Valve doesn't know how much Orange Box cost to develop

By Tom Bramwell Published 29 August, 2007

"We don't track that."

In light of recent chatter about Stranglehold having cost USD 30 million to make, we thought we'd ask Valve's Gabe Newell how much Orange Box ran to. "I don't know," he told us at Games Convention. "We don't track that."

"One of the nice things about being an independent developer is we just keep everybody busy. We're making lots of money, and we just focus on what we're trying to build and then build it."

All well and good, of course, but surely there must be a number they want to hit? Somebody in the company who's going to measure their work against a big number? Apparently not. "No," in fact.

"We're trying to make the decisions that a gamer would if they were given the opportunity to run a games company," says Newell.

"We've never really even had a conversation internally where we say 'we've put enough money into this - let's just cut it off'. That's not even a conversation that happens at Valve."

All this comes from today's interview with Newell, which also touches on the Orange Box contents (as you'd imagine), Steam, Wii controls and what's going on with those TF2 movie shorts.

But you'd have to look back to our previous interview with Newell for an insight into why Valve might not give much of a damn about sales figures. We'd asked why Valve was set up in such a freeform way, with developers moving between little cabals.

"If you're making cars or you're doing product support, repeatability and defect-detection are critical aspects and you need to build an organisation that works well," he said, "but I think that the challenges that we have right now in the games industry, specifically and more broadly in the entertainment industry, are about inventing new things, about seeing things that occur between disciplines."

"So a lot of time the people who are most successful doing that here at Valve are people who are engineers who have fine arts background, and our goal is not to make them increasingly narrow and increasingly specialised but instead push them to be broader in their perspective."

Which is all very well thought out. But less interesting than finding out how we got him to swear in today's chat, so see to that instead!

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Rayn #1 5 years ago

    ...but what's the point in knowing what it cost to develop? It's gonna sell shitloads so Valve are bound to make money on it. What I care about is how much I'm gonna have to pay for it.
    Edited by 1 at 29/08/07 @ 08:27

  • Fab4 #2 5 years ago

    Its called Accounting, and every properly-run business should be doing it.

  • playgen #3 5 years ago

    They also dont know how much their staff are paid, they just leave a big bag of money on the floor and let them take what they want.

  • speedjack #4 5 years ago

    Frankly, I don't believe him .

    ...and as for the whole 'We're trying to make the decisions that a gamer would if they were given the opportunity to run a games company'... wasn't that what John Romero said when he founded Ion Storm ?

    I hardly think Newell (a man who made his fortune at Microsoft), is that daft or idealistic.
    Edited by 1 at 29/08/07 @ 08:58

  • Les #5 5 years ago

    "Its called Accounting, and every properly-run business should be doing it.""

    +1

    This once again shows how immature the video games industry is. No wonder few developers/publishers actually make money...

  • brainbird #6 5 years ago

    You people do not really believe what he is saying, do you?

  • Rirekon #7 5 years ago

    Let me get this right; When a Developer comes out and says "Our game cost $x-millions to produce" you all reply "Who cares how much it costs just make it fun", but when a Developer comes and says "We don't track how much our game cost, we don't care we just want to make it fun" you all reply "Well you're an idiot, you should know how much it cost"....

    MAKE YOUR BLOODY MINDS UP!

    Personally I cheer Valve for being more interested in making fun innovative games and I'll continue to support them in doing so. Also congratulations to Newell for managing to hold an interview without saying something inherently stupid, unlike everyone else at the moment it seems.

  • the_sas_man #8 5 years ago

    What a load of twaddle. Of course they know - if not they'd a) be out of business and b) his managers would sack him!

  • asphaltcowboy #9 5 years ago

    "What a load of twaddle. Of course they know - if not they'd a) be out of business and b) his managers would sack him!"

    QFT (and obviousnessness). What a load of crap!

  • kangarootoo #10 5 years ago

    @Fab4

    "Its called Accounting, and every properly-run business should be doing it."

    +1. He is also talking bollox.

    I don't believe for a SECOND that they don't know how much it cost. Gabe himself might not know, but someone working for Valve (their accounts for example) can account for every cent. In fact they will HAVE to account for every cent for tax purposes. Its just sales bravado.


    @Rirekon

    "Personally I cheer Valve for being more interested in making fun innovative games and I'll continue to support them in doing so"

    If by "more interested" you mean they care more about making fun games than making money, you are utterley deluding yourself.

  • Rirekon #11 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo;

    Actually I meant more interested in making fun games than expensive games

  • zoidberg #12 5 years ago

    But didn't I hear a few years back that Half Life 2 cost about/over $40 million to make? I'm sure they had accountants for that, since they didn't bring in too much revenue for 5 years of developement time...

    Still, I'm pretty sure he has a big idea on what the company spends every month on its teams, and what its revenues are. Maybe he just didn't tally it all up to: "We've been making Episode 2 for 12 months, it cost us X amount"...

    I don't really care. GET ME THE GAMES FASTER people!

    Episodic my ass!

  • kangarootoo #13 5 years ago

    @Rirekon

    I think Valve do both. Half Life 2 cost a fortuune to make. Not having to track and plan your expenditure doesn't mean you aren't spending a lot, it usually just means you are minted.

    I don't think anyone is interested in making expensive games if they could make the same profit on cheap games. Whether Valve are interested in making expensive games or not is not really a straight forward question, but I'm certain they are interested in making profitable games above anything else. Quality feeds profitability (in an ideal world), but its the profits that drive everything.

    I think first and foremost Valve are interested in making money, which is no bad thing at all. They also know that spending a lot of money on their titles is a sound investment, which is a good attitude I agree.

  • Freek #14 5 years ago

    He doesn't know personally, but the people keeping tabs on the money at Valve sure do.

  • Dr_Lobster #15 5 years ago

    Oh Valvie. I've heard they take around 30-40% for each Steam title, but this is vaguely remindful of id's early days (shareware, Ferraris, etc.) before they had folks like Todd aboard to make them a successful business.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #16 5 years ago

    Maybe, like Sony were measuring PS3 prices in beers, Valve should measure the cost of their development in pies.

    Though if that were the case, it would appear as if Gabe had consumed all of the expenditure personally.


    (do you see what I did there?)

  • subtlesnake #17 5 years ago

    Well, if the size of the Episode 2 team is variable then it might not be easy for them to track how much the project has cost.

  • rock27gr #18 5 years ago

    He certaintly knows how much his company costs to run per month. That doesn't mean he keeps exact track on how a particular game costs; especially if people in the company are working as freeform as the article suggests.

    That said, he must definetely have a rought estimate on a figure, he just isn't willing to say ATM.

  • bengray66 #19 5 years ago

    I believe the old saying goes :

    "An arm and a leg" is how much it has cost them.

  • Cyclone #20 5 years ago

    Personally I'd have loved to hear how much the black box would have taken to produce. Before they cancelled it.

  • kangarootoo #21 5 years ago

    @subtlesnake

    "Well, if the size of the Episode 2 team is variable then it might not be easy for them to track how much the project has cost."

    It would still be an easy task for any competant accountant.

    The only thing that could cloud it a little now I think on it, is if a lot of the team were working on multiple projects at once, and you weren't tracking what hours went where.

    Then you might be saying "well we spent 7 shilling and 6 on wages this year, but its hard to say exactly how much of that was dedicated to Episode 2 and how much went into Bongo Monkey 3". Though even that sort of thing should be accounted for in a decent schedule.

    Though on that basis no company can really say exactly what something cost. "Yeah, the project cost us £50k, but we also spent £10k that year paying our employees to browse facebook and smoke cigs outside". It just depends where you draw your boundaries I guess.

  • zendragon #22 5 years ago

    Translation: I'm not saying!

  • The-Bodybuilder #23 5 years ago

    Complete and utter bull. You mean to tell me a company doesn't watch it's cashflow? Not accounting AT ALL?

    BALLS.

    Do they even pay the staff equal wages?

  • The-Bodybuilder #24 5 years ago

    But how did stranglehold become so expensive?
    Did 90% of the cost go to paying off john woo and chow yun fatty?

  • kangarootoo #25 5 years ago

    "Do they even pay the staff equal wages?"

    Huh? Of course they don't pay their staff equal wages. Last time I looked the games industry was missing a union.

  • zoidberg #26 5 years ago

    Union? Why? Some have WAAAY more experience and talent than others!

  • RazorObsession #27 5 years ago

    I'm sure the IRS would be very interested to know this.

    I'm pretty sure there is someone keeping tabs on that sort of thing, but what Gabe meant is that Valve spare no expense, and money is no object, and once the game is finally on shelves someone taps him on the shoulder to tell him he's made a profit.

    Must be nice to work under these conditions.

  • dryden555 #28 5 years ago

    Gabe just doesnt want to say how much. I loved HL2 but could care less about the add-ons that take a year to make. Lets have a full game please.

  • pesser #29 5 years ago

    HOW MUCH WILL THE ORANGE BOX COST US