It seems to me that the organization worked as it intended to work. The consensus was the project wasn't a big enough moneymaker, so they didn't fund it properly.

Of course if there was a boss, there would be a pitch, a cold, hard look at the budget and then a decision, which you may or may not like, but you would have to live with it. At Valve there's no one person to blame that you didn't get what you wanted.

But the result is the same: The company didn't go forward with an interesting but not-obviously profitable project.