Report: Up to 25 Laid Off at Valve

by William D'Angelo, posted on 13 February 2013 / 2,858 Views

There have been reports today that several employees have been laid off at Valve. The layoffs have occurred at multiple departments according to one report and up to 25 employees have been let go.

Hardware engineer Jeri Ellsworth was laid off was the first confirmed name to be laid off. She was hired in August 2011 as a hardware engineer to work on the next generation consoles.

"Wow. I suddenly have a lot of spare time. Got fired today. Time for new exciting projects," Ellsworth tweeted.

Jason Holtman, Valve's director of business, was also laid off according to Develop. Holtman played an important developing the relationship between Valve and developers who have released games on Steam. Hotman was hired in 2005.

Gamasutra is reporting that as many as 25 employees may have been laid off. The majority of layoffs have come at the hardware and Android departments. The layoffs are due to challenges in the company and not due to the performance of the employees let go.

Valve's official employee list has several employee names missing, which suggest that these people were laid off as well. The name missing include Jason Holtman which has been confirmed, lead visual designer Moby Francke, developers Tom Leonard and Elan Ruskin, animators Keith Huggins and Matthew Russel,artists realm lovejoy and Bay Raitt, and lead tester Marc Nagel.

6 Comments

Cheddarchet (on 13 February 2013)

Say what you will about it being normal or whatever, it's still a shame to see people lose their jobs. In this case, it doesn't seem like it was expected, either. Best of luck to them.

Show replies (1)

ganoncrotch (on 13 February 2013)

I'm sure having Valve on their resumes should help these people get jobs in the industry pretty quickly :) Some good brains and workers in that company, just probably might be over looked for any games 3rd iteration.... :D

PullusPardus (on 13 February 2013)

-continue- as it says "Hardware engineer" , hardware engineers work on obviously hardware, so there is no need for them post developement of the hardware, its like i said either the 3D glasses that they worked on earlier or the "Steambox"

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PullusPardus (on 13 February 2013)

Why do people find this as bad news? maybe those 25 employees had finished their work on some project, maybe the "Steambox" ? or a game? or some project, that they agreed to make and then leave? , its normal for a company to sever their employees from them after they finished their missions and obligations, why sit them with nothing to do?