Quote: Independently minded staff would leave before any acquisition, says co-founder Gabe Newell: Valve Would “Disintegrate,” Its Independent-Minded Workers Scattering, Than That It Would Ever Be Sold. Speaking to the NY Times, the co-founder of the Half-Life studio and Steam business said it was much more likely that talent at the 300-strong business would prefer to leave rather than ride out the years following an acquisition. "It's way more likely we would head in that direction than say, 'Let's find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate,'" he offered. According to the report, Battlefield and Madden publisher Electronic Arts has made enquiries about buying Valve in the past, with an unnamed source suggesting EA would have valued the company at well over $1 billion. Prolific industry commentator Michael Pachter estimated Valve could be worth around $2.5 billion. The company famously has a flat management structure that favours self starters, and hires individuals for their overall talents rather than specific skills. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...valve-would-likely-disintegrate-before-a-sale
Gabe seems like the type of guy that would run Valve into the ground before letting it be bought out. I don't blame him though. Valve is doing alright by itself.
Good on valve. While other developers/publishers have fallen flat, Valve (too me) seems like the only last decent developer/publisher left. Good on ya Valve. :thumbup:
They have Big Picture Mode starting beta today and Dota 2 coming out. Not to mention CS: GO and Source Filmmaker. Why are they seen by people as not being productive?
Cause they're really not that productive. Things they release take a very long time, comparatively. Quality's good, release is slow.
EA have tried to buy Valve!?!?!?! God help us if they ever do that because I believe it would utterly ruin Steam based on the abysmal Origin software I have to put up with on my system. Steam might not be perfect - its lack of custom install still annoys me somewhat - but it is light years ahead of Origin by virtue of having a seven year head start. I get the sense with Valve that they care about their PC user base and that's not something I would say about EA who are more concerned with profits than pleasing their users.
Bolded part says to me that they probably never did. Even if they did though, it doesn't state when - it could have been year and years ago. Just more fuel for the hate train i recon. --- OT. I hope valve never sell to anyone, as much as i dislike requiring steam valve at least release good quality software (all be it, not to often for my liking).
Microsoft bought Skype not too long ago (2011), nothing much has changed since then. Just because something gets bought doesn't necessarily mean everything about said service is going to change, it's mostly the future of the service that you have to worry about in terms of quality. What changes for sure though is where your money goes. As for Valve dying, I believe you can already play most offline games without being connected. As for online play, it goes without saying that it would go as they have no reason to keep paying for servers.
Keep Valve a private operating company and not a public one at the mercy of Stock Market IPO's. Nothing worse than have a good company bought out and driven to the ground in the name of share holder profits. Death to Venture (Vulture) Finance and Finance based Capitalism.!!
This is EA, they will change the way things work. They always have and chances are they would in this scenario as well.
