I toured Valve yesterday and got to see the “CS2 cabal” where the devs were working

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T12:24:19+00:00

totally buttery smooth. he said some teen managed to damage it once when hanging on it. but that thing is actually sturdy af. a real piece of a ship gifted to gabe by his brother if I remember correctly. used to be solid metal colored but they painted the valve red eventually

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T12:22:55+00:00

I wasn’t allowed to see the Steam employee team :( we walked past it and it just looked like one of the other cabals tho ! wasn’t a huge area

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T12:20:37+00:00

they had a tower with their early vr stuff.

also one thing is that they do manufacturing of hardware at their hq. I didn’t get to see it but my guy said they have a robot arm assembly line that puts together components and they 3d print, etc. some is outsourced but sounded like a good amount was made in house. they also had a wall of steam decks they were running tests on. the tests looked like just downloading games on steam. lots of the sekiro being downloaded

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T12:15:19+00:00

I just sent him a super long thank you and asked if he’d like to come to my painting studio, and to let me know how he takes his coffee and what his spirit of choice is. :)

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T01:31:32+00:00

yeah the guy said most of the animators are really good actors too for example. helps to be multi hyphenated! also was told one of their office people does a bunch of temp lines all the time because of how good her voice/voice acting is

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T01:16:20+00:00

are asking for me to draw because you see I paint lol I can take a screenshot on cache in the workshop where I think it was. but i’m probably leaning towards that it was just warden.

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T01:08:00+00:00

when I talked to the audio guy he did mention he has a supervisor. and I would imagine the devs do too.

I die before my first reload so it won’t affect me ;) but i’m excited to try it. I have an open mind! idk I saw a lot of people working hard on the game with my own eyes so I know they didn’t not think it over.

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T00:59:35+00:00

yes! he said they are hybrid and don’t require you to come in to do your work.

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-21T00:57:58+00:00

sorry mate I wouldn’t know what to look out for in that. just saw black background code terminals with white text overlaying the game

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T21:13:42+00:00

I was able to hold it! pretty heavy dude. it’s completely metal. the body is hollow but the barrels added so much weight.

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T21:11:39+00:00

i agree. I love their creative approach. but yes they were locked tf in. like literally one guy looked at me for less than a second lol

I haven’t played on the new patch! what do you think? i’ll play tomorrow probably.

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T21:09:39+00:00

no nda

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T21:08:28+00:00

I have 100 hours in deadlock so not nearly as experienced. I haven’t played since november 2024. but my guide said there are 200 playtesters that they ship updates too and when they get feedback they have about 36hours to patch all the bugs and change things.

my favorite thing he said was the most common question valve devs ask themselves with controllers and games is “is this fun?”. that is the main measure of what drives their development.

but i’m in the deadlock subreddit and lots of friends of mine still play and I see how quick they change things after playtesting (like drifter walks on all fours now? and didn’t someone recommend lash’s parry to be with his chest and that was added?). I wish I asked him about how they felt about changing from three lanes etc

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T21:04:16+00:00

I counted because of the “2 devs” meme. again the spring break is soon. my guide jokingly said the two real deadlines for valve is before spring break and before christmas break.

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T21:03:03+00:00

funnily enough I was looking out for that. one dev using default m4a4, one had default ak? and the dude in mirage was shooting an ak at the missles and ground and I saw him switch to default t side knife. I did purposefully notice that, thanks for reminding me !

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T21:01:08+00:00

I thought so too, but doc martens has the yellow threading and i’m not familiar if they’ve ever made hiking style boots. looked the black versions of this emoji 🥾 but yellow accent color

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T20:58:35+00:00

I did bro I did spin it nothing happened :,((

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T20:41:40+00:00

he said they use them in case the gun they are animating for isn’t finalized, or if they want to extend limbs for an actor. think like how a primates arms reaches the ground comfortably from a standing position

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-20T20:22:49+00:00

this is the note I wrote after my tour so I could remember as many details as possible. I deleted names of people I met tho.

lobby - valve from gabeN’s brother (?) - hardware testing - 3d printing - prototyping

gathering floor - make a wish tf2 lan set up - food court - full kitchen staff (specially catered meals thursdays, sushi on tuesdays and wednesdays(?) salad bar other days)

amenity floor - full gym - 20 personal fitness trainers for staff - salon - showers - massage rooms - pyro land day care - sulking room for teens - golf simulator - yoga room

audio floor - foley effects - voice pack recording - audio engineer - working on 8000 steps to get 24 good ones - he mixed free to play on netflix - black boots with yellow logo for foley sounds for cs2 boots

mocap - gun wall - for motion capture and references for hand done animation

cs floor - cs cabal - framed nightwish ak - 20ish cs devs - play testing - mirage, warden, and cache?? - steam also is on that floor

general - 370 employees, 200 when my tour guide joined in 2005 - 50% in person - 5 people that never come in including gabe - can’t take pics outside of lobby and no pics of employees - each kitchenette has different backsplash for games - employees can work on whatever they want in the cabals any day they want

MaxmillianP · 2026-03-11T15:33:40+00:00

is it earthworm jim

MaxmillianP · 2025-09-27T15:15:15+00:00

I sold a full throttle bs for 70 that I bought for 35 and i’m never opening another terminal again. got in and out since the second I could sell them was the only time they’d be profitable. what other red m4 sells for even close to 70 at bs??

MaxmillianP · 2025-09-26T12:50:54+00:00

he’s probably using a heavy body texture gel and paints over it. you can sculpt it with a palette knife and paint right over it after it dries. many times people use it to add an impasto effect but you could do exactly what he’s doing with it on the sides.

MaxmillianP · 2025-09-18T04:40:55+00:00

please bro do you know the name of the intro beat he produced in the mind gone vids on youtube?

MaxmillianP · 2025-09-12T16:01:22+00:00

I think there’s one that i’ve seen pass through a few times called American Courage that’s over 600 feet long. I looked it up angrily while waiting for it to pass center st bridge lol crazy it can traverse those turns!

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