Valve recently laid off a handful of full-time employees and contractors, all of which are believed to be from the VR hardware team. It was confirmed by a spokesperson from Valve that the company indeed laid off 13 full-time employees. However, Valve did not confirm the positions of the former employees.
Soon after, Reddit user 2flock posted a message on the forum. Confirming Valve’s layoff of half of the VR hardware team.
ohai 🙂 so as of 7 Feb I'm no longer doing VR at Valve – if I left your question unanswered or your bug unfixed, DM or natbro@gmail.com – happy to help connect you with good folks still there! kthxbye!
— Nat Brown @natbro@mastodon.social (@natbro) March 7, 2019
To some, the message is deemed as credible, simply because 2flock was also responsible for leaking photos of Valve’s supposed prototype VR Head Mounted Display (HMD). Another former Valve VR team member, Nat Brown also took it to Twitter to confirm his departure from Valve. It should be pointed out though, that Brown had left Valve prior to the layoffs.
It should be made clear, Valve’s actions does not imply that the company is folding up its VR headset initiative. However, given the events that have transpired, it’s now unclear what plans the company has for the division. On a somewhat related note, Valve is still on the lookout for a “VR and hardware” software engineer.
(Source: Valve, The Verge, Variety, Reddit)
