John Cook (TF Co-Founder and Steam Dev) Removed from Valve's Employee Page

[-smash-]

It would appear that another veteran employee from Valve has left the company. According to two sources, Valve's employee page and LinkedIn, John Cook may have left Valve about a month ago after working there for 17 years.

You can see which strings were removed from Valve's employee page by going to SteamDB's SteamTracker.

John Cook is the co-founder of the original Team Fortress (along with Robin Walker) and was one of the head developers of Steam since the early days of Half-Life 2.

If this means that he has left the company, John Cook would be known to be the fourth veteran employee of Valve to leave within the last twelve months, following Ted Backman, Marc Laidlaw, and Doug Wood.



Kudos to the Facepunch and NeoGAF communities for spotting this.

 

[User With No Name]

Well I just hope he has left on good terms with the company and not out of spite. Wish him all the best and cannot thank him and Robin enough for all the work they've done on Team Fortress and for Valve.

 

[-smash-]

Agreed.

But I wonder why veterans are leaving now. Retiring after 17 years makes sense. Maybe they're retiring now, right before the next-generation of Valve comes about, because they don't see themselves working for another 10 years on Source 2, first-gen VR, and next-gen iteration of Steam. 27 years is a loooong time, and maybe they think it's time to get out now and make room for employees that will be in this for the long haul.

It's not that things are broken at Valve, it's just that the times they are a changin.

 

[Rancid Sloth]

It hurts to read. Of course times are changing among with people but i am afraid that in world of today there will be no more team like old VALVe was. It will be a killing strike if second EA will be born there

 

[Ennui]

It hurts to read. Of course times are changing among with people but i am afraid that in world of today there will be no more team like old VALVe was. It will be a killing strike if second EA will be born there

This does scare me a little bit. I really don't want to see Valve go down the same terrible road that Blizzard did.