Former Valve executive now heads Microsoft's PC gaming division

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,240   +192
Staff member

valve microsoft

Microsoft recently hired Valve’s former director of business development Jason Holtman. The executive, who had been with Valve for eight years, will now lead Microsoft’s PC gaming and entertainment division according to Holtman’s LinkedIn page.

Holtman confirmed the news through a brief statement to GamesIndustry International. In it, he said he had indeed joined the Microsoft team where he will be focused on making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment. Furthermore, he believes there is a lot of opportunity for Redmond to deliver the games and entertainment that customers want. To work with developers to make that happen is exciting, he concluded.

Rumors surfaced back in February that Valve was preparing to lay off multiple employees after the firing of Jeri Ellsworth one day prior. That just so happened to be around the same time that Holtman departed although it was never clear if he was let go or decided to leave on his own accord. It is believed that more than two dozen Valve employees were let go but the company never confirmed or denied the reports.

During his time at Valve, Holtman was one of the biggest forces behind the growth of Steam as it slowly grew to become the largest source for downloadable PC games. He was even responsible for bringing several third-party publishers to the platform, we’re told. It’ll no doubt be interesting to see how his experience at Valve will be utilized at his new workplace.

Permalink to story.

 
Halo 3 cant be made by microsofts game devision it would be a windows 8.1 only game and badly coded without the features we want lol
 
Hopefully he can get developers interested in Games for Windows Live again. I know that some people see the service as blight on the PC gaming landscape but I'm of the opinion that it's good service that was poorly implemented.
 
Hopefully he can get developers interested in Games for Windows Live again. I know that some people see the service as blight on the PC gaming landscape but I'm of the opinion that it's good service that was poorly implemented.

Steam is easily the better option no need to fill the PC platform with buttloads of useless options that to be honest dont come close to any of the competitors specially when users only want 1 library like steam or make it a option to add to the windows live platform or get microsoft and valve working on a integration that would bolster the xbox one a lot more than just giving users a games for windows live thing that is really annoying and hated.
 
Hopefully he can get developers interested in Games for Windows Live again. I know that some people see the service as blight on the PC gaming landscape but I'm of the opinion that it's good service that was poorly implemented.

Steam is easily the better option no need to fill the PC platform with buttloads of useless options that to be honest dont come close to any of the competitors specially when users only want 1 library like steam or make it a option to add to the windows live platform or get microsoft and valve working on a integration that would bolster the xbox one a lot more than just giving users a games for windows live thing that is really annoying and hated.

That will never happen, don't you know how much Gabe hates Microsoft? Why do you think they are driving linux forward? This is simply an attempt by Microsoft to distrupt Valve, they know they can't compete in the PC space any more, and I'm pretty sure Microsoft said themselves they were not interested in PC gaming any more. Best thing Microsoft has done in the game market in a long time is re-release AOE2 on steam.
 
Give RARE a kick up the arse for me and get them to start making games again, none of this "Kinect Sports" tomfoolery.
 
Steam is easily the better option no need to fill the PC platform with buttloads of useless options that to be honest dont come close to any of the competitors specially when users only want 1 library like steam or make it a option to add to the windows live platform or get microsoft and valve working on a integration that would bolster the xbox one a lot more than just giving users a games for windows live thing that is really annoying and hated.

Personally I don't really care for Steam and it pains me that I have to use any DRM client to play games. That said I have some games that use Games for Windows Live I enjoy playing them on occasion. If the service is improved it won't radically alter the PC gaming landscape and since the service already exists why not shore it up?
 
Booted out after 8 years of hard loyal service... It's true, there is no honor among thieves. MS will probably do the same thing to him.
 
Back