A considerable number of Valve employees have been laid off. Valve didn’t give any solid numbers or reasons for the layoffs, but affected employees believe that the company is undergoing a "great cleansing" while making "big decisions" regarding its future.
Most reports estimate that no less than 25 employees were fired in the process. To put this number in perspective, it means that more than 8% of the company’s workforce left it in one sweep.
Perhaps the most notable employees who got fired are Moby Francke and Jeri Ellsworth. Francke worked as a character designer on Half-Life 2 and as art lead on Team Fortress 2. Jeri Ellsworth worked at the company’s R&D department, apparently working on game controller prototypes. Other than that, it seems that most layoffs were from hardware and mobile (Android) divisions.
Valve didn’t give any reasons for the layoffs, but Gabe Newel issued a statement stating that: " We don't usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I'd take the unusual step of addressing them. No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We're not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn't working here."
