If you look at a multi-player game, it's the people who are playing the game who are often more valuable than all of the animations and models and game logic that's associated with it.

Traditional credentialing really doesn't have a lot of predictive value to if people will be successful.

Don't ever, ever try to lie to the internet.

We just always focus on quality, which can be frustrating during the wait, but which pays off when we're done (we hope).

About half the people at Valve have run their own companies, so they always have the option not just to take a job at another game company, but to go start their own company. The question you always have to answer is, 'How are we making these people more valuable than they would be elsewhere?'

A lot of times I make people better by getting stupid, distracting, bureaucratic stuff off their desk. That's an incredibly easy way to make a senior person more productive.

One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue.