Valve on 13 things they've failed at

This is what is different about valve as a game developer. They will learn from their failures and talk about them with the public. It's a constant feedback loop. If you participate in the valve community your voice will be heard. I've never seen this type of interaction from another company.

It's great to see an article like this. There are a lot of people in the tech/startup community who talk about not being afraid to fail, but very few that actually talk about their own failures.

I think every company learns somewhat from its failures, but I love how valve is really nonchalant about it. Their failures are not this grand secret they're trying to protect. They know they're not perfect, they deal with it and they work it out. Ask many other companies about their failures and they'll get all tight, because they think talking about their failures is bad for business. On the other hand, I think that valve understands that talking about their failures is good for business.

I was there for the start of Steam, the first two days of Half-Life 2, Ricochet. Hate to say it, but those were definitely failures.

Takeaway quote from the article:

Because it got all the way through to customers. It’s like a bug. If you fix a bug before it ever ships, it’s pretty cheap. If you ship it and then fix it, it’s really expensive. Those ones are really bad.

Does anyone else feel that they learn significantly more from failures and missteps than successes? From my former sports years we would spend hours watching film for errors while only touching on good things. Its definitely stuck with me.

They have failed at delivering Episode 3... It's becoming Valve's Duke Nukem