‘Valve Time’, it flows a little differently compared to normal time. Way more slowly. My wife is on a similar schedule. ‘Valve Time’ is a bit of a running joke amongst the gaming community, but it turns out that Valve is far from offended by the tag — it actually embraces the whole schtick, and sees it as a compliment.
“Valve Time is interesting,” said Valve’s business development chief Jason Holtman, speaking to Eurogamer. “To my mind, an interesting thing about being on the inside of Valve and working there quite a while is, what we’re always concerned with is doing what’s right for the customer; doing what’s right for the product. And people get an idea of Valve Time because they’re very used to how maybe other people work and bring things out. Other people have much more formalised schedules. They have dates they have like lines in the sand because of their structures.”
According to Holtman, the extra time Valve takes on its properties is simply a commitment to quality.
“We also value it. If the end result is, we get tagged a little bit of like, we can’t tell when you’re coming out or you take longer, that’s okay with us,” he said. “Because we’re trusting the fact that when it takes longer, it will be better. The thing that is ultimately consumed and played with, customers will like it better – like it better than the thing we could have shipped them a year ago.
“We would infinitely rather have happy customers for decades, rather than a happy batch of customers at one Christmas.”
Valve on Valve Time: “It’s charming. It’s kind of a compliment.” [Eurogamer]
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