Really great interview! Thanks for posting this. I love how he seems to care about his employees health. Taking everyone and their family to Hawaii once a year sounds not just great but smart also.
Do they really pay some gamers 20k per week? I haven't played online games in years but my first thought was "This can't work for Valve. How can a gamer produce so much value for the community in a FPS."
But then again, people were making tons of many back in the days of UO and Diablo II by selling virtual items. So, these people already provided a value for hard money, too.
Valve isn't making a decision to pay a specific player 20k a week, it's merely a consequence of the economy system that Valve has created. It's the players paying other players 20k a week, not Valve per se.
Do they really pay some gamers 20k per week? I haven't played online games in years but my first thought was "This can't work for Valve. How can a gamer produce so much value for the community in a FPS." But then again, people were making tons of many back in the days of UO and Diablo II by selling virtual items. So, these people already provided a value for hard money, too.