Valve's Staying Indie

[-smash-]

GameIndustry.bizhttp://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25172 has now published their second part to their interview with Valve's co-founder, Gabe Newell. In this installment, Gabe discusses how the companies independent status in the gaming industry is important to their success, and the fact that "there's no venture capitalists breathing down our neck... I think that helps us make decisions that are more focused on what customers will like than what a third party has an opinion about," he explains.

You've partnered with EA for distribution. Why did you choose to go with EA?[br]It's pretty straightforward. We went around and talked to all the people we could use and for some of the markets that we're in EA is a great partner for that and for other areas we work with other people, but we've been really happy with EA; they've done a great job for us. Sometimes EA gets painted a little bit as the boogeyman... We keep waiting for them to jump round the corner! And it hasn't happened. We've been really happy with everyone there and the job they've done for us.

The community; the business - All of that is the focal point of the interview. Read it over at GameIndustry.biz. Also, if you've missed the first part, you can catch it herehttp://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25081.

 

[Homie]

niceniss :]

 

[Asuka]

Read this earlier, very good interview.

 

[mortiz]

It's only a matter of time before EA bites them in the ass and tries a takeover or something.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

How are they going to do that then? Valve have no shareholders - there's no shares for EA to buy. The only way they could take Valve over is if they offered them enormous sums of money, and Valve already have that.

 

[Avoidist]

I think that we're really trying to let our customers tell us what they like and what they don't like, and we seem to get a really good response. One of the things we released recently was the movie for the Heavy Weapons Guy [one of the character classes in Team Fortress 2], so the feedback we get from that, we go in and read forum posts, we get email telling us what they like and what they don't like, and then we say we should probably do more of those, right, people like those.

Awesome.

 

[Ennui]

Atta boy Valve. They've always stuck to their guns.

 

[eAi]

Don't you mean to link to http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25143 ? Thats the actual interview, rather than the press release based on it...