Ex-Valve Writer Says Huge Teams Don't Work Unless It's GTA 6

Chet Faliszek, a writer who spent 12 years at Valve, has some strong opinions about how games get made. In a recent YouTube video, he tackled a question fans have asked for years: why doesn't Valve just hire more people? His answer was blunt. "I just think games aren't meant to be made by ten thousand people. These giant teams just don't work."

Now, Faliszek isn't saying big teams are never needed. He admits that a project like GTA 6, which is reportedly costing around two billion dollars, might need "countless" hands to pull off. But in his view, Rockstar's massive blockbuster is the exception, not the rule. It's the one case where a giant team actually makes sense.

He recalled a story from a Ubisoft artist who said the company only hires "top artists"—around 3,500 of them. Faliszek thinks Valve has had its own moments of bloat while chasing visuals and fidelity. That's not inherently wrong, he says, but "these huge teams just don't give you a good return on investment."

What bothers him more than the cost is the time. Faliszek says games take so long to make because of indecision and constant rework. "That kind of stuff eats up more time than just making the thing." He pointed to Dead Island 2, which bounced between three studios for nearly a decade, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which arrived 21 years after the original and switched developers twice.

Remote work doesn't get a pass either. Faliszek described it as a "whisper network" where "egos come into play" because your voice isn't heard and you end up on the losing side of decisions. He used Left 4 Dead 2 as a reference point: "We made Left 4 Dead 2 with 45 people. I don't think it would have been a better game with 450." He added that some of the goals the industry chases now push teams to grow bigger, but the best work happens when it's done by "people in the same room."

So, what do you think? Are giant studios the future, or is smaller and tighter still the way to go? Let us know in the comments.