Valve hardware dev gets the boot, could work on Occulus Rift

Valve's hardware guru Jeri Elssworth, announced this morning that she'd been let go from the company and would need to find a new workplace to call home. She was thought to be currently working on controller designers and other hardware developments for Valve's Steam Box console system.

Noted for her inventions and hardware experimentation, Jeri tweeted about the layoff a few hours ago, simply stating:

Yup. Got fired today. Time for new exciting projects.

— Jeri Ellsworth (@jeriellsworth) February 13, 2013

She also tweeted a picture of a long line of out of action pinball machines, suggesting that “all the pinball players are sad,” – presumably because she won't be around to fix up their favourite games.

No reason has yet been given for the firing and despite Valve's open nature about its non-traditional business practices, it's not really known how employees are evaluated in their success there and what they need to do in order to maintain a position.

However all need not be sad, as just a few hours after posting the tweet about her firing, one of the founders of the company behind the Occulus Rift VR headset, Palmer Luckey, got in touch with her and suggested she come and see what they are working on. Perhaps we'll see miss Ellsworth helping design VR goggles before long.

@jeriellsworth You should use some of that free time to make a trip down to Oculus HQ and check out what we’re working on!

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) February 13, 2013

KitGuru Says: It will be interesting to see if this holds back development on Valve's Steam Box hardware, or if it perhaps takes things in a new direction now one of the bigger players in the company's hardware team is no longer around.

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