Ex Valve Developer Lashes out about Steam "Steam Killing PC Gaming"

The guy was at Valve to work on Linux, the project went nowhere (like many R&D projects at Valve), and he left bitter that his work contributed to basically nothing (where is Steam Linux now? nowhere to be found), so he resorted to badmouthing the whole structure and the people working there (without giving out names to avoid lawsuits).

His rants about "intruders" messing with "his" code, "his" repos, and how he perceives so many social interactions between workers as sources of anxiety and betrayals (going as far as saying "So-called “self organizing” companies are controlled by mass anxiety") really shows he has serious troubles with group work and socializing at the workplace.

Dong_Key_Hoe_Tay 155 points 8 months ago*


As somebody who has worked in triple A for years now, including time in a very toxic company, this guy is still straight up delusional.

No company on earth will hire you just so they can hire your friends and then fire you. That's so wildly impractical I can't even begin to break it down. Half the shit he's describing sounds like the ranting of somebody who has gone off their meds.

There are definitely things to watch out for with any company, and bits of good advice here and there, but in general I would not take this dude seriously. In the most toxic, depressing, dog-eat-dog company I ever worked things weren't anywhere near this level. And some of what he's saying is so obviously wrong or the product of extreme paranoia that I'm surprised anyone is even listening to him.

Edit: More...

This seems like a classic case of "if it smells like shit everywhere you go, check your own boot." This dude seems very toxic, like the kind of person who would lose his pen and immediately start shouting at his colleagues asking who stole it instead of checking under his desk. So many red flags:

"People will shit up your code so just make everything private/local so they can't." - This is both very indicative of egotism, extremely detrimental to a team, and fucking crazy from a collaboration standpoint. Working with a team together on a code base means almost inevitably people will have to touch your stuff. If you can't get over that, you are probably not somebody who should work on a team.

"Coworkers will sabotage you if you ask for help." - Never in my life have I seen a place so toxic that this would happen (in the industry at least--retail? maybe). My interpretation here is that somebody accidentally gave him bad information and he decided it was sabotage.

"" - This is super hypocritical after all the toxicity he's supposedly decrying. He's also very mercenary about work relationships, in such a way that tells me he would be absolutely obnoxious to work with, trying to manipulate people to get things he wants instead of just being friendly and candid. Not every work environment is going to be a garden of honesty and friendship, but this guy sounds like he's going to war with a bunch of folks who are probably just interested in doing their job.

All these tweets are telling me, personally, is that I would never want to hire this guy, or work with him on a team. It's true that one should be wary of corporations and their internal machinations, and there is a certain level of politics and ugliness almost everywhere you go, but what he describes is far beyond the point of reason IMO. He seems to believe everyone is out to get him.

Now I expected that the Steam premium would be steep, but not 30% steep