Multiple Valve employees let go as company undergoes “great cleansing”

Reports are circulating today that Valve has made cuts to its workforce, with a rumoured 25 employees apparently let go including high profile employees like hardware lead Jeri Ellsworth — last mentioned to be working on Valve’s controller prototypes, who tweeted overnight that she “got fired today”.

Gamasutra, reporting on the matter, claims from speaking to affected employees that they were “asked not to speak about specifics”, and that they are lead to believe the layoffs were “driven more by company challenges than by individual performance issues”.

Valve’s head boss-man Gabe Newell has taken the unusual step of directly responding to reports of the firing, releasing a statement to Engadget that reads: “No, we aren’t canceling any projects. No, we aren’t changing any priorities or projects we’ve been discussing.”

“No, this isn’t about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We’re not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn’t working here.”

Source: Gamasutra / Engadget