Valve developer who is publicly visible explains why most Valve developers don't interact with the public much: 'I am the only one stupid enough to be on twitter'

Valve is a somewhat closed shop. Staff interviews are rare and community engagement is kept to a minimum. The studio's newest game, Deadlock was released semi-covertly, with no official confirmation before the cat was out of the bag. (This may have been inspired marketing.) Valve employees, in general, keep their thoughts to themselves. Valve engineer Fletcher Dunn, some would say foolishly, is a brave man.

Dunn is a man of extraordinary overqualification. He has, for example, co-authored a book on 3D mathematics in game development. His role at Valve appears to be focused on networking. He has worked across all of the studio's titles, even though CS2 is the focus. He also leaves breadcrumbs for the community, which is often starved of information.

Dunn, using a smiley emoji to refer to the recent Armory Update, said: "I have new network stuff that will ship in CS soon." Counter-Strike fans were ecstatic to hear that a Valve developer was talking about their beloved game. Discussions soon turned to new maps, Operations, and other exciting things Dunn would deliver.

Dunn wrote shortly after, "Oh crap! This was a mistake." "Don't get excited. I am only a small part of this amazing team."

It doesn't matter what Dunn says - and the vast majority is about networking issues - it is at best an "rare W" by Valve, and at worst, some sort of implicit confirmation for Half-Life 3. This makes him a target for the spittle flecked mob that thinks harassing developers via social media is a harmless pastime.

VoxPopuli490, a blog with a perfect name, says "Fix the game for overpaid idiots." Another healthy missive says "Hey idiot, fix the subtick. You c**t." Some of these things are hard to understand: "You broke CS2 network packets without reason and 2sec lags in CS2." Fletcher Dunn, you're right! What about that?! Dunn is also expected to find a new CS-server in Colorado.

To be fair to Counter-Strike, which is a community of many millions of individuals, rather than a toxic blob of people, many saw the Dunn heap-on and went into him to thank him for his communication, tell him not to listen to the idiots, etc.

Dunn says that she uses a rule of thumb: If my first interaction with a random stranger on social media is that they are a snarky idiot, I assume the total value of future interactions will be negative and block them. This sounds exhausting. It is possible to express negative criticism, disagreement, or feedback in a polite manner.

Oh, it's possible. Bizarro, a CS fan, says in a sweet way: "I don't even know what you do for Valve. But you are their best employee." Dunn says that citation is needed. "Not by far." I'm the only one stupid enough to be on twitter."

Dunn was the hero the TF2 Community had been waiting for since 2021 when he fixed a major issue with the community servers. Dunn was a hero at the time, as he played along with the jokes about Valve's game maintenance: "I'm only the janitor," said our hero.

Dunn's work seems to be split between CS2 Deadlock and he is the only person who puts his head above the parapet, so it's likely he will remain a focal for all the good, bad, and ugly. It's still sad that when someone from a company like Valve is willing engage in public, people quickly give them every reason to not do so. You can't say Valve won't talk to you and then, when they do, start yelling at them and bringing up all your problems. You can, but we'll see how it ends up.

Dunn, despite the unpleasantness of the situation, maintains a good sense of humor and doesn't appear to be affected by it. He posted last week about using ChatGPT in order to identify a matchmaking algorithm that he could use with Deadlock. He is interested in experimenting and one of his posts contained a mathematical expression that led to the inevitable.

"Lambda??? Half-Life 3 confirmed???" Patsabame, a breathless Patsabame, says.

Dunn has one word for you: "lol."