Despite the strong future painted for Valve during DICE 2013, reports indicate about 25 of their employees have been laid off.

The exact number remains unknown, but several Valve employees have confirmed their termination. On Twitter, hardware engineer Jeri Ellsworth said:

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

— Jeri Ellsworth (@jeriellsworth) February 13, 2013

Meanwhile, director of business Jason Holtman’s departure has also been confirmed—his profile has been removed from Valve’s website, along with the profiles of several other employees. Keith Huggins, Moby Francke, Tom Leonard, Realm Lovejoy, Marc Nagel, Bay Raitt and Elan Ruskin, have all had their profiles removed since February 5.

In response to these reports, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell issued the following statement to 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.

Source: Gamasutra