this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Valve veteran slams Tim Sweeney and Epic Games for laying off 1000 people while making 'as much money as possible… and hey Tim, Gabe's better at that than you' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 5 days ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 220 points 5 days ago (21 children)

The actual quote that the tagline paraphrases:

"And so Tim has gone from making games to making one game, spending all his time doing that and trying to make as much money as possible," says Faliszek. "And I guess well, hey, Tim, Gabe's better at that than you. I don't know what to tell you, man, because you stopped caring about making things."

Other good quote:

Faliszek says it infuriates him to see "lazy dev" complaints when companies like Epic "just cut them off at the knees, man." He suggests looking at the documentary about Half-Life and Valve: "And how many people still work there after all those years?"

And it turns out the salary was good. Very good. "They care so much about what they're making that they're still there and they're all rewarded handsomely," says Faliszek. "To be clear, I could retire, I worked my ass off at Valve, and I could retire today. I made more money than I'll ever make. And the money I made is dwarfed by the people who were there longer than me or before me.

"But Valve understood that. That's how you get this thing where people cared, people worked hard, people stayed because they felt they were improving. What they were building on was something that they had agency over and owned. Like, even now, I'm excited when I see the Valve announcement about the VR stuff and everything, that makes me happy.

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 118 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (15 children)

Valve understands that they owe their success to the skill of their employees and knows how precious having such a solid team is. You can't replace that with an expensive CEO or by throwing money at the problem later on. Valve has the best among the best and wants to keep them happy and working for them. They understand that they do best when they're not subject to corporate micromanagement, pressure or threats of layoffs. The results speak for themselves.

Tim however did that classic business move of sacrificing everything for short term gain and on the long run they've completely ruined what used to make the company good.

[–] GalacticSushi@piefed.blahaj.zone 48 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Valve is also a privately owned company. They don't need to make more money this quarter vs last quarter to keep shareholders happy, they can just be happy that they're making a lot of money. That requirement to always become more profitable than before leads companies to enshitify products with anti-consumer "features" and cut costs (ie layoffs).

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I think the point being made is that Gabe rewards his employees first and then himself after, and yet hes still somehow made more money personally than Tim Sweeney.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Somehow" he owns the only PC video game store that matters.

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Well he knows his customers. Have you ever worked in a computer parts store? Every mistake a manufacturer makes is remembered for decades and punished. You can't make shitty stuff and sell it to this crowd. Hell, Epic is technically paying us to use it, and we still won't use it.

[–] MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Epic is technically paying us to use it, and we still won't use it"

I think it's because it feels like an obvious bait and switch. We've seen it so many times over the years. Services reel people in, get them hooked on their platform, then enshittify them with ads and paid subscription tiers etc. Like everything that Epic does just seems so desperate, and that makes me belive they can't be trusted. "Please bro. Please install Epic. Bro I'll give you free games. I swear bro, I won't start scraping your data and selling ads. Trust me, bro. Please"

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago

Seriously. The local drug dealer giving out testers.

[–] baatliwala@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Epic is also privately owned...

[–] Isthisreddit@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Yes, that's exactly the point being made. Tim is basically the movie villain version of a greedy CEO

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