Valve Corporation - "Valve Time"

"Valve Time"

"Valve Time" has become an industry term used jokingly with game releases from Valve, used to acknowledge the difference between the promised time for released content stated by Valve and to the actual release time; "Valve Time" includes predominant delays but also includes some content that was released earlier than expected. Valve itself has fully acknowledged the term, including tracking known discrepancies between ideal and actual releases on their public development wiki and using it in announcements about such delays. Valve ascribes their delays to their mentality of team-driven initiatives over corporate deadlines to make sure they provide a high quality product to their customers. Valve's business development chief Jason Holtman stated that the company sees themselves as an "oddity" in an industry that looks towards punctual delivery of products; instead, Valve " as hard as we can to make the best thing possible in the right time frame and get people content they want to consume. And if that takes longer, that's fine." For that, Valve takes the concept of Valve Time as a compliment, and that "having customers consistently looking at our property or something you've done and saying, can you give me more" is evidence that they are making the right decisions with their game releases, according to Holtman. The company does try to avoid unintentional delays of their projects, and believes that the earlier occurrences of "Valve Time" delays, primarily from Half-Life development, has helped them improve their release schedules.