently-used PEGI 18), but it was pulled from Steam Greenlight only to then have it reinstated on the platform with an apology from Gabe Newell. Nowadays, the game is mostly looked back on with a "That was a lot of fuss made over a rather unremarkable game, wasn't it?" when it's not getting jokes made about it by the developers & audience for the 'Postal' franchise (Again, as far as I've seen it), but there are other examples of "Games getting a moment of attention due to, intentional or not, their subject matter causing platform holders to be hesitant to distribute them" in the past, of which I must admit I can't provide immediate examples of besides me saying "Go see what the likes of John 'Totalbiscuit' Bain or 'Jim F------ Sterling, Son' were covering during Steam Greenlight's busier days". But of course, that means that Valve is ultimately leaving those judgement calls upon the Steam customer-base, which can leave one with the question "How well are Steam's tools whether user, community or algorithmic helping customers curate their personal shopping experience if not curate the shopping experience platform-wide?". In my personal case, it's been a very long time since I saw a game on Steam during my daily use that was being "overtly racist", "a clear-cut scam" or "intentionally looking to cause a fuss" besides 'Sex with [WWII Dictator I think KZfaq doesn't like you mentioning]' or 'Furry [Aforementioned WWII Dictator]' getting a bit of a fuss mostly via joke reviews (Plenty of sexually explicit games via the 'New & Trending' or 'Popular Upcoming' pages on Steam during quieter periods, but not a lot that I otherwise don't see arrive on GOG or gives me the impression that it crosses lines of legality, regardless of their spectrum of tastefulness and/or mechanical substance), but this could be due to the 31 games I currently have "Ignored" (Much of them are games like FIFA, NBA 2K, WWE 2K, Red Dead Online & Infestation: Survivor Stories 2020, but there are some sexually explicit games on that list that I must've found particularly distasteful or reportedly shallow beyond their explicit nature to add them there) contributing to what I see splashed at the top page beyond what my current Steam Library, Wishlist or other data already is. But I'm only one among 28mil peak users at the time of writing, so I'm barely even a paint-stroke in that whole picture. And that's not accounting for the developer's experience of using the platform, of course (Of which I do actually have one friend with a game on Steam, but nothing too useful to add here). I guess the long & short of it is; It does seem that Valve would rather leave the answers to more complicated questions in the hands of it's customers & tools or not say anything that they can't materially back-up in the present (I'm pretty sure 'Half Life 2: Episode 3' was what made them ultimately do the latter much more consistently if they weren't doing so after Half Life's many delays or Half Life 2's development hurdles). But that's so much more frustrating & unhelpful when you're among the staff working within Valve's offices on their payroll or it's becoming clear that a complicated problem requires a solution that Valve themselves must make the call on what that is.

I feel like the critiques of the structure of valve, and the diversity/social outreach would be better served as two separate videos. They don't really have anything to do with each other.

Good documentary but as a black man, I do not care what Valve has to say about diversity. Let Valve do what Valve does best. I truly fear what will happen to Valve and Steam when Gabe passes away. All Hail Gaben! May he show us the way!

The straight up trolling comment sounds like it may have been pointed at the steam greenlight submission game "Missing Information" which was a game based on the Half-Life 2 Beta leak content with stolen assets from valve by the dev team called "Gabe's Love Tub". The game was approved by Steam Users but valve did an extremely rare move and intervened to block it going on Steam without stating why. The publication regarding "straight up trolling" was realised shortly after that incident. It is believed that Gabe Newell intervened directly in that case as the HL2 leak was still a sore subject.

you made really good points about the way the company works, and the firing process, but asking a company to make a statement on a political issue is not right to me. Asking companies to be activists is wrong to me.

The employee structure does sound odd. In terms of appraisal, I would imagine it would become a popularity contest. As for the "no manager" approach it is natural for a hierarchical structure to develop anyway. I would say Valve being apolitical is the right choice. In my opinion, companies should stay out of politics and focus on the product or service they're giving. With regards to hiring practices as long as it is a meritocracy, that's fine. As far as what games are published to their platform, there is an argument to curate the content in terms of quality of the game.

When it comes to the racist games and stuff, removal of them would make it a political statement. Unless someone made a game about eating the rich and enslaving white people and that was removed then there's something to be said. But leaving the game there to sink or swim on it's own is the most apolitical you can get.

I am still sad they bought Campo Santo. We’ll never see another game from them again.

I really believe that there is nothing wrong with what valve is doing with their hiring process. Yeah, it's a company full of white guys, but it's only that way because of their experience levels. Yeah, it sucks that their aren't nearly as many non white male devs in the industry, but that's not valve's fault. A company like valve is something you should work, dream, and strive towards, not just have handed to you because you want it and you're different looking. They say it in the interviews here that they only hire senior devs, so therefore, if you're a non white male dev who is relatively new to the industry, get a job and experience somewhere else for now, then try to get a job at valve later on once you've gotten that experience under your belt. You just gotta recognize and work with the institution that you want so desperately to be a part of. That's my opinion.

I appreciate the in-depth look behind the scenes of Valve's work-structure. Can we get a couple of these kinds of videos for Epic Games next?

If not saying anything, but giving money to the employees to chose who to donate to, makes you the bad guy. Then you can’t win, might as well not say anything. It’s literally the only outcome, because you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. This video proves that.

Important and interesting video, but I think it’s beyond unfair to bash Valve’s structure and their libertarian nature. Sure, they will block whatever hurts the store the most, or evade anything if it may hurt the company’s image, but this stance makes sense for me. All of this diversity discussion makes sense for the USA, and maybe a bunch of other countries where people claim “white folks rule ’em all”, but there are way more other countries. I can understand the diversity issue if we talk USA specifically, because Valve is based in the US. That being said, I’m not from the USA, and I cannot quite comprehend why Valve should give additional benefits to people of color or claim white folks being bad. Anyway, I think helping people from different backgrounds is good - a person’s race shouldn’t give them benefits, but the background. White folks come from a poor background, black folks too, the same can be said for everyone else. And all of them might come from a rich background. Why only non-white people should get some sort of privilege? I don’t quite understand it in this case. Adding to this, Valve’s structure allows everyone to agree on certain decisions, but people need to accumulate these opinions. I can imagine it might be hard, but invite your friends then - if you cannot do it just because of the colleagues are racist or something like that, then there’s a clear issue here. Ultimately, my main point about Valve’s political standing is to emphasize with them. Keep it in mind, I’m talking globally, not US specific. Steam is a global store, after all. If Valve starts making political decisions and align with certain sides, then what’s good can come out of it? Some will be happy, most others won’t. Gabe made a good point about the show that was described in the video. Also, let’s say, Valve says “We support BLM” and stuff like that - what about other issues in the world? Russia vs Ukraine? Armenia vs Azerbaijan? Racist and bigotry attitude to influx of people fleeing wars, for example, Russians in particular? They are facing issues in other countries just because of their passport color, but they left their home country because they disagree with the gov’s politics. Why they are being targeted and yelled at? Why locals and others tell them to go back? Again, what about the other issues like, I dunno, situations with ethnicities in China? Or even racist behavior of some locals in China who target foreigners as the main reason behind the outbreak in China? If you think some examples above isn’t even related to Steam, then why the rest isn’t? Why Valve should focus on Russia vs Ukraine, or just BLM? Why Valve should focus on the US, that’s just stupid. If you say that they should do it just because they are a US based company, then keep in mind that their statements will be thrown at a global audience. When I see events that aren’t even related to my region, I may wonder why I am even seeing them - why someone shows their political views onto me? I want to keep this discussion civil and hear your opinions. I feel Valve’s stance, and maybe it has hidden meaning, but it still makes sense anyway.

I’ve always wanted to know about how Valve worked, thank you for this

Oh good Jesus. I'm not going to make friends (perhaps? I mean, not like I care), but I think that the part when you criticise Steam for not taking part in the BLM movement is a mistake I didn't believed you could make as a videogame industry analyst. (TL:DR: it's a long comment) I'm not defending Steam for having such a poor HR policy or any other shit they did as a company, I just want to talk about this particular thing because it makes no sense to me. In my own beliefs, a company is NOT a person, does and should NOT speak on behalf of the workers within. Because a company is just meant to make money and that's its ONLY job and only meaning for existence. It just makes money and that's it. When you see Nike, M&M's, Ubisoft and whatnot speaking in favor of communities, BLM, speaking for "the good" and against "the bad", it's just marketing talk meant to please you so they ensure that YOU continue to buy THEIR product, man. You seem to fall for these techniques, that's quite sad. It's at the highest level of hypocrisy and marketing felony to try the emotional approach at something they're not strictly and directly related to. They should be talking about videogames for a videogame company. Or cars for a car company. It's NOT their job to stand for or against anything else, this is the role for real people, individuals, or non-profit organizations. For example: You know well Nike, it's a company that sells sportswear ; why would they pay a marketing person to write "stand up for human rights" on their Facebook or Instagram if this is not to surf on the "human rights" trend because it's been hot in the social medias, so this brand wants to have their part of media attention too? Please explain to me how these videogame companies appears to be friendly and humane and shit when they tell this: "Today, we've changed our work policy to respect our employees, guarantee NO MORE CRUNCH TIME", but one year later you get to read in the newspaper that the workers were doing just as more crunch time as before, or there's been a massive fire after a massive financial benefit, and YOU know that it's been the case SO MANY TIMES right now in this industry... Don't you believe that there's a bit of hypocrisy behind "friendly public speech", that it's never to be trusted? So why do you spend so much time on Steam's public relationship toward BLM movement, when it's been clear that this isn't their job to express an opinion about what's happening to the world... Do you believed that brands and videogame studios were your friends? No they're not. They sell videogames and whatnot. And Steam (Gabe?) knew as a company it should never do this PR speech in the name of the company. What a nonsense if it did. I think you must have been talking about this particular topic, because it fits into your "Steam is a company with racial bias" speech. Ironically this is one of the stuff they did right, that is "avoid the bullshit PR speech that's meant to drag customers to our side in the name of something unrelated to videogames". One info to close my topic: surprisingly enough (considering what you've said about Steam), on the Steam main page I can see and discover DOZENS of indie LGBT themed games, or games made by small teams (1-2 devs), or games made by indie foreigners (non-USA) or games made with gender-equality systems, or with feminine exclusive main protagonist, etc etc. Please explain to me how all these games can have so much publicity on Steam, if Steam is such a "racist" company? Maybe I'm biased, maybe I'm seeing all these games because I'm into indie games so Steam keeps me in the comfort bubble, so I keep seeing this topic on my page, I don't know. But it seems that according to the gamer/customer side, Steam is doing just great, right? If that's your kinda things, they gonna provide you with it. It's not like they try to hide these games from the public. We live in a crazy world, don't make it more crazy than it really is. Thank you.

I am with Valve on this one

Why would you force a video game maker submit political statements?

Valve doesn't make games - it's a cut-throat PvP skunkworks arena funded entirely by the their Real Arcade-deposing store front. Even as far back as [spins wheel] 2010, Valve wasn't in the business of making games; Left 4 Dead was an outside project, Portal 2 was an outside project. Their store front has become astoundingly polished, with the addition of Steam Workshop in 2014. Sometimes their engineers managed some outstanding achievements: Linux gaming would not be possible today without the last decade of effort of random dudes working on it because it interested them. If it were not for Half-Life Alyx, i'd argue that Valve should downsize and focus entirely on what it does best: collecting a toll on every videogame purchase.

What games allowed on steam feels like a joke sometimes... Visual novels in general are in a weird position... They either have cut content or outright rejected for unlcear statements. The song of saya is on steam with 18+ content cut, but it's on gog without any content being cut. evenicle 1 is on steam but 2 has been rejected while it's just more of the same. Chaos;head Noah has been rejected while the sequel Chaos;child has been out on steam for years, and chaos;head noah is on the f*cking switch without any cut content and it needed a ton of news site telling excatly this and a petiont for steam to allow it on store... But outright porn games, furry porn games, and shit like sex with hitler is fine... I just have no idea if thier what's allowed rules are unclear to even the employees themselvs or someone who does it just hates visual novels in generel. Because if it's allowen on other store(not even vn specific ones like as I mentioned gog before) it surely can't be illegal.

Many great points made; however, I don't quite understand the obsession over diversity. It would surely be great to have, but I don't understand how a company solely focused on quality games should ignore the more qualified workers over people of colour during hiring stages. Also valve almost never makes public statements, so it's not surprising that they didn't make any statements on black lives matter. It's a video game company. A statement like that wouldn't change anything. Also they already gave 10000 dollars to each employee to give to charity. That is way more than other companies ever did for black lives matter.

I have so much respect for Valve after this video. Political stances should not be taken by private companies.

As a visual novel player, I am somewhat happy that Valve doesn't police these games too hard but I would love if they're even more laissez-faire. I still want Fullmetal Daemon Muramasa and I'd love for less cases like Chaos;Child Noah and Evenicle 2 where permissions are given and yanked randomly. Yeah, the junk games making it through is hard, but I want to buy these games legally because it's more convenient than pirating them and I don't have the money nor patience to import them. So for me, all I want is just better consistency instead of praying whoever does the checking doesn't hate the game for a random reason.

Honestly, based on the actual results they have to show for their structure, I can’t help but think Valve has the right idea on how to run a video game company compared to Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar, Microsoft, etc.

I think this video brings up both a lot of valid issues, as well as a lot of non-issues.

I’m about to enter college next semester for a degree in game design. I’m really passionate about games and the industry but I really think these sobering dives into the issues with both are invaluable. This channel is an excellent resource and I thank you dearly for what you are providing.

Listen, this is a great video and it's good to have this documented. That said my feeling is that you were having a hard time finding things to criticize at Valve. All in all I left it wanting to work there even more

I feel like Gabe it's not your boss in the traditional sense that he's gonna come to your desk or team and tell you what to do but I can guarantee that if he has a certain opinion on a topic and you actively disagree on that opinion your chances of getting fire may increase a lot.

Soo thats why nobody filters the store front and just every gargabe gets released