Valve makes almost $50 million per employee, raking in more cash per person than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft — gaming giant's 350 employees on track to generate $17 billion this year
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I don’t think it’s misleading, “generating” implies gross profit, not net. It’s not explicit, but it’s also not misleading.
“Makes”.
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Valve moved into hardware long after its other ventures, so it’s not surprising the hardware devs make less – they’re newer. Still, $430k/yr is an enviable salary…
This was from 2021, so prior to the Steam Deck… that was really their break-out moment, I think, with regards to hardware. The Steam Link and Steam Controller were neat but didn’t really capture their respective markets, and the Index was widely considered one of the best VR headsets on the market but that’s a relatively small market, and it priced out all but the enthusiast tier consumers. The Steam Deck on the other hand had mass appeal and basically ushered in a golden age of handheld PC gaming… not to mention the immense hype around their recent hardware announcements. Could be that their hardware team is making more now.
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Again, implying gross profit, not net. It didn’t say “makes” 50 million profit. You are inferring something that is not otherwise implied.
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I don’t get it. Are there any sources for this?
Are you saying the more people get paid the less work they do? This doesn’t make sense to me. This sounds like a management and hiring issue. If someone doesn’t want to work, you replace them with someone who does. Don’t hire lazy fucks, hire competent people.
If I had a job that pays say 1 million a year, and I know I won’t be able to get paid nowhere near as much at another company, I would make sure I work hard enough not lose that amazingly paid job, because otherwise I will have to work for half that and give up my rich lifestyle.
Again, a management issue for letting employees become zombies and a hiring issue for hiring lazy bums.
It is actually very well established:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-008-0063-2
When Do Financial Incentives Reduce Intrinsic Motivation? Comparing Behaviors Studied in Psychological and Economic Literatures
Objective: To review existing evidence on the potential of incentives to undermine or “crowd out” intrinsic motivation, in order to establish whether and when it predicts financial incentives to crowd out motivation for health-related behaviors. ...
PubMed Central (PMC) (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-effects-on-intrinsic-motivation.pdf
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Ah OK, so the classic monopolies in American History (Standard Oil - controlled 90% of its market; American Tobacco - controlled 80% of its market) were not monopolies.
And Steam controls 80%-90% of the video game market?
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Again, implying gross profit, not net. It didn’t say “makes” 50 million profit. You are inferring something that is not otherwise implied.
Considering that I’ve seen conflation of revenue and profit from actual journalists, I stand by my previous statement.
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Treat customers right and you get rewarded. They are the majority market shareholder because they have earned it, not through deceptive business practices but through being a great company.
If they were a monopoly they wouldn’t allow other game catalogs on their systems, yet I have GOG and Epic on my Steam Deck. In fact, there isn’t even a requirement for me to have Steam on my Steam Deck. Just because a company is the market leader doesn’t mean they got there through unethical means.
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If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
I know! There’s this great game called Fortnite that no one has ever heard of because you can’t get it on Steam. /s
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Do they have any kind of profit sharing program?
I’d be kind of pissed if I worked there and made like $70k or whatever, only to read this shit.
Their lowest paid employees still very likely make 6 figures. Valve has historically taken very good care of their employees.
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Not hard, if you don’t have 20k employees.
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And Steam controls 80%-90% of the video game market?
of the PC video game market, yes.
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That tends to happen when you have a monopoly on an industry where you get 30% of the revenue from other people’s hard work.
Go do your own game shop with the feature set of steam.
We have seen how well that was executed with Epic.I wouldnt even call the GOG implementation bad but it obviously lacks the PR in comparison (+ games like CP2077 are also available on Steam)
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Treat customers right and you get rewarded. They are the majority market shareholder because they have earned it, not through deceptive business practices but through being a great company.
If they were a monopoly they wouldn’t allow other game catalogs on their systems, yet I have GOG and Epic on my Steam Deck. In fact, there isn’t even a requirement for me to have Steam on my Steam Deck. Just because a company is the market leader doesn’t mean they got there through unethical means.
You are equating “monopoly” with “abusive monopoly.”
Google got its monopoly in internet search by being better than the competition. It’s still a monopoly, even though it mostly plays by the rules.
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If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
Hey look, the contrarian is back! Wow! I thought you would take some time to reflect after your wack takes.
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It’s not misleading, you’ve just purposely ignored the meaning of the words to instead imply your own.
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I know! There’s this great game called Fortnite that no one has ever heard of because you can’t get it on Steam. /s
It did well because EGS is so great /s It’s obviously the exception.
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It is actually very well established:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-008-0063-2
When Do Financial Incentives Reduce Intrinsic Motivation? Comparing Behaviors Studied in Psychological and Economic Literatures
Objective: To review existing evidence on the potential of incentives to undermine or “crowd out” intrinsic motivation, in order to establish whether and when it predicts financial incentives to crowd out motivation for health-related behaviors. ...
PubMed Central (PMC) (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-effects-on-intrinsic-motivation.pdf
The research is mostly about overpaying, not high but equal pay for everyone doing the same job. It happens when people compare their effort to others’ and if they feel over-rewarded it can actually lead to two outcomes:
- Increasing effort to justify it, or
- reducing effort
And the evidence is actually mixed between the two outcomes, because different people respond differently to different incentives, like flexibility, holidays, etc.
Equity theory mostly applies only when the work is measurable and the teams/individuals compare themselves constantly.
IMO this can be solved by better management and equal pay for equal work/skillset.
There are also other incentives that can crowd out internal motivation, such as surveillance, pressure, inequality. But obviously management doesn’t want to talk about those, much more profitable to reduce the pay.
High pay alone doesn’t really trigger crowding out.
I still maintain my position that this is largely a management and greed issue. And high and equal pay alone doesn’t create a lazy, zombie workforce.
Here’s some studies and theories arguing the opposite:
Do financial incentives help or harm performance in interesting tasks? - PubMed
There continues to be disagreement about whether financial incentives help or harm performance, especially in interesting tasks. Although the Jenkins, Mitra, Gupta, and Shaw (1998) meta-analysis finds a positive effect of incentives, including in interesting tasks (reported ρ ^ = +.34; our computed …
PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/275/pdfs/efficiency-wages-variants-and-implications.pdf
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Hey look, the contrarian is back! Wow! I thought you would take some time to reflect after your wack takes.
I don‘t think it’s very contrarian or whack to acknowledge the fact that I may need to sell on the biggest platform if I want my game to do well.
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I don‘t think it’s very contrarian or whack to acknowledge the fact that I may need to sell on the biggest platform if I want my game to do well.
I’m referring to your prior comments and history speaking in communities. The most recent one I remember involved Portal, Half-life, and counterstrike.
You’re not at Lembot_0005 level comments yet tho, so that’s good.
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And Steam controls 80%-90% of the video game market?
steam has a 75% marketshare of PC games distribution in the US. the 2nd biggest player, epic games, has a market share estimated from 3% to 7,5%. i can’t find data for steam’s market share outside the US, but i’d expect it to be even higher.
if google can be considered to have a monopoly on web browsers with 73% of the marketshare, even as alternatives (like safari, 13%) exist, i don’t see why steam wouldn’t count as well.
