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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Did a little digging, apparently in a 2021 lawsuit, documents were released with bad redactions (they blacked out over the data, but the underlying information was still able to be highlighted and copied/pasted. Very common error when redacting PDFs)
I haven’t checked the data myself but according one user this was the breakdown:
“Total staff as of 2021: 336 people
Administration: 35 people making an average of 4.5 million a year
Game Developers: 181 people making an average of 1 million a year
Steam Developers: 79 people making an average of 960k a year
Hardware Developers: 41 people making average of 430k a year”
Normally I would guess that “average” here probably means a few people making a ton of money while others get shafted. But I think “admin” probably accounts for that. We have no official way of knowing the true breakdown since this info is not supposed to be public
This actually seems like not a terrible spread. The average for the top earners is a little more than 10x the average for the lowest earners… Obviously outliers could be skewing that data (there could be one hardware developer making 30 million while the others work for poverty wages) but from the data we have, this isn’t nearly as wide a gap as I would have expected.
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If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
It would really help if the would-be competitors focused on consumer-facing features rather than… whatever it is they’re doing. GoG is doing a great job of this, but EGS is still missing even the most basic features years later, because they keep trying to get market share through buying exclusives and giving away free games and that’s sadly never going to work out. They just don’t understand what the consumers in the industry they’re trying to operate in want.
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This actually seems like not a terrible spread. The average for the top earners is a little more than 10x the average for the lowest earners… Obviously outliers could be skewing that data (there could be one hardware developer making 30 million while the others work for poverty wages) but from the data we have, this isn’t nearly as wide a gap as I would have expected.
Wouldn’t surprise that much, as far as I’ve heard from as far as I remember Valve is a great place to work and by all accounts treat their employees well.
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Revenue. Revenue is not profit.
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If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
Interesting that first part… Respectfully, no one is entitled to sales on any platform. As a consumer, I’ve tried other launchers and stores. I hate them all. I choose to only use Steam (for the time being). It’s simply choosing the superior option, but it is an option. I can’t say the same for my internet, energy, or cable companies…
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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.
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I wonder if they’re also getting paid more or does greedy Gabe just take it all to fund his mega yachts.
capitalism gonna capitalism, man. you know the answer.
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I think the difference here is that Valve isn’t forcing a monopoly in the way our tech overlords like Google and Amazon do through acquisitions and regulatory capture.
Several companies have tried and mostly failed to compete with Steam, I’m primarily thinking of whatever the EA and Ubisoft launchers are. The two closest have been GOG whom I would argue is fairly successful considering what their goals are and Epic, whom I would say is much less so.
This is the key point people are missing.
Valve arent paying for exclusives or anything, they are just delivering a far better product than anyone else. GOG has it’s DRM-free market, but outside of that, there’s nothing close. Even if Epic Games had feature parity, fuck that company.
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They probably should hire more people and reduce profits. But you can’t just hire anybody and that’s a lot of work.
This is revenue not profit. They need to pay their operating costs with these funds. Their operating costs are probably pretty high considering their global network and distribution. Hiring more people would likely have a minimal impact on their operating costs and each new person may not contribute much to their revenue considering their business model.
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I wonder if they’re also getting paid more or does greedy Gabe just take it all to fund his mega yachts.
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If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
You can sell your game on Steam, in addition to other platforms as well.
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Remind me again which game developer had to release their game on Steam? Or which publisher had no choice but to market on the platform? And are you the sole user forced to use Steam, or was that someone else…?
Yeah, why do you buy things if you’re against capitalism? Checkmate.
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I’d think it’s marketing teams, HR, managers, the C-suite.
Those who manage people usually make more than those who dos tuff because they take on more responsibilities.
Yeah I know that’s bullshit and that they shift responsibilities all the time, but good managers do shoulder bullshit so workers can work.
The C-suite being included there made sense of that disparity.
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Valve still makes a ton of money from kids gambling. They don’t care about anything else than money and yet gamers keeps kissing their ass.
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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.
Mono=one poly=seller… and last I checked Steam is not the only seller of video games. They aren’t even the only seller of digital video games. They aren’t even the only seller of digital video games for SteamOS.
They are the largest because they do what’s right by their customers and employees. As a ‘for instance’, I bought Portal 2 for the PS3 many years ago. I no longer have my PS3 but I can still play Portal 2 (as well as Portal which was just thrown in for me) on any PC.
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This is revenue not profit. They need to pay their operating costs with these funds. Their operating costs are probably pretty high considering their global network and distribution. Hiring more people would likely have a minimal impact on their operating costs and each new person may not contribute much to their revenue considering their business model.
Didn’t catch that, thanks. What is their actual profit before personal cost?
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Didn’t catch that, thanks. What is their actual profit before personal cost?
They are a private company, so they don’t have to disclose that.
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Correct. The article is discussing revenue.
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Correct. The article is discussing revenue.
The headline is misleading, it was worth mentioning.
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Interesting that first part… Respectfully, no one is entitled to sales on any platform. As a consumer, I’ve tried other launchers and stores. I hate them all. I choose to only use Steam (for the time being). It’s simply choosing the superior option, but it is an option. I can’t say the same for my internet, energy, or cable companies…
Respectfully, no one is entitled to sales on any platform.
I’ve never said that. Of course if I‘m publishing a game I want it to be successful. If I was a book publisher, I‘d have to sell via Amazon, too, simply because a lot of people never buy anywhere else. It is a requirement to sell on Steam for a successful campaign, and OP implied otherwise.
