Speaker 1: Technology with tech Stuff from dot Com. Hey there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: here to talk about all things technological, well not all
Speaker 1: things today, because we're going to continue our story from
Speaker 1: the last episode, the story of Valve. Now, in that
Speaker 1: last episode, we looked at how to Microsoft millionaires left
Speaker 1: their stable gigs to launch a new game development company,
Speaker 1: and they called it Valve Software LLC. At that time,
Speaker 1: they use their own money to fund this company, and
Speaker 1: they hired on talent to help them come up with
Speaker 1: a new type of game, which was a story driven
Speaker 1: first person shooter. It would take them two years and
Speaker 1: the result of that work would be the game Half Life.
Speaker 1: A couple of years later, one of those two co founders,
Speaker 1: Might Harrington, would dissolve his partnership, with the other co founder,
Speaker 1: Gabe Newell, taking on charge of the company as the
Speaker 1: sole leader as it were, and leaving him a little
Speaker 1: bit lonely. So. Valve at this point had finished Half Life,
Speaker 1: which was enjoying critical acclaim as well as healthy sales.
Speaker 1: Gamers were eating it up. But as I covered in
Speaker 1: that previous episode, it didn't exactly go smoothly at the time.
Speaker 1: The development took a long while. It did, however, help
Speaker 1: establish Valves methodology for developing games. That is that within
Speaker 1: the company, employees would form cabals. Now that all sounds
Speaker 1: rather sinister, doesn't it, But the cabal structure was necessity
Speaker 1: while working on Half Life, which I should remind you
Speaker 1: was a project that Valve hit the reset button on
Speaker 1: when the original work was nearing completion. They were getting
Speaker 1: close to their original ship date and made the determination
Speaker 1: that the game just wasn't working. It wasn't fun. They
Speaker 1: developed lot of cool technology, but they had not yet
Speaker 1: figured out how to use it properly to make a
Speaker 1: really compelling game. So they wanted to actually take all
Speaker 1: that stuff they learned and turn it into a much
Speaker 1: better product. First, they thought, well, what we should do
Speaker 1: is get a game designer, someone who's brilliant in this field,
Speaker 1: like a leader, who can sweep in and rescue the project.
Speaker 1: The way Ken Birdwell put it in a blog post
Speaker 1: was that the company was looking for a person who
Speaker 1: would swing in on a on a chord, you know,
Speaker 1: sword in hand, hair swept with a wind. He or
Speaker 1: she would pick up all the disparate pieces and development
Speaker 1: and magically assemble them into the most awesome game ever.
Speaker 1: But it became clear that this was a pipe dream.
Speaker 1: There was no hero coming to the rescue. They just
Speaker 1: they couldn't find the right person who could actually make
Speaker 1: this happen. So instead, Valve employees within the company already
Speaker 1: began to form groups within that organization. They decided, well,
Speaker 1: we don't really have one person who can lead this
Speaker 1: project and turn it into something that is really compelling,
Speaker 1: but we've got a lot of talent here. Maybe we
Speaker 1: get a group of us, a multidisciplinary group, so people
Speaker 1: who are specialists in different fields to work together in
Speaker 1: a collaborative process. We can achieve what one magical superhero
Speaker 1: would be able to do. And the members of that
Speaker 1: group had a really wide range of skills that complemented
Speaker 1: one another. They would have meetings that contained a lot
Speaker 1: of brainstorming, and in those meetings the group would do
Speaker 1: a ton of work. In fact, let me quote Mr
Speaker 1: Birdwell to give you a clue about how cabals would
Speaker 1: actually get stuff done. Quote. The goal of this group
Speaker 1: was to create a complete document that detailed all the
Speaker 1: levels and described major monster interactions, special effects, plot devices,
Speaker 1: and design standards of Cabal was to work out when
Speaker 1: and how every monster, weapon and n PC was to
Speaker 1: be introduced, what skills we expected the player to have,
Speaker 1: and how we were going to teach them those skills
Speaker 1: end quote. That's that's a huge burden. You know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about every element of game design, from the mechanics
Speaker 1: as in the mechanics within the game itself, not to
Speaker 1: mention just how do those translate to what the player
Speaker 1: needs to do in order to pull it off? Like
Speaker 1: what button do you have to push in order to strafe?
Speaker 1: What button do you push to interact with your environment?
Speaker 1: And then all the elements that happen inside the game,
Speaker 1: all the stuff you encounter, all the things that make
Speaker 1: the game what it is. According to Birdwell, this process
Speaker 1: was intense and exhausting, and it would also include a
Speaker 1: second stage. Essentially, once the team had enough raw material
Speaker 1: material to work with, you know, they had brainstorm, they decide, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a level. We know that the level
Speaker 1: is going to culminate with an encounter enter with this
Speaker 1: particular type of enemy uh that has these weaknesses and
Speaker 1: nise strengths. But leading up to that, we want them
Speaker 1: to have these four or five other experiences. Plus we
Speaker 1: have to make sure that the player has the opportunity
Speaker 1: to learn the strategy that will ultimately benefit them in
Speaker 1: the battle with this big boss at the end of
Speaker 1: the level. They come up with these various ideas, they
Speaker 1: would start hashing them out and they would get really detailed.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't just be these general rules. It might be
Speaker 1: much more specific, and they would start to take all
Speaker 1: of these different disparate pieces and shape it into a narrative.
Speaker 1: They decided that the stuff that happened within the game
Speaker 1: should be location based rather than time based. So in
Speaker 1: other words, you wouldn't need to worry about missing out
Speaker 1: on a really cool story development because you were lollygagging
Speaker 1: two rooms back for too long. So you were, you know,
Speaker 1: checking out this one corner because you were convinced that
Speaker 1: that corner was going to lead you to a super
Speaker 1: secret special area. And it turns out no, it's just
Speaker 1: a corner. So you go on with your merry little life.
Speaker 1: But you missed all the great stuff because you were
Speaker 1: too busy with the corner, and the great stuff was
Speaker 1: on a timer. They did not want that to happen,
Speaker 1: so instead they decided that once you reach the appropriate
Speaker 1: location within any given level. Your arrival is what would
Speaker 1: trigger whatever the event was supposed to be, and those
Speaker 1: events could be plot developments. It could be an encounter
Speaker 1: with a monster. It could be the discovery of a
Speaker 1: new weapon. It could be uh the interaction with another character.
Speaker 1: It could be a specific special effect, whatever that might be. Now,
Speaker 1: occasionally the group would come up with ideas for really
Speaker 1: cool stuff that didn't necessarily fit in with anything else.
Speaker 1: It was kind of just a neat idea all on
Speaker 1: its own, and sometimes they would use those as transitions
Speaker 1: between areas. They'd say, well, it doesn't really fit in
Speaker 1: this level design, and it doesn't really fit in this
Speaker 1: next level design, but we could have it as something
Speaker 1: in between those two. Or some times they would just
Speaker 1: have to toss it out if they couldn't find a
Speaker 1: way for it to work within the confines of their story.
Speaker 1: They also found it helpful to occasionally just put a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of unrelated ideas into the same area and
Speaker 1: then try to figure out how they would make them
Speaker 1: all fit logically. So you might have a couple of
Speaker 1: monster designs and a new weapon, and maybe a character interaction,
Speaker 1: and all of these ideas you've had separately, and you thought, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we just throw them into this one level,
Speaker 1: see if we can make it make sense from a
Speaker 1: story aspect, and then that can help lead to some
Speaker 1: more creativity. Uh. Sometimes that didn't work. Sometimes they would
Speaker 1: end up incorporating a lot of ideas, but ultimately they
Speaker 1: would discover when they were done that whatever it was
Speaker 1: that launched them down that path was no longer part
Speaker 1: of the level. So let's say that you have this
Speaker 1: one monster design you really like, and you have decided
Speaker 1: that you're going to try and create a level around it.
Speaker 1: It might turn out that months later you've got a
Speaker 1: great level, but that monsters nowhere to be found. You
Speaker 1: don't even use it, they said. Ultimately they realized, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter what the the genesis of the idea
Speaker 1: was so much that the finished idea worked for the game.
Speaker 1: And once they took that philosophy, they realized that the
Speaker 1: development process, while very exhausting, worked much much better now.
Speaker 1: At that time, Birdwell says, cabal sessions would include five
Speaker 1: or six employees, and not everyone would always have something
Speaker 1: to contribute every single day. So if you didn't have
Speaker 1: five or six, you could end up with a meeting
Speaker 1: where no one's really talking, nothing's really getting done. So
Speaker 1: they needed five or six just to kind of cover
Speaker 1: all the bases. Make sure that even if you're strapped
Speaker 1: for ideas that week, other people in the group have
Speaker 1: stuff to contribute, and it may be that three weeks
Speaker 1: later you're the person who's taking the lead because something
Speaker 1: someone else has done has sparked an idea in your
Speaker 1: head and you're able to run with it. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what they wanted. So the cabal group for Half
Speaker 1: Life consisted of a single writer, a level designer, and animator,
Speaker 1: and then three engineers. Everyone who was in that cabal
Speaker 1: had previously worked on a product somewhere that actually shipped,
Speaker 1: which was a pre requirement of that first cabal. They
Speaker 1: wanted the group to only include people who had worked
Speaker 1: on products that actually saw the light of day. Now,
Speaker 1: that didn't mean that they had done that in game
Speaker 1: development necessarily. They might have developed software they got published
Speaker 1: somewhere else that wasn't even a game, but at least
Speaker 1: they had worked on something that published. The group would
Speaker 1: meet four days a week, and the meetings would last
Speaker 1: six hours a day, and this went on for five
Speaker 1: months when they first started the cabal system. After that,
Speaker 1: they would occasionally meet as the game continued to develop
Speaker 1: until it was finally shipped, but they weren't meeting every
Speaker 1: single day or even four days a week. Once they
Speaker 1: got through that initial brainstorming process, and according to Birdwell,
Speaker 1: the experience was so draining that you couldn't expect the
Speaker 1: people who were in the cabal to do any other
Speaker 1: work because it was just so consuming. The most you
Speaker 1: might manage is some light housekeeping stuff like answering emails.
Speaker 1: That's about as strenuous as you could get once you
Speaker 1: went through this system. Now, at the end of this process,
Speaker 1: the cabal produced a two hundred page document about Half Life.
Speaker 1: This became the guiding design behind the game. More importantly,
Speaker 1: this style of collaboration became synonymous with valves operating procedure.
Speaker 1: Cabals became the model for game development and really all
Speaker 1: projects with involved, not just game development, software development tools, patches,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. All of it is centered around
Speaker 1: this concept of cabals. And it all started with Half Life.
Speaker 1: Once there was enough of Half Life to actually test
Speaker 1: Sierra because remember Sierra was the publisher for Half Life
Speaker 1: pulled in play testers to try stuff out. During those
Speaker 1: sessions that people responsible for that level would observe the
Speaker 1: players and they would take notes. So that had to
Speaker 1: be a harrowing experience to have designed something and now
Speaker 1: you're watching a stranger play through it for the first time,
Speaker 1: and you're thinking, oh, they're gonna love that thing that's
Speaker 1: around the corner, and then it turns out they never
Speaker 1: even went around the corner. That's gotta be a sobering experience.
Speaker 1: It's also how they found out if a puzzle they
Speaker 1: designed was too easy and people just breathe through it,
Speaker 1: or maybe they found out it was impossible that without
Speaker 1: the fore knowledge that there was a puzzle and how
Speaker 1: the puzzle worked, there's no real way to work it out.
Speaker 1: And it also just showed them if there were any
Speaker 1: elements that just weren't fun to play, and that would
Speaker 1: allow them to go back and refine their design for
Speaker 1: the next build of the game. Now, after Half Life
Speaker 1: was done, the cabal process continued, but it did change
Speaker 1: a bit. Birdwell says that for Team Fortress too, For example,
Speaker 1: cabals tended to include between eight and twelve people, and
Speaker 1: the meetings weren't nearly as long they were a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, not six hours a day. But the collaborative
Speaker 1: process became an important element for Valve, so much so that,
Speaker 1: according to the two thousand twelve employee Handbook, which by
Speaker 1: the way, you can actually find online and it is
Speaker 1: a pretty entertaining read, at that point, all desks at
Speaker 1: Valve were mounted on wheels that allowed him to move
Speaker 1: around the office. Even when the office got large enough
Speaker 1: to encompass multiple floors, there were freight elevators where you
Speaker 1: could wheel your desk and take it to a different floor.
Speaker 1: This would make it easier to form teams within Valve
Speaker 1: and work close by, you know, shoulder to shoulder with
Speaker 1: your teammates for as long as whatever the team project
Speaker 1: was took, and then once it was over, you could
Speaker 1: actually wheel your desk somewhere else and join a different
Speaker 1: team or form a team yourself. In fact, rather than
Speaker 1: just jumped down the chronology, it might be a good
Speaker 1: time to talk about the actual corporate culture of Valve,
Speaker 1: at least circa two thousand twelve, because that was the
Speaker 1: latest employee handbook I have at my disposal. It may
Speaker 1: be that things have changed since then, but the two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve valve. I imagine it was not too different
Speaker 1: from what today's valve is, But this gives you a
Speaker 1: way of imagining how things work inside the company itself.
Speaker 1: The two thousand twelve handbook refers to valves organizational structure
Speaker 1: as flat land, so they don't have a strict hierarchy
Speaker 1: of positions in which directors report to a president and
Speaker 1: then manager's report to the directors and employees report to
Speaker 1: managers or they're overseen by managers. Instead, it's at least,
Speaker 1: in theory, a flat line across the company, with all
Speaker 1: employees being equal. The handbook does say that Gabe Newell
Speaker 1: is the founder slash president, but he it also says
Speaker 1: that he is not quote your manager in the quote,
Speaker 1: so every employee in theory at least has the power
Speaker 1: to green light and ship products. Uh. Of course, the
Speaker 1: manual also says that out of all the people who
Speaker 1: are not your manager, Gabe Newell is the most not
Speaker 1: your manager, and it almost sounds like a double speak
Speaker 1: sort of thing, like he's not your manager, but he
Speaker 1: runs the company. M of course, that could just be
Speaker 1: my interpretation of the manual. So how does this corporate
Speaker 1: culture work in practice. Well. I have not been to
Speaker 1: Valve personally, and they are traditionally a pretty secretive company.
Speaker 1: They've had a couple of different UH folks visit and
Speaker 1: document their visits to the office, but it tends to
Speaker 1: be really controlled and usually there are multiple floors that
Speaker 1: people have no access to because there are top secret
Speaker 1: projects going on in those floors. But it sounds to
Speaker 1: me like the corporate culture Valve would be a rewarding
Speaker 1: but extremely challenging environment for a lot of people because
Speaker 1: instead of taking direction, instead of having a boss who says,
Speaker 1: this is what your job is, these are your responsibilities.
Speaker 1: Here is how we expect you to perform your duties,
Speaker 1: and we will evaluate you based on that criteria. Employees
Speaker 1: at Valve are expected to seek out projects that appeal
Speaker 1: to them and then essentially glam onto them and contribute.
Speaker 1: So you would look around at your fellow employees and say, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you working on? Oh that sounds cool, I
Speaker 1: would like to work on that too. I'm part of
Speaker 1: your team now, Or you could say what are you
Speaker 1: working on? What are you working on? You know what?
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like no one is working on
Speaker 1: this amazing idea I have so I am going to
Speaker 1: launch this as a project, and I'm going to start
Speaker 1: recruiting people to work on my own team so that
Speaker 1: we can get this done. Uh, these projects can be
Speaker 1: just about anything. There seems to be a huge number
Speaker 1: of options to choose from, and for some people that
Speaker 1: could be a little bit intimidating. I know for me
Speaker 1: it would be extremely intimidating. I mean, if you just
Speaker 1: take me to the cheesecake factory and watches I panic
Speaker 1: while flipping through that fifty page menu, you'd understand, like
Speaker 1: sometimes having unlimited options is more restrictive than it is freeing.
Speaker 1: There's actually a whole paradox about that. But if you
Speaker 1: have the aptitude, if you're the person who can thrive
Speaker 1: in that environment, you can, in theory anyway, work on
Speaker 1: any project inside Valve. The philosophy of the company is
Speaker 1: that if you're good enough to be hired, you're already
Speaker 1: on the right path. And in fact, they are very
Speaker 1: careful in the hiring process. They don't want to hire
Speaker 1: someone who is either just a generalist who is pretty
Speaker 1: good at lots of stuff but doesn't have a deep
Speaker 1: expertise in anything, Nor do they want to get someone
Speaker 1: who has an exclusive expertise in one subject and no
Speaker 1: interest or affinity for any other subject. They want to
Speaker 1: find people who have a broad range of skills and
Speaker 1: a narrow range of deep expertise. That's the sweet spot
Speaker 1: for Valve employees. And honestly, they say that they want
Speaker 1: people who can make senior level decisions because in a
Speaker 1: flat hierarchy, where you don't have a boss to report to,
Speaker 1: you are the one making these senior decisions. You might
Speaker 1: end up contributing to one project, but you could end
Speaker 1: up effectively leading another one. Now, within work groups, some
Speaker 1: hierarchies can and do emerge, but they are informal. They're
Speaker 1: not codified in the organizational chart of Valve. Typically, someone
Speaker 1: on a project will end up being a team lead,
Speaker 1: though that person is more often a repository of all
Speaker 1: the information about the project instead of being like a
Speaker 1: traditional manager. And while a group is working toward a goal,
Speaker 1: certain roles and relationships might form because just on necessity
Speaker 1: to make sure you get stuff done uh, and that
Speaker 1: might look more like a traditional company's structure, at least
Speaker 1: temporarily within the confines of that project. But all of
Speaker 1: that will fade away once the goal is complete or
Speaker 1: the project is concluded now. According to the handbook, the
Speaker 1: company also wanted to avoid the problems of crunch time
Speaker 1: because they had gone through that a couple of times
Speaker 1: by the by the year two thousand twelve when this
Speaker 1: handbook was written. Crunch is when you're coming up against
Speaker 1: a deadline and you need to make the mountain of
Speaker 1: work between you and the deadline go away. So typically
Speaker 1: this means working very long hours with an increased amount
Speaker 1: of stress. And if you've ever done a crash study
Speaker 1: course before a test, you know you're just cramming before
Speaker 1: a test. You get an idea of what this is like,
Speaker 1: only crunch is way way worse. Valves Handbook says that
Speaker 1: employee work life balance is really important and that for
Speaker 1: that reason you should only work normal office hours, and
Speaker 1: employees also have no holiday or sick leave policies, meaning
Speaker 1: that you can take as much time as you need
Speaker 1: at least in theory, as long as you're getting your
Speaker 1: work done. Whether this actually happens at the company or not,
Speaker 1: I can't say, but I can imagine why it was
Speaker 1: added in, because, after all, one of the co founders
Speaker 1: a Valve left after half life shipped and part of
Speaker 1: the reason for his leaving was because he had poured
Speaker 1: so much of his time and energy and effort into
Speaker 1: getting the game out the door that it had had
Speaker 1: a real impact on his life at that point, and
Speaker 1: no one wants to drive their talent away. So they
Speaker 1: made a formal policy saying, you know, you should just
Speaker 1: be working your office hours, and anything that's causing you
Speaker 1: to work longer hours than normal, maybe we need to
Speaker 1: take a look at it and make sure that you
Speaker 1: know the priorities are in the right spot so that
Speaker 1: you can actually have your personal time. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's how it actually shakes out in the company.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to say it in the employee handbook.
Speaker 1: It's another thing to see it play out in the
Speaker 1: actual day to day office life. But since I don't
Speaker 1: know anyone at Valve, I can't really get insider information
Speaker 1: on that. If you do work for Valve or have
Speaker 1: worked for Valve, and you have some insight into this
Speaker 1: and whether or not that in fact is the way
Speaker 1: it works within the company, or maybe it's the ideal,
Speaker 1: but that's not how things turn out, let me know,
Speaker 1: because I can tell you as a creative person on
Speaker 1: my end, most of the people I know at this
Speaker 1: company are working very long weeks, and just because you're
Speaker 1: office hours are over doesn't mean you are done working.
Speaker 1: You might be working quite a bit more, even at
Speaker 1: home or on vacation. As it turns out anyway, peer
Speaker 1: review would become the basis of employee reviews at Valve,
Speaker 1: And because there's no real hierarchy, there's no manager director
Speaker 1: that you're reporting to, you would have to rely upon
Speaker 1: your fellow employees to describe your work, and they would
Speaker 1: describe it to some people who would essentially be kind
Speaker 1: of chosen each year to be responsible for interviewing employees
Speaker 1: to find out how everyone is doing job performance wise,
Speaker 1: and compensation decisions would rest on peer descriptions of an
Speaker 1: employee's technical ability, their ability to work within a group
Speaker 1: and contribute valuable input, how much the employee actually contributed
Speaker 1: to products and development, and the employee's general output level.
Speaker 1: So you would end up having, like if you work
Speaker 1: for Valve, then your coworkers that you are in close
Speaker 1: contact with because you're all working together on a specific project,
Speaker 1: they would get interviewed by some of these employees and
Speaker 1: they would give answers like, hey, Jonathan over there, he's
Speaker 1: on your team. Uh, what's he like to work with?
Speaker 1: Did he do anything really uh? Notable in context of
Speaker 1: this particular product, you know, were his contributions meaningful? Did
Speaker 1: they help make the product better? Did they help it
Speaker 1: ship on time? All those sort of questions. The answers
Speaker 1: to that are what informs the decision to increase your
Speaker 1: compensation or not. As it turns out, and Valve really
Speaker 1: wants to reward people based upon their value to the company,
Speaker 1: but not over reward people, so it's a delicate balance.
Speaker 1: They also pride themselves on being more generous with their
Speaker 1: compensation than some other companies like Microsoft and Google. But
Speaker 1: this is important because there's no there's no career ladder, right,
Speaker 1: there's no hierarchy, so you can't be promoted. In fact,
Speaker 1: most Valve employees don't really have a position uh not
Speaker 1: not really not not a real position or even job
Speaker 1: description apart from help Valve do stuff. Some Valve employees
Speaker 1: have an effective job title because if you're ever interacting
Speaker 1: with anyone outside of Valve, typically you need to have
Speaker 1: some sort of job title to make sense of it,
Speaker 1: because anyone who's chatting with you needs to have a
Speaker 1: point of reference. So people who work at Valve who
Speaker 1: have outside facing duties, like let's say it's someone who
Speaker 1: represents Valve at a trade show like E three, they
Speaker 1: probably have a working job title, though within Valve they
Speaker 1: would just be considered another Valve employee. So you can't
Speaker 1: really get promoted, but you can increase your compensation based
Speaker 1: upon your personal performance at work and your technical expertise
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. Uh. The handbook also outlines
Speaker 1: some amenities that the office had at that time. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a different office than where Valve is currently,
Speaker 1: but I suspect that the amenities haven't changed, or rather,
Speaker 1: if they have changed, they've only expanded. But the ones
Speaker 1: that were listed in the two thousand and twelve handbook
Speaker 1: included laundry rooms. There was a room where you could
Speaker 1: get a massage if you need in one. There's a gym.
Speaker 1: There were recreational games like dartboards, that kind of stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: The lobbies sported an enormous valve which, as I understand
Speaker 1: it is also in the new office space. This was
Speaker 1: a gift from Gabe Newell's brother when Half Life one ship.
Speaker 1: They also have a gold crowbar, which was a gift
Speaker 1: from Sierra when half Life went gold. Uh, And not
Speaker 1: to jump too much ahead, but Valve has moved a
Speaker 1: couple of times in its history. During the half Life days,
Speaker 1: there were only about twenty people working for the company,
Speaker 1: but by that number had increased to more than two
Speaker 1: hundred employees, and in the company moved into the Lincoln
Speaker 1: Square Expansion, which is a skyscraper next to the Bellevue
Speaker 1: Arts Museum in Washington, Washington State. That is, so, I
Speaker 1: guess it would be good to go back and explore
Speaker 1: how the company ended up getting so big, which means
Speaker 1: dialing the time machine back to two thousands. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hop in the time machine and head back there.
Speaker 1: The old way back machine has been sitting getting a
Speaker 1: little dusty in the corner. Before I do that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor, and we're back,
Speaker 1: And by back, I mean back to the year two thousand.
Speaker 1: The dot com bubble is poised to burst the final
Speaker 1: original Peanuts comic strip publishes after Charles Schultz's passing, and
Speaker 1: Sony debuts the PlayStation two in Japan. Meanwhile, over at Valve,
Speaker 1: what's going on there? Well, I mentioned in the previous
Speaker 1: episode that Half Life Opposing Force came out. N I
Speaker 1: failed to mention in that episode that Valve didn't actually
Speaker 1: develop that game or expansion pack if you prefer, because
Speaker 1: it really was an expansion on the original Half Life
Speaker 1: game and not a fully fledged game on its own right. Instead,
Speaker 1: this game was developed by someone else. It was actually
Speaker 1: developed by Gearbox Software, which would go on to make
Speaker 1: a two thousand one expansion for Half Life called Blueshift.
Speaker 1: Gearbox became known later on as the creators of a
Speaker 1: series called Borderlands. So the folks at Valve we're looking
Speaker 1: at other projects, namely half Life two and Team Fortress too,
Speaker 1: and a couple of other projects as well. The company
Speaker 1: was also supporting the work of the mod community, which
Speaker 1: helped entrenched Valve in the hearts of hardcore gamers everywhere.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned in the last episode, when the company
Speaker 1: really liked a mod, they were likely to acquire it,
Speaker 1: and that was the case with a little mod of
Speaker 1: the Half Life competitive multiplayer mode called counter Strike. Now.
Speaker 1: That mod put players into one of two teams. You
Speaker 1: either played as a terrorist or a counter terrorist, and
Speaker 1: each team had a certain goal depended upon whatever the
Speaker 1: game type was is for that particular playing session, Completing
Speaker 1: the goal would gain your team a point for that round.
Speaker 1: After a certain number of rounds determined before you actually
Speaker 1: start playing the game, the team which had the most
Speaker 1: points would win. Now, that does not necessarily mean you'd
Speaker 1: win if you've got more kills than your opponents, because
Speaker 1: sometimes the objective wasn't too just kill as many people
Speaker 1: as you possibly could. However, killing opposing team team members
Speaker 1: tends to help no matter what the game type is.
Speaker 1: The game rewards tight team play and ultimately became a
Speaker 1: popular title in the e sports realm because while you
Speaker 1: could excel at counter Strike if you were just an amazing,
Speaker 1: lead skilled player, what you really needed was a team
Speaker 1: of people who could work well together in order to
Speaker 1: to excel at the game itself. If you are an
Speaker 1: amazing player and all your teammates are nubes, then you're
Speaker 1: probably not going to do so well in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things, especially if you're up against a team
Speaker 1: that has, you know, decent communication skills. You need to
Speaker 1: have a good, solid group together, and that's what made
Speaker 1: it a prime candidate for E sports now. Counter Strike
Speaker 1: was the work of two members of the Half Life
Speaker 1: modding community, and those were Meanly a k A. Gooseman
Speaker 1: and just Cliff Lee did nearly all the development on
Speaker 1: the mod, while Cliff helped publicize it. He had a
Speaker 1: Half Life fan site that would publish and promote mods
Speaker 1: and maps in the half Life community. Their work so
Speaker 1: impressed Valve that the company extended to them the invitation
Speaker 1: to become employees, and they both accepted that invitation. In
Speaker 1: two thousand, Valve released counter Strike one point oh. It
Speaker 1: became one of the most popular multiplayer games of all time,
Speaker 1: right out there with games like Call of Duty. In fact,
Speaker 1: even today, after nearly a decade and other versions of
Speaker 1: counter Strike coming out, the original counter Strike is still
Speaker 1: going and has more than fifteen thousand people playing it
Speaker 1: as I do the research for this podcast. In fact,
Speaker 1: the day that I did the research for this there
Speaker 1: was a peak number of players hitting seventeen thousand, seven
Speaker 1: sixty six, which is pretty incredible for a game that's
Speaker 1: that old. By the way, Cliff provided the voice of
Speaker 1: the radio commands in the game, so you would get
Speaker 1: little commands over your radio that came from the from
Speaker 1: Jeff Cliff himself. Well, Meanly would stay on with Valve
Speaker 1: for a little while and would shift work to counter
Speaker 1: Strike to the full sequel to counter Strike. Eventually, Valve
Speaker 1: decided that they were not going to develop counter Strike too.
Speaker 1: They made some other counter Strike spinoffs, but the sequel
Speaker 1: itself got scrapped and Lee would leave Valve. As a result,
Speaker 1: Cliff would actually stay on with Valve. Lee would go
Speaker 1: on to work for other games for other developers. The
Speaker 1: count Strike series did continue with spinoffs. Uh, there just
Speaker 1: wasn't a counter Strike two. So in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: counter Strike Condition zero published. This was a game that
Speaker 1: was developed by Turtle Rock. They developed that particular version
Speaker 1: of counter Strike and it was still using the gold
Speaker 1: Source game engine, which was the same one that powered
Speaker 1: Half Life and the original counter Strike Mod two. Other
Speaker 1: games would follow. There was counter Strike Source, which used
Speaker 1: a different game engine that we'll talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit later in this episode. That one also published in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, and then there was Counterstrike Global Offensive,
Speaker 1: which would not publish until two thousand twelve. That one
Speaker 1: was developed in partnership with Hidden Path Entertainment five years later.
Speaker 1: That particular version of counter Strike, that is Counterstrike Global
Speaker 1: Offensive remains one of the most popular games on the
Speaker 1: Steam platform. In fact, when I checked it today as
Speaker 1: I do this podcast, there were more than four hundred
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand concurrent players. Nearly half a million concurrent
Speaker 1: players playing a game that's five years old. That is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Back to two thousand, Valve released a game called Ricochet
Speaker 1: in two thousand and It was developed by a guy
Speaker 1: named Robin Walker who was an Australian game designer. He
Speaker 1: was part of the team who had developed the Team
Speaker 1: Fortress mod for Quake World, and when Valve decided that
Speaker 1: they were going to acquire the Team Fortress assets and
Speaker 1: end up acquiring the company essentially or the group that
Speaker 1: developed them, uh, Robin Walker was one of those guys
Speaker 1: and came over to Valve. So he had joined Valve
Speaker 1: about two years earlier. Now the employee handbook describes Ricochet
Speaker 1: as an example that quote demonstrates to the mod community
Speaker 1: how a game can be created quickly and easily with
Speaker 1: Valves s d K end quote. S d K stands
Speaker 1: for Software Developer Kit, So in other words, Ricochet was
Speaker 1: meant to say to the mod community, Hey, we want
Speaker 1: you to make awesome games, and here are the tools
Speaker 1: you can used to do that, So go out there
Speaker 1: and make the next cool, super awesome game. And obviously
Speaker 1: Valve has a vested interest in this because if people
Speaker 1: go out and create an awesome game, and Valve sees
Speaker 1: a way of marketing that they can acquire that game,
Speaker 1: the game developers get rewarded for the work they've done,
Speaker 1: and then Valve can sell that game to a wider audience.
Speaker 1: Ricochet was developed internally. This was not a moded game
Speaker 1: that they picked up, but Walker created Ricochet and modified
Speaker 1: Half Life into a new type of game. It was
Speaker 1: a competitive multiplayer game, so you know something counter Strikes
Speaker 1: a competitive multiplayer game as well, but Ricchet is very
Speaker 1: different from Counterstrike and Ricochet. Players would control the character
Speaker 1: first person shooter style, but you would have all these
Speaker 1: different disc shaped platforms in a giant arena that are
Speaker 1: suspended over an infinite pit it appears to be so
Speaker 1: you can jump from platform to platform as part of
Speaker 1: this game, those part of the strategy is jumping from
Speaker 1: one platform to the next while trying to take out
Speaker 1: your opponents. So you had to worry about all these
Speaker 1: sorts of different angles. You had to worry about making jumps.
Speaker 1: If you missed a jump, then you would fall to
Speaker 1: your death. You had to worry about where your opponents were,
Speaker 1: and there are also little elements along the edges of
Speaker 1: the playing field that would allow you to bounce off
Speaker 1: of them, so if you jump toward them, it would
Speaker 1: redirect your jump or allow you to ricochet. Thus the
Speaker 1: name and actually reminds me a lot of the disc
Speaker 1: game in Tron in a lot of ways, although that
Speaker 1: may just be the graphics that are really reminiscent of that.
Speaker 1: The gameplay itself is quite different now. Originally, Valve wanted
Speaker 1: to release this game and then have updates come out
Speaker 1: over time, allowing it to continually evolve. That would eventually
Speaker 1: become the model for Team Fortress to further down the line,
Speaker 1: but Ricochet never quite got that benefit. It just sort
Speaker 1: of languished, and a lot of folks look at it
Speaker 1: as a totally failed title. It became something of a
Speaker 1: joke within the gaming community and definitely something that Robin
Speaker 1: Walker would find painful to discuss, because clearly there was
Speaker 1: the gem of a really cool idea here, but it
Speaker 1: just never got the support outside of its initial development
Speaker 1: that it really needed in order for it to become
Speaker 1: a really compelling game. However, I would argue that if
Speaker 1: you look at something like Ricochet, you could easily see
Speaker 1: where the other future developers would come up with ideas
Speaker 1: that were really compelling that put their own twist on
Speaker 1: the first person shooter genre. I'm specifically talking about Portal,
Speaker 1: but that's a game we'll have to cover in Part
Speaker 1: three of this series. Also spoiler alert, there will be
Speaker 1: a Part three of this series. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: to suggest that Valve is so important a company that
Speaker 1: requires three episodes, but rather that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of lessons to be learned in the story of Valve,
Speaker 1: that there are a ton of things that happened through
Speaker 1: the course of valves history that are really valuable to
Speaker 1: understand for other companies. It's not just Valve. So while
Speaker 1: I understand that i've I've covered other companies with fewer
Speaker 1: parts that had longer histories than Valve, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of deep lessons to be learned in
Speaker 1: these histories. So that's the only reason I'm really spending
Speaker 1: that much time on this one now. In two thousand one,
Speaker 1: Valve released a couple of half life expansions. While counter
Speaker 1: Strike would become the most popular online action game that year,
Speaker 1: and behind the scenes work would continue on Team Fortress Too,
Speaker 1: as well as the sequel to Half Life, but it
Speaker 1: became clear that, at least for Team Fortress Too, things
Speaker 1: were going to take a lot longer than game Newell
Speaker 1: initially expected. In fact, in many ways, it was going
Speaker 1: to become another Half Life, in that numerous delays and
Speaker 1: internal issues would cause the game to come out much
Speaker 1: much later than what they had hoped. These days, gamers
Speaker 1: call this sort of thing Valve time, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of a dismissive term, almost a pejorative about the delay
Speaker 1: between when you expect a game and whether or not
Speaker 1: it ever comes out. That that time in between is
Speaker 1: called Valve time. Like, yeah, but how long is that?
Speaker 1: In Valve time, you might say, all right, what was
Speaker 1: coming out next year, But in Valve time, that really
Speaker 1: means two, three, six years from now. So uh. These
Speaker 1: long stretches have made Valve employees a bit more hesitant
Speaker 1: to talk about big projects because of the issues that
Speaker 1: stirs up within the gaming community. I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: want to announce that a game is coming out, have
Speaker 1: that day come and go with nothing shipped, and then
Speaker 1: have to answer to the gaming community over and over again,
Speaker 1: because they are persistent and largely unforgiving, and it can
Speaker 1: be very frustrating from a creative perspective to deal with
Speaker 1: that level of animosity, or even not even if it's animosity,
Speaker 1: let's say that there's no ill will or anything. Just
Speaker 1: having to answer the same question over and over again
Speaker 1: can become demoralizing. So these days Valve is less likely
Speaker 1: to talk about the stuff that's in development. So we'll
Speaker 1: check back with Team Fortress two in the next episode
Speaker 1: and maybe touch on it a couple of times throughout
Speaker 1: this one and talk about some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: went down during its development. But the following year, two
Speaker 1: thousand two, was when Valve relocated to a new office space.
Speaker 1: So they had started off in Kirkland, Washington, they had
Speaker 1: signed a five year office rental agreement, and they decided
Speaker 1: that they would relocate to Bellevue, Washington. It was also
Speaker 1: in two thousand two that Valve made an announcement that
Speaker 1: would end up transforming the company on a level that
Speaker 1: I suspect no one anticipated at that time. And this
Speaker 1: was an announcement that happened at the Game Developer Conference
Speaker 1: in two thousand two. That's when Valve announced Steam. Now,
Speaker 1: the actual platform of Steam wouldn't launch until two thousand three,
Speaker 1: but they announced it in two thousand two. So what
Speaker 1: is Steam and why is it such a big deal? Well,
Speaker 1: when it launched, it wasn't nearly as big a deal
Speaker 1: as it is today, and I don't think anyone could
Speaker 1: have anticipated it. But first, at the time, Steam was
Speaker 1: pretty much necessary for Valve. So Valve was working on
Speaker 1: developing or supporting tons of multiplayer games, either the games
Speaker 1: that they had developed in house or the mods that
Speaker 1: were based upon the game they had developed. That game
Speaker 1: essentially being Half Life right, So Half Life and all
Speaker 1: the different modifications that came out, all of them required
Speaker 1: this kind of ongoing support because Valve would constantly tweak
Speaker 1: things so that they would run a little better, more smoothly,
Speaker 1: that they would remove exploits, that they would remove vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: But that meant that people had to use the latest
Speaker 1: version of the game or to play with each other.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you have the latest version of
Speaker 1: counter Strike, but I've got a version that's two versions behind.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you've got one point four and I
Speaker 1: have one point too, we can't play together because our
Speaker 1: games are no longer compatible. I I cannot match everything
Speaker 1: you have. There might be new maps that you have
Speaker 1: that I don't have, and this sort of mismatch meant
Speaker 1: that we could not have a compatible gaming session with
Speaker 1: one another. I would need to update my game to
Speaker 1: be the same version as yours. Uh. And actually it
Speaker 1: ends up being more complicated than that, because I would
Speaker 1: need to have the right version to even log into
Speaker 1: a server and be able to play on that server.
Speaker 1: So what Valve wanted to do was develop a platform
Speaker 1: that would make it easier to patch games like counter
Speaker 1: Strike and Steam was that solution. It's an online platform,
Speaker 1: which means you have to log into an online account.
Speaker 1: You have to have an Internet connection for it to work.
Speaker 1: Once you're logged in, the platform can scan the versions
Speaker 1: the various Valve games. Later on it would be other
Speaker 1: games as well, but in the early days it was
Speaker 1: just Valve and really it was just Half Life and
Speaker 1: the various mods, and then it would make sure that
Speaker 1: the version you were using was up to date. And
Speaker 1: if the version you're using isn't up to date, it
Speaker 1: could automatically update those games to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: ready to go and you could log in and have
Speaker 1: your online gaming session. Eventually, Valve would extend this to
Speaker 1: apply not just to online multiplayer games, but also single
Speaker 1: player games that you can play offline. Let's say you
Speaker 1: buy Half Life and you only want to play the
Speaker 1: single player campaign, you have no interest in playing the
Speaker 1: multiplayer campaign. Well, once this really got going, you had
Speaker 1: to have a Steam connection even to play your single
Speaker 1: player game on your computer, because even though the whole
Speaker 1: thing is self contained, even though you are playing data
Speaker 1: that lives on your computer, you would require that persistent
Speaker 1: connection to the Internet in order to actually play it.
Speaker 1: And a lot of gamers do not like this, particularly
Speaker 1: since at the time in the early two thousand's, not
Speaker 1: everyone had a persistent Internet connection. It wasn't really common
Speaker 1: in the gaming world or in the households in general,
Speaker 1: and some gamers really resented having to log onto an
Speaker 1: online service just to play a game that, in their minds,
Speaker 1: should exist completely on their own machines with no need
Speaker 1: for outside access. And I can't say that I fully
Speaker 1: blamed them. I mean, I find it very frustrating to
Speaker 1: try and play certain games that should not have any
Speaker 1: real Internet component and find out I can't do it
Speaker 1: because my Internet connection is uh is down or is unreliable.
Speaker 1: I have an Internet connection that sometimes just poops out
Speaker 1: on me, and if I have a game installed on
Speaker 1: a computer or a console, is really frustrating to have
Speaker 1: that experience of launching the game and being told, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, you can't actually play this because I
Speaker 1: can't connect to the servers to authenticate. In fact, that's
Speaker 1: another point that Steam was made for. It was for authentication.
Speaker 1: This is a way to combat piracy. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that if you want to play a game, you
Speaker 1: log into Steam, which would check to make sure the
Speaker 1: game you were playing was in fact a valid copy.
Speaker 1: It would make sure that you had the license to
Speaker 1: play that game and you weren't just pirating a copy
Speaker 1: of it. Now, if you're an honest customer, that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily sound bad, right like, well, you know I bought
Speaker 1: the game. It's checking to make sure I bought the game.
Speaker 1: I get it fine, you know whatever, you might think.
Speaker 1: The only people who really get upset at this tactic
Speaker 1: are software pirates, the people who steal games and that
Speaker 1: they find out that the stuff they stole they can't
Speaker 1: actually play. But it turns out that you can be
Speaker 1: a completely honest customer and still have really negative experiences
Speaker 1: due to this sort of authentication or digital rights management strategy.
Speaker 1: The implementation caused problems to people even when they had
Speaker 1: legitimately purchased their copy of a game. So here's one
Speaker 1: way Valve games are popular. They are really popular games.
Speaker 1: They a lot of people end up buying them on
Speaker 1: day one, and then they launched their games, they want
Speaker 1: to play them right away. Well, if you have an
Speaker 1: authentication strategy that requires your games to dial into a server,
Speaker 1: and on day one of your game, everybody is trying
Speaker 1: to play it, your servers could get overwhelmed with all
Speaker 1: these requests. Tons of people are logging in they just
Speaker 1: want to play their games, and these may be single
Speaker 1: player games that have no multiplayer component. Because the server
Speaker 1: that authenticates the play sessions would be overloaded. This could
Speaker 1: cause delays, and then you have a growing number of
Speaker 1: gamers who are frustrated that the single player game that
Speaker 1: they own on their machine cannot launch because of a
Speaker 1: problem on some other computer out there on the internet.
Speaker 1: They have no control over that, and that gives credence
Speaker 1: to the argument that authentication strategies frequently punished legitimate users
Speaker 1: more than they prevent piracy, because pirates, they'll go to
Speaker 1: an extra step. They'll often work to strip out those
Speaker 1: protections in games entirely so they aren't hampered by these
Speaker 1: same issues because they've gone into the code and removed
Speaker 1: those protections. So they turns out the only people who
Speaker 1: are getting affected by this anti piracy policy are the
Speaker 1: legitimate customers because the pirates have already taken it out.
Speaker 1: So this is a common problem in digital rights management
Speaker 1: solutions in general, not just this particular one, but different
Speaker 1: DRM approaches. So it's a big challenge to create DRM
Speaker 1: that does its job while also not creating a negative
Speaker 1: impact for actual customers. But that's another topic. I could
Speaker 1: do a full episode, and in fact I have done
Speaker 1: full episodes about digital rights management and why it's both
Speaker 1: important and problematic. It's important because people steal stuff and
Speaker 1: it's really easy to distribute digital content without any checks
Speaker 1: or balances, and that has a real impact on finances
Speaker 1: down the line. Um, it's a real problem because more
Speaker 1: often than not it ends up punishing your customers and
Speaker 1: does nothing to dissuade pirates. So yeah, big issue. The
Speaker 1: thing to remember right now is that when Steam launched.
Speaker 1: It was really done so as a means to distribute
Speaker 1: patches and also to sell digital copies of Valve games.
Speaker 1: Later on, Steam would become much more than that and
Speaker 1: has played a large role in the gradual shift away
Speaker 1: from physical media to more digital distribution. Valve saw the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall way back in two thousand two
Speaker 1: and got ahead of the curve big time. But we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that in part three. Now. Steam launched
Speaker 1: on September twelve, two thousand three, and in another year
Speaker 1: it would become a huge deal because that's when Half
Speaker 1: Life two would come out. Meanwhile, we're still back in
Speaker 1: two thousand two. Remember that's when Valve announced that Steam
Speaker 1: was going to launch. It was that the game developer
Speaker 1: a conference in two thousand two. Valve also launched that
Speaker 1: year a second initiative called Valve Anti Cheat or v
Speaker 1: A c VAC. There have been a couple of different
Speaker 1: versions of that. This was software that was designed to
Speaker 1: detect modifications to games that allowed players to cheat in
Speaker 1: multiplayer matches, and there are a lot of different variations
Speaker 1: of this. You know, things that would cause bullets to
Speaker 1: miss you, or things that would allow you to have
Speaker 1: like an auto aim feature essentially on players, especially for headshots,
Speaker 1: because those would be instantly fatal in games like Counterstrike.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of different cheats out there
Speaker 1: that would take advantage of the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: Valve wanted the mod community to be really, really healthy,
Speaker 1: which meant releasing the software developer kits. But that means
Speaker 1: you're giving people the tools to see how the game works,
Speaker 1: understand it, and potentially make these workarounds, these cheats that
Speaker 1: will allow you to UH to boost your abilities or
Speaker 1: remove your opponents abilities unfairly. And in order to counteract that,
Speaker 1: Valve began to develop this software. There are other pieces
Speaker 1: of software that were in place at the time that
Speaker 1: Valve could have acquired, but instead they chose to develop
Speaker 1: their own in house software and they just stopped supporting
Speaker 1: the other types of anti cheating software. So the way
Speaker 1: this one would work is it would look for anomalies
Speaker 1: within games. UH. It would first look for anything that
Speaker 1: it was identifiable, stuff that was already listed in its
Speaker 1: cheap code database, so it's looking for anything that it
Speaker 1: has already recognized previously. It would also look for other anomalies,
Speaker 1: unfamiliar anomalies. Maybe there's a new cheat code, because the
Speaker 1: way hackers work as they keep on making stuff, as
Speaker 1: as code changes, hackers will change up their approach to
Speaker 1: try and take advantage of the way that code works.
Speaker 1: So the software itself had to have the ability to
Speaker 1: identify things that were outside the norm of regular gameplay,
Speaker 1: and then upon detection, the various game engineers could take
Speaker 1: a look at those anomalies and determine, all right, is
Speaker 1: this actually indication of a cheat? Is it a glitch?
Speaker 1: Is it just a weird thing that happened because this
Speaker 1: one particular seve circumstances that had never happened before in
Speaker 1: a game, did happen in this game? Because sometimes that happens.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not so much someone's cheating as it's just
Speaker 1: something that the game cannot typically handle. Happens because infinite possibilities,
Speaker 1: you know, and the game reacts in a way that
Speaker 1: you could not predict. So these engineers would review things
Speaker 1: and then they could ban a player. Now, the original
Speaker 1: duration of the band this was back in the counter
Speaker 1: strike days, because counter Strike was really the the target
Speaker 1: of a lot of cheating. I mean, there was tons
Speaker 1: of cheaters who were flocking to a counter strike That
Speaker 1: original band length was twenty four hours, so if you
Speaker 1: are caught cheating, you would be banned for twenty four
Speaker 1: hours from the servers and you could not play. As
Speaker 1: the system evolved, the bands would actually grow in length.
Speaker 1: They become one year or five years, and eventually in
Speaker 1: two thousand five they became lifetime bands. So don't cheat.
Speaker 1: I guess it's the lesson there. So I mentioned what
Speaker 1: was happening on the back end. Um. Once people were
Speaker 1: able to take a look at something an anomaly and
Speaker 1: determined that yes, in fact, this is a cheat, they
Speaker 1: could then add that to a database, which meant that
Speaker 1: from that point forward, the system could automatically detect other
Speaker 1: instances of that same cheat. So even if someone developed
Speaker 1: a new type of cheating software and they rolled it out,
Speaker 1: this particular anti cheat software could pick up on it
Speaker 1: relatively quickly, and after review, it could be built into
Speaker 1: the system to be detected automatically when it happens in
Speaker 1: the future, so that bands happened without too much human
Speaker 1: interaction required. Now, there's some types of hacks that the
Speaker 1: software could not detect. For example, if you use the
Speaker 1: software Developer Kit to modify the game engine in a
Speaker 1: way where you can see through the various textures. It
Speaker 1: essentially gives you the equivalent of X ray visions. You
Speaker 1: can look right through walls and other obstacles and just
Speaker 1: see where other players are. No matter where they are at.
Speaker 1: You might just see an outline for things like walls
Speaker 1: and doors and that kind of stuff. Uh, that kind
Speaker 1: of cheat would not get picked up by the VAC software,
Speaker 1: So there were people who were using that so they
Speaker 1: could keep an eye on an opposing team. Even if
Speaker 1: they were hidden behind cover or sneaking around, it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: You could see them. And that could also explain how
Speaker 1: if you are up against an opponent and they always
Speaker 1: seem to know where you are, no matter how careful
Speaker 1: you are, it could be they're using that cheat against you,
Speaker 1: or they might just be really wicked good. Sometimes, if
Speaker 1: you play enough games, you'd learn all the tricks and
Speaker 1: you just go with the probabilities. If you know, people
Speaker 1: tend to rush out this one door at the top
Speaker 1: of matches, you know, to camp that door and take
Speaker 1: people out. But there are people who will cheat. I
Speaker 1: don't get it. I don't understand cheats. I mean I
Speaker 1: realized that when you play a game, you want to
Speaker 1: feel like you're the best, But using cheats doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you're the best at all. In fact, very much means
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. You're really just taking the game
Speaker 1: out of it. There's no skill there, You're just cheating,
Speaker 1: and all you're really doing is punishing other players. I mean,
Speaker 1: any sort of success you're experiencing isn't due to your
Speaker 1: own skill. So if you're only happy because you're making
Speaker 1: other people miserable, well I would suggest that you start
Speaker 1: asking yourself some pretty tough questions about why making other
Speaker 1: people unhappy makes you happy, because that doesn't seem cool
Speaker 1: to me because it's kind of messed up. Man. But
Speaker 1: never mind it. That's off topic. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: more to chat about with the story of Valve Part two,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back now. It's two thousand three and
Speaker 1: a major event happens to Valve. That becomes an example
Speaker 1: of how game companies have some huge issues to contend
Speaker 1: with that are outside of actually making a game work.
Speaker 1: That's that's enough right there, right, just trying to create
Speaker 1: a game that does what's supposed to do. That's fun
Speaker 1: to play that can be a successful product in a
Speaker 1: very crowded marketplace. That's already a huge challenge, but Valve
Speaker 1: encountered something else that was even more complicated. Someone managed
Speaker 1: to infiltrate valves computer system. They stole the source code
Speaker 1: for Half Life two, which was in development at the time.
Speaker 1: It was not finished, and then that source code found
Speaker 1: its way onto the Internet and got wide distribution across
Speaker 1: the Internet. People were pirating the source code for the
Speaker 1: game left and right. This was a disaster, so gamers
Speaker 1: were really eager to continue those adventures of Gordon Freeman
Speaker 1: from Half Life. They began to scoop up this source code,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't really finished. It wasn't a full game.
Speaker 1: It was only the way you know as the game engine.
Speaker 1: Really it was the way the game worked, and it
Speaker 1: had some stuff in it, but it wasn't a fleshed
Speaker 1: out product. And part of that ended up being a
Speaker 1: huge black eye for Valve, not just because the source
Speaker 1: code leaked that someone managed to infiltrate their systems, but
Speaker 1: also because the game was supposed to come out in
Speaker 1: two thousand three. Half Life two was supposed to debut
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, but it wasn't ready, and the
Speaker 1: company had not yet publicly addressed this issue. They had
Speaker 1: not admitted that the game was going to be a
Speaker 1: year a moother another year in development. Uh, it was late,
Speaker 1: but they had not actually said that it was going
Speaker 1: to take another year. So this was a big issue
Speaker 1: because Valve not get a chance to get ahead of
Speaker 1: the story and say, you know, we promised this game
Speaker 1: in two thousand three. It is not ready. We don't
Speaker 1: want to release a game before it's ready, because it
Speaker 1: will be a terrible experience for you. It will be
Speaker 1: a terrible experience for us. So trust us, We're going
Speaker 1: to continue working on the game. It will come out
Speaker 1: next year. They didn't even have that chance. It was
Speaker 1: spoiled for them. So game Newell ultimately discovered that his
Speaker 1: own corporate email account had been compromised and that key
Speaker 1: logging software had been installed on machines in the Valve offices.
Speaker 1: Key logging, by the way, does exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It logs key strokes. Hackers use these programs to spy
Speaker 1: upon people in general, and in particularly use them to
Speaker 1: get login ideas and passwords to systems. So you essentially
Speaker 1: get a a document of all the different key strokes
Speaker 1: used on that machine while the key logging software was active,
Speaker 1: and if someone was using it to log into accounts,
Speaker 1: then you get those passwords. It's a clever way to
Speaker 1: get around all that encryption nonsense, right, It's also really nasty. Well.
Speaker 1: The culprit turned out to be a young German guy.
Speaker 1: I think he was a teenager, might have been eighteen
Speaker 1: at the time. I think his name was Axel Gimbe. Uh,
Speaker 1: it might just be gimb My German is really rusty,
Speaker 1: so on my apologies, but gimb g E m b
Speaker 1: E had gotten into hacking after he himself had been hacked. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had installed malware on his system accidentally. He was
Speaker 1: trying to get a pirate copy of the game Warcraft
Speaker 1: three at the time, and instead of getting really upset
Speaker 1: and he decided to reverse engineer the malware. He learned
Speaker 1: how it worked, and I learned more about creating malware
Speaker 1: of his own in order to infiltrate systems. His goal
Speaker 1: was to be able to play games. He wanted to
Speaker 1: play as many games as he possibly could, and he
Speaker 1: felt like he couldn't buy them. He didn't have the
Speaker 1: money for them, and he had what was described in
Speaker 1: multiple sources as a rough upbringing. So I suspect that
Speaker 1: he didn't have a whole of support at home to
Speaker 1: get into the hobby that he enjoyed. So he really
Speaker 1: wanted to play the games, and he decided that stealing
Speaker 1: them would be fine. That it was. You know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that he was trying to sabotage a game. He
Speaker 1: just really wanted to play things and he didn't otherwise
Speaker 1: have an opportunity. By the way, this is no way
Speaker 1: justifies stealing a game. In case you were wondering, just
Speaker 1: because something exists doesn't mean that you have a right
Speaker 1: to it. That might come as news to some of you,
Speaker 1: and I know that there have been people in the
Speaker 1: past who have yelled at me for getting on my
Speaker 1: soapbox about this, but it it remains true that just
Speaker 1: because something exists doesn't mean you have a right to it.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, any company that makes something and
Speaker 1: does not make it available to everyone, uh, they don't
Speaker 1: deserve to be the targets of theft. But they certainly
Speaker 1: are making themselves big targets because if they make something
Speaker 1: people want and then they don't make it available, that's
Speaker 1: just encouraging lots of bad behavior, so blame goes all around,
Speaker 1: although ultimately it falls on the thief, I would argue
Speaker 1: while Axel found the source code for Half Life too,
Speaker 1: while he was snooping around Valves network. He was able
Speaker 1: to get access to the network because he found access
Speaker 1: to another company that was doing business with Valve and
Speaker 1: there was sort of a tunnel between that company's server
Speaker 1: and Valved servers. So by infiltrating this partnered company that
Speaker 1: had pretty poor security, he was able to then get
Speaker 1: access to Valves system, which had pretty good security on
Speaker 1: the whole, but did not have good security with this
Speaker 1: partnered relationship. Uh. He then started looking around. At first,
Speaker 1: he was pulling out documentation about the game and just
Speaker 1: reading about it and getting really excited, and then one
Speaker 1: day he discovered the source code and he made the
Speaker 1: decision to download it. He did that on September nineteen,
Speaker 1: two thousand three. Now, Axel has said that he never
Speaker 1: uploaded that source code to the Internet, but he does
Speaker 1: admit that he shared that code with someone else, and
Speaker 1: that person, who as far as I know, was never named,
Speaker 1: did take the step to upload it to the internet.
Speaker 1: Axel had said that he was initially promised that this
Speaker 1: person he showed the source code to wasn't going to
Speaker 1: do anything with it. Axel was very proud of his
Speaker 1: accomplishment and he wanted to kind of brag a little bit.
Speaker 1: But apparently he took this person at his or her
Speaker 1: word that they were not going to share the code,
Speaker 1: and then of course the code got shared, so the
Speaker 1: code made the rounds on the internet. People downloaded it
Speaker 1: like crazy. The potential impact of val of his bottom
Speaker 1: line was catastrophic, or it could have been catastrophic. It's
Speaker 1: actually impossible to say you never know how many sales
Speaker 1: you miss out on on these things. You can't say
Speaker 1: that for sure, because you until you actually make the sales.
Speaker 1: You don't know how many people bought the thing, and
Speaker 1: you'll never know how many people would have bought it
Speaker 1: had they not pirated it. They impact on sales. Argument
Speaker 1: against piracy is a shaky one because we make those
Speaker 1: arguments without knowing how many sales were actually prevented. At
Speaker 1: any rate. It was an embarrassing situation for Valve, and
Speaker 1: it's certainly caused them financial issues because they had to
Speaker 1: respond to it, and they also had to respond to
Speaker 1: the fact that gamers now knew that Half Life two
Speaker 1: was nowhere close to being finished game. Newell actually took
Speaker 1: to posting to a thread and half Life two. This
Speaker 1: was on October second, two thousand three, and there was
Speaker 1: a forum official forum on Valves website for half Life two,
Speaker 1: and Newell wrote and laid the cards on the table
Speaker 1: and said, hey, half Life two is not ready. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna be ready for another year. The source code
Speaker 1: that is not the game, but is the work on
Speaker 1: the game in progress got released, uh prematurely. It was
Speaker 1: leaked and released, and we would like some help tracking
Speaker 1: down the person who did this. Within Valved, things were
Speaker 1: looking pretty grim. Development for half Life two was costing
Speaker 1: about a million dollars per month and the game was
Speaker 1: clearly a year out from being finished. So even if
Speaker 1: you had not read Gabe Newell's post, if you looked
Speaker 1: at that source code, you realize, like, this isn't a game,
Speaker 1: this is a lot of code. In fact, initially if
Speaker 1: you just download the source code, it went and run
Speaker 1: on most machines, you would have to build a platform
Speaker 1: upon which it could run. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: it was just useless information, and there was a legitimate
Speaker 1: fear within Valve that the leak would cause enough damage
Speaker 1: to destroy the company before it could even complete Half
Speaker 1: Life too, and a lot of employees felt demoralized. Their
Speaker 1: unfinished work was stolen and was being judged unfairly because
Speaker 1: it wasn't finished. Uh, it was not remotely a fun
Speaker 1: or complete game. So they were going to be judged
Speaker 1: on something that was just the bones of a game,
Speaker 1: and they were dealing with a community that was mad
Speaker 1: at them because the title was so far behind schedule
Speaker 1: and they had not yet you know, admitted to that
Speaker 1: when this all happened. Axel would eventually send an email
Speaker 1: to Valve admitting his theft and said that he felt
Speaker 1: badly about how it turned out that he did not
Speaker 1: intend for the code to go public. He also perhaps
Speaker 1: brazenly asked about getting a job at Valve now. Newell
Speaker 1: said he would be interested to talk to Axel and
Speaker 1: they would set up a phone interview. At the conclusion
Speaker 1: of that phone interview, at which Axel was, you know,
Speaker 1: talking with a different person at Valvue was and toy
Speaker 1: that Gabe Newell himself self. But Axel was told, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we're interested in flying you out to the
Speaker 1: United States and have a second interview here in person.
Speaker 1: What Axel suspected but did not know for sure, was
Speaker 1: that this could be a trap. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: allegedly a trap. It was not a real job interview.
Speaker 1: It was an attempt to get Axel to come over
Speaker 1: to the United States where he could be apprehended by
Speaker 1: the FBI and then held and interrogated there for the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of prosecuting him on US soil. Axel agreed
Speaker 1: to the interview, but before he could actually be flown
Speaker 1: over to the United States, you know, they had to
Speaker 1: get visas for him and his family and everything. Before
Speaker 1: he could do that, the German authorities acted and they
Speaker 1: raided his house and they arrested him, and happened on
Speaker 1: May seventh, two thousand four. That's when they burst into
Speaker 1: his house and they held him for questioning. And they
Speaker 1: were concerned not just with his involvement with the valve
Speaker 1: infiltration and the leaking of the half life source code.
Speaker 1: In fact, that really wasn't what they were really worried about.
Speaker 1: They thought that he might have had some involvement with
Speaker 1: a different piece of malware called the sassor worm. I'll
Speaker 1: have to do a full episode about the Sassor worm.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal at the time. Axel actually
Speaker 1: was a bit insulted by this accusation because he felt
Speaker 1: the Sassor worm was shoddy coding. He actually said, well,
Speaker 1: the the malware of the Sassor worm. Sure, it's based
Speaker 1: off the same basic vulnerability that my stuff was based
Speaker 1: off of. But the sasser worm would cause your system
Speaker 1: to crash where his mind would keep it stable. So
Speaker 1: I would never code something that crappy. It's kind of
Speaker 1: funny really, but authorities were really concerned about it. It
Speaker 1: was freaking havoc in Europe. So Axel admitted uh to
Speaker 1: infiltrating Valve. He explained the whole thing, how he was
Speaker 1: able to do it, what he had stolen. He continued
Speaker 1: to to say that he was not the person to
Speaker 1: share the information on the internet, but he did, you know,
Speaker 1: he was ultimately responsible for the code getting out there
Speaker 1: because he was the one who gave that code to
Speaker 1: the person who did share it. And um, he said
Speaker 1: the whole thing was motivated by his desire to play
Speaker 1: the games, that he wasn't trying to do industrial sabotage
Speaker 1: or anything like that. The German authorities told him that
Speaker 1: he was actually lucky to have been apprehended in Germany
Speaker 1: rather than finding himself overseas and in the custody of
Speaker 1: the FBI. Axel eventually would stand trial for his crimes
Speaker 1: against Valve and was sentenced to two years probation, and
Speaker 1: since then he's expressed deep regret over his action, saying
Speaker 1: he wished he could go back in time and not
Speaker 1: do those things because he genuinely loved the games, and
Speaker 1: while he was motivated with a desire to play the games,
Speaker 1: he realizes that that was a kind of childish and
Speaker 1: selfish motivation and ultimately it caused a lot of problems
Speaker 1: for Valve, the very company that he loved, and he
Speaker 1: loves the games from Valve. So he certainly feels a
Speaker 1: lot of regret for his role in that whole thing,
Speaker 1: and he says that, you know, he you know, he
Speaker 1: has apologized numerous times and interviews for those actions, and
Speaker 1: I think that's an important little thing to look at
Speaker 1: as well outside of Valve, just this whole motivation for
Speaker 1: you know, why hackers do what they do. Not everyone
Speaker 1: is doing it in a way to actually make a
Speaker 1: profit or to hurt anyone and yet their actions can
Speaker 1: cause a great deal of harm, so you can't dismiss it.
Speaker 1: But you also can't just assume the darkest of motivators
Speaker 1: on behalf of those hackers. As I mentioned earlier in
Speaker 1: this episode, two thousand three was also when Steam launched,
Speaker 1: although it was much more modest than what it is today.
Speaker 1: And Valve also acquired another popular Half Life mod in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, and that mod was called Day of
Speaker 1: Defeat and it featured the Western Front of World War
Speaker 1: Two as it's game setting. This was a multiplayer only
Speaker 1: game in which players chose characters of various classes to
Speaker 1: complete objectives either on the Allied side are the access side,
Speaker 1: and they would compete against other teams obviously on the
Speaker 1: other side of the game, which leads us up to
Speaker 1: two thousand four. Now, that would end up being a
Speaker 1: huge year for Valve, and I think I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to wrap up right here and include two thousand four
Speaker 1: in our next episode, and we'll build from there. But
Speaker 1: as a preview for what happens in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: the stuff I'm going to cover more thoroughly in our
Speaker 1: next episode. Two thousand four would see Valve release a
Speaker 1: new game engine called Source. So they had been using
Speaker 1: a game engine called gold Source, which was based off
Speaker 1: the Quake game engine, and as I mentioned in the
Speaker 1: previous episode, they changed about seventy of the code in
Speaker 1: Quake Engine to become gold Source. Source would be a
Speaker 1: further branch off of that and become the next generation
Speaker 1: of game engines upon which most of Valves games would
Speaker 1: be based from that point forward. It's also the year
Speaker 1: that Half Life two would come out. So in our
Speaker 1: next episod and we'll talk about the Source engine, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about Half Life two, we'll talk about the evolution
Speaker 1: of Steam and where Valve is today. So we'll compress
Speaker 1: a lot of things our next episode. I know that
Speaker 1: in Part one and Part two I was getting really
Speaker 1: granular year by year with what was going on with Valve,
Speaker 1: but again, this was so that we could understand the
Speaker 1: corporate culture of Valve and its effects on how things
Speaker 1: came out, as well as get a deeper understanding of
Speaker 1: why gamers are so emotionally invested in this company. In
Speaker 1: large part is because the company had already shown a
Speaker 1: great deal of respect and value toward its customers. So
Speaker 1: in our next episode will kind of compress the last
Speaker 1: decade a little bit more than that of Valves existence,
Speaker 1: and talk about where it's gone from there, including what
Speaker 1: the heck happened to Half Life three, a question that
Speaker 1: refuses to die well. Also talk about some other games
Speaker 1: like Left for Dead and the Portals series and how
Speaker 1: those got started and how they got wrapped up in Valve.
Speaker 1: But for now, it's time to close this episode down.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember if you have
Speaker 1: any questions or suggestions for future episodes, whether it's a
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