Valve writer and VR ambassador at Valve Chet Faliszek is leaving the company after 12 years of service. This news has been confirmed by Faliszek speaking to gamesindustry.biz.
During his tenure at the development house/online storefront, Faliszek quickly became one of Valve's most familiar faces and has been working with third parties developing games for Valve's Steam VR platform.
In addition to his position as VR lead, Chet Faliszek has also been involved in writing the story for 2 Half Life episodes, both games in the Portal franchise and both entries in the Left 4 Dead franchise. During his time on these projects, he also worked closely with Eric Walpaw and Mark Laidway, both of which left Valve in the year and a half preceding Faliszek leaving the company.
Speaking to gamesindustry.biz, Faliszek notes that the split between Valve and himself was amicable:
It was nothing exciting or drama filled.Faliszek has been garnering a reputation as a knowledgeable as well as approachable person whom would happily lend their knowledge to aid interested parties in developing games for the nascent virtual reality industry. Because of his work, Faliszek has become well-respected in the VR community by both developers and players alike.I worked there 12 years, shipped a bunch of great games and some amazing hardware and wanted to change things up. There's no news on what's next etc, I will let you know when that happens.
Callum Underwood, the Senior Developer Strategist at Oculus had this to say about Faliszek leaving Valve:
Being mentioned alongside Chet in an article about 'giving weird artists a chance' was one of the highlights of my career so far. Chet has been instrumental at Valve in pushing VR forward, and has been a driving force with Developers from indie to AAA. He will be greatly missed in the VR community, but at least this may mean I don't have to hear about his bloody cats quite so much anymore.What do you think of Chet Faliszek leaving Valve? Let us know in the comment section down below!
