Old Man Flurry: Chet Faliszek Leaves Valve

Hot on the heels of his hero Erik Wolpaw, Valve's VR top-dog and grizzled bossman Chet Faliszek has announced that he's leaving the company. Amicably, he claims, but anyone who's ever met him will know that's not possible.

Once famous, Chet Faliszek was previously an assistant to comedy writer Erik Wolpaw at the much missed internet website Old Man Murray. That ended in 2002, after which Faliszek wandered lost for three terrible years, until Wolpaw got him a job at Valve Software in 2005. "Together" they wrote the words for games like Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two, Left 4 Deads 1 and 2, and something called Dotertwo.

Since Valve stopped making games, Faliszek moved on to helping them sell their VR hat, the Vive, and has been a huge advocate for the inevitably doomed technology over the last few years. But now it seems he desires something new.

Faliszek told GI.biz of his reasons for leaving, "Nothing exciting or drama filled. 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."

Which I think we can translate to, "I will let you know when Erik lets me join in on his new cool thing."

This means Valve has now lost three of its high profile writers in the last year and a half, with Marc Laidlaw leaving in January 2016. That just leaves Jay Pinkerton of the famous writing names, with Ted Kosmatka having also left after finishing Dota 2 lore. But then with no games being made, there's presumably not a lot for them to do.

Disclosure: Chet Faliszek has always been very mean to me.