21 years of service is crazy

Just a reminder to not engage with trolls.

Stopping by to say hello! You seem cool

I stumbled upon your profile randomly. It's very nice of you to take the time to give such a detailed reply to some random person on the internet, even if they didn't appreciate it!

I'm leaving the below post up even though it's a response to someone who has since deleted their questions. The original request was to add them as a friend on Steam for business networking purposes. They replied to my post by saying they didn't have time (to read the post? answer my questions? follow my advice?), misunderstood LinkedIn as a dating platform, and tried to make me feel guilty for not accepting their friend request "out of kindness."

Look...

There are no shortcuts to breaking into the industry. If you're not willing to invest in developing your skills and abilities, and instead want to rely on connections (especially ones as tenuous as the Steam friends list), then I can't offer you much advice except to reconsider your approach.

Hey! Disclaimer - I don't work for Valve. I understand Dave's point and Steam isn't a great medium for creating business contacts. Try LinkedIn, maybe.

I can give you a bit of direction based on my experience though.

What is your area of interest? Are you a coder? Modeler? Map maker? Do you want to work on the Steam application or web content? The best way to get into the game industry is to have a volume of content that you can point to, in the same way that a photographer will have a portfolio, for example.

I was a known quantity before I started working in the industry. I came into the industry through my support of the quake-based mod and mapping community, and my focus on web development. I had content and achievements I could point to, that were created or performed outside of a professional context. It was my virtual portfolio.

Hopefully some of this is useful to you. There is no shortcut for creating business contacts. For me, Steam is where I go to play some games.