Valve's Staff Cull Won't Cancel Projects says Gabe

When Valve/Steambox hardware guru Jeri Ellsworth went public this week stating "Yup. Got fired today. Time for new exciting projects", it was obvious that something was up at Valve. Today Gabe Newell has responded to this and other, many other departures.

Ellsworth was not alone in waving goodbye, other staff exiting the building. These people include the high profile Director of business development Jason Holtman.

Also, according to GamaSutra, Valve's staff listing is currently bereft of Moby Francke ( lead on Team Fortress 2), Keith Huggins (previously in the world of feature film special effects), Tom Leonard (he worked on design and technology for Half-Life 2, Episodes One and Two, and Left 4 Dead), Realm Lovejoy (worked on Valve’s Portal team), Marc Nagel (a tester of some experience), Bay Raitt (came to Valve having been concept artist and sculptor at the Weta workshop), Elan Ruskin (engine programmer, gameplay developer), Matthew Russell (worked on Alien Swarm, Team Fortress 2, and Portal 2). It must be pointed out here that these are simply names that did appear on the staff list last week, but don't this week.

For his part, Gabe tells Engadget: "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."

Bad and sad news for the staff... could we call this the Curse of JJ Abrams???

(Probably not)