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Ex-Steam boss Jason Holtman joins Oculus VR as head of platform

Jason Holtman joins Oculus VR

Jason Holtman, who previously headed up Steam as director of business development at Valve and more recently worked at Microsoft, is Oculus VR’s latest big hire. Holtman’s taking on the mantle of head of platform. 

“A driving force behind Steam since its earliest days, Jason brings incredible experience building entertainment platforms for both users and developers,” says the VR developer. 

Holtman will be leading the business development and partnership side of Oculus VR, working alongside the engineering and publishing sides.

“I’m humbled to become a part of this team. I’m not one of the pioneering scientists or engineers in virtual reality,” said Holtman. [“B]ut I am one of the people that can’t stop grinning every time I see something new inside the headset, and I’m looking forward to helping shape the transformative experiences that inspire the next generation of developers.”

Holtman left Steam last year, and until February was working at Microsoft to make Windows a better platform for PC. With the failure of GfWL, he may have been keen to get out, and was only with the company for around six months.

Since the Facebook deal, Oculus VR have been doing a lot of hiring. The company has listed just some of the acquisitions they’ve made just since March:

  • Neil Konzen, former engineer at Valve and one of the original Microsoft employees
  • Brian Hook, former engineer at RAD (Telemetry) and the original author of 3Dfx Glide
  • Adrian Wong, former lead systems engineer at Google[x] (Glass)
  • Ian Field, former engineer at ARM and co-inventor of Cortex-M
  • Raul Corella, former head of supply chain at JawBone, Monster, and Leap Motion
  • Laura Fryer, former GM of Epic Seattle and WB Seattle
  • Paul Pedriana, former engineer at EA
  • David Moore, former engineer at RAD (Granny)
  • Kenneth Scott, former art director at 343 Studios (Halo 4)
  • Seneca Menard, former technical artist at id Software
  • Paul Pepera, former environment artist at Valve and 343 Studios
  • Brian Sharp, former engineer at Bungie
  • Aaron Nicholls, former engineer at Valve, 343 Studios, and Microsoft
  • Matt Alderman, former engineer at Valve and ArenaNet
  • Cass Everitt, former GPU architect and engineer at Nvidia
  • Ross O’Dwyer, former at head of development support at Havok
  • Douglas Lanman, former research scientist at Nvidia Research and MIT Media Lab