Valve engineers made the move to PlayStation 3

When Portal 2 was announced for PlayStation 3 by Valve CEO Gabe Newell at Sony’s E3 2010 press conference, many assumed it was Newell’s idea to make the move to the platform. According to Valve project manager Erik Johnson, it was not.

“No one here decided to do anything about PS3 development, and the way we vote to do something about it is to simply start working on it,” Johnson told Issue 116 of Develop.

“That’s why we’re working on the PS3 now, because we had about four engineers — some of which have worked here for a few years — who were annoyed that we hadn’t developed for that platform, and they were willing to cross over.”

The engineer’s actions go in line with Valve’s work ethic, which Johnson describes as a ‘nobody tells anybody what to do’ workplace.

“Having someone tell someone else what to do [at Valve] would just be completely destructive to Valve. We’re completely allergic to that.”

Valve has yet to sneeze.