Valve laid off 13 employees working on virtual reality

An attendee wears a HTC Corp. Vive Pro virtual reality (VR) headset on the opening day of the MWC Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday, Feb. 25, 2019. At the wireless industrys biggest conference, over 100,000 people are set to see the latest innovations in smartphones, artificial intelligence devices and autonomous drones exhibited by more than 2,400 companies. Photographer: Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Valve said it doesn’t spell major changes for the company, though.

Valve has laid off 13 employees, including people working on virtual reality, according to UploadVR. The company has confirmed the layoffs after the publication discovered that it removed a number of employee names from its website. While letting over a dozen people go might sound like bad news for the SteamVR platform, the company said that it doesn’t spell major changes for its plans going forward. Presumably, that means Valve will continue working on virtual reality.

“Last month, 13 full time employees were let go and a portion of our contractor agreements were terminated,” a spokesperson said. “It’s an unfortunate part of business, but does not represent any major changes at the company. We thank those affected for their contribution and wish them well in future endeavors.”

UploadVR found the status of some of the laid off employees. One of them was Nat Brown who was instrumental in developing Steam’s ability to support external GPUs. Rob Rydberg, yet another employee who worked on virtual reality, indicated on his LinkedIn account that he left Valve in February. The other affected employees reportedly worked on the Steam Controller.

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