March 10, 2019 Despite some layoffs from the division, considered one of Valve’s long-time engineers says the corporate continues to be pursuing VR.
Valve has confirmed that 13 full time staff had been laid off at Valve final month, and a variety of contractors had been let go on the similar time. The precise nature of these layoffs are undisclosed, however a few of these affected appear to be from the corporate’s VR and {hardware} division. Valve was working on new VR hardware as lately as final yr, although a lot of that work wasn’t offered to the general public.
“Last month,” Valve says in a press release to UploadVR, “13 full time employees were let go and a portion of our contractor agreements were terminated. It’s an unfortunate part of business, but does not represent any major changes at the company. We thank those affected for their contribution and wish them well in future endeavors.”
Nat Brown lately tweeted that he was not on Valve’s VR challenge, as of February 7. Other Valve staff have been faraway from the corporate’s personnel page over the previous month, as UploadVR notes, and people embody individuals engaged on initiatives starting from VR to the Steam Controller.
As a personal firm, Valve isn’t topic to the identical form of investor scrutiny as most of the trade’s largest publishers, so we’re not aware about the varieties of press releases that accompany information just like the latest Activision layoffs.
There had been comparatively latest rumours a couple of Half-Life prequel coming alongside a Valve-branded VR headset, although we by no means acquired any substantial thought of what that challenge would possibly seem like.
Alan Yates, considered one of Valve’s high VR engineers, explained on the Vive subreddit that regardless of the layoffs, the corporate continues to be actively pursing analysis and growth into VR. Redditors and others thought that the layoffs would possibly imply Valve was scaling again in that space.
“I am still at Valve, still working on VR R&D with the original core team and a bunch of people you’ve never heard about that have joined over the years,” Yates wrote, when a redditor tagged him right into a thread through which redditors questioned if he was nonetheless on the firm.
Yates stated that regardless of rumors, VR wasn’t the primary group impacted by the layoffs.
“As you can see from the jobs website we are still hiring for VR and other hardware-related skills,” he stated. “Does anyone really believe we would abandon a nascent media like VR, especially one we have such a significant position?”
“Hardware is of great strategic importance to our future, VR and otherwise,” he concluded. “Abandoning that capacity would be stupid.”
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