Didn't see this posted here yet - relatively new. The handbook is definitely an interesting read and worth looking at. Link to pdf only.

Quite probably a deliberate leak given that Gabe recently gave away some details about the internal structure of the company (or lack thereof).

Definitely lack.

This made me giggle:
"Empty Shelf on Fifth Floor—Place we’re planning on putting all those awards for Ricochet once the gaming world finally catches up with it."

(I am easily amused)

Methinks that a lot of companies could learn a lot from what's inside that handbook. The idea of the "T-Shaped Employee" is something they'd do well to encourage.

Aka cherry pick and leave the rest.

Want to see what the Google employee handbook is like :P

Their non-traditional approach to corporate power structure was no real secret with articles as recent as with Portal 2's launch detailing as much. This aspect of Valve fascinates me as much as the games.

Gabe seems to be very aware of "business paradigms" and their potential harm. Some recent examples could include how Blockbuster should have been Netflix or how Lego should have had the foresight to develop Minecraft earlier, etc. All things considered, Valve is close to what Ion Storm was originally envisioned to be where, as Warren Spector put it, "The inmates run the asylum." He mentioned that he was enough of a "business man" to make it work when compared to the other Ion Storm offices but that approach did create an amazing product (Deus Ex).

That's awesome.

Do Google have employees? I thought it was more like minions...

GOG should release its employee handbook :)

When you're a monopoly you can get away with whatever structure or lack of structure you want. The question is whether Valve would have survived had their been a viable competitor to Steam when they launched it.

My hunch is no. Even now the results of the poorly designed services are apparent and they've managed to kludge together and bandage up most of them, but they still don't have a proper and reliable offline mode. You can only choose it if you've opted to store your credentials and if you manually choose it while you're connected to the net.

Not entirely true. If you get disconnected from Steam while being connected you can pretty much switch to offline mode rather seemlessly. The problems really only come during updates or if you're offline while losing internet. (Ie, I can pull the cable from my computer now and i'll be able to switch to offline mode easily.)

But yes, it still needs improvement, no argument there.

About the competition thing. It's hard to say. You could say that if it had had competition, perhaps it would have pushed them further. As it is, they basically had the foresight/insight to basically pioneer it on their own. You can say that they might not have had the structure to last if it had had competition, but in itself that's already quite a feat in my opinion, something a lot of places that have different/possibly better structure haven't done.

Also, about competition, I think EADM /Origin is really only 2 years younger, despite their re-re-re-release into Origin recently. They really should've put more effort into that long ago.

Also not sure what Blizzard is doing at the moment. I remember their roadmap including signing up third party publishers to Battlenet, but I think the timeframe on that particular one already having passed. Could still happen though I guess.

I'd say that's close enough. I also know that there are a number of bugs which prevent things like that from working as intended. Really, the whole software needs to be rewritten from scratch by people that know what they're doing, but I think the odds of that are rather low.

I doubt very much that Blizzard will ever sign any 3rd party devs up for the services as I don't think they're hurting for money the way that they're currently operating.

lmao that is epic! :D

One of those Blizzard product road maps leaks every 2 years or so. They usually either seem to get changed or they're at least partially faked...