Valve laid off 13 full-time employees and 'a portion' of its contractors in February

Valve has confirmed with UploadVR that it laid off 13 full time employees in February, and also severed ties with an unspecified number of contractors. The company said that the cuts will not result in any "major changes."

The cuts came to light when the site compared Valve's current "People" page with an archived version from January. It found nine people listed as employees in January who absent from the most recent list, several of whom have said on social media that they are no longer with Valve.

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

At least four of the former employees were part of Valve's hardware engineering team, but there were also changes to business development, customer support, data science, software engineering, and technical infrastructure. The number and roles of the cut contract workers isn't known.

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell said via email that the layoffs do not reflect a shift away from VR development.

Thanks, Gamasutra.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.