Valve's unique approach to corporate governance is probably the reason why it's such an efficient company.
Triumph
link
fedilink
1612M

Revenue. Revenue is not profit.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
122M

Then again, somehow I don’t expect Valve’s expenditures are that high, except download server costs.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
72M

Eh, that could also include sales revenue, of which Valve pays out 70% to right holders.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

People are the biggest cost for sure. Then servers probably.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
672M

Correct. The article is discussing revenue.

Triumph
link
fedilink
362M

The headline is misleading, it was worth mentioning.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
112M

It’s not misleading, you’ve just purposely ignored the meaning of the words to instead imply your own.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

Have you ever considered that different people can interpret things differently? Why are you jumping down someone’s throat for clarifying an ambiguous title?

hzl
link
fedilink
English
-42M

Is this fun for you?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
192M

I don’t think it’s misleading, “generating” implies gross profit, not net. It’s not explicit, but it’s also not misleading.

Triumph
link
fedilink
02M

“Makes”.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
8
edit-2
2M

I “make” my gross pay. I don’t really talk about “making” my net pay. I don’t much think about my net pay, outside of actual budgeting.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
162M

Again, implying gross profit, not net. It didn’t say “makes” 50 million profit. You are inferring something that is not otherwise implied.

Triumph
link
fedilink
32M

Considering that I’ve seen conflation of revenue and profit from actual journalists, I stand by my previous statement.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

Buddy. Take a breath for a moment. I mean this constructively; it’s an opportunity to learn.

What you’ve just said here is essentially this:

  1. Some journalists sometimes make errors.
  2. Therefore I choose to make an interpretive error.

Please remember, we all make errors (myself included). The best of us learn from them.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
112M

Nah he’s right. Nobody buys a widget for 5 bucks and sells it for 10 bucks and says, “I made 10 bucks”. By your rational I could buy a car new for 25 grand, sell it 10 years later for 12 grand and say I “made” 12 grand off it.
“Make” has typically implied profit for as long as I can remember.

@[email protected]
cake
link
fedilink
English
32M

I interpreted it as profit.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
102M

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.

Kühlschrank
link
fedilink
English
12M

Levels.fyi data from 1 October 2025 reveals senior engineers at £206,000 ($375,000) total, but Valve’s equity-heavy model amplifies this, drawing top talent without micromanagement.

This article was here the other day and made it sound like employees are treated very well.

Jyek
link
fedilink
English
172M

Their lowest paid employees still very likely make 6 figures. Valve has historically taken very good care of their employees.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
82M

Doubt it. But, for what it’s worth, last I heard, valve was one of the most sought after employers in the business. Apparently the salaries are generous and you get to work on whatever you want, not on what a manager tells you to.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

If I remember correctly they have performance based bonuses

To be fair, Valve only has around 350 employees. The other companies have thousands more.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

Microsoft has 228,000 employees. Holy crap

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

Does anyone know how Valve rate on privacy? Do they aggressively data mine and sell it in the surveillance economy?

Yerbouti
link
fedilink
English
-122M

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.

Rentlar
link
fedilink
English
132M

Call me a shill, but Valve’s actions indicate that they care about the money that comes from improving a product or service. That differentiates them from many publicly traded companies that care about money at the expense of the quality of their own products and services.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

Both things can be true. They make good products while also making millions from kids gambling.

Rentlar
link
fedilink
English
22M

You are correct, though it bears stating that they make millions from kids gambling and they make billions for their software distribution platform, as one indicator of Valve’s priorities as a for-profit company.

I Cast Fist
link
fedilink
English
572M

The business hive mind cannot comprehend a company making so much money without shareholders demanding line go up every hour

TheTechnician27
link
fedilink
English
12M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
142M

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…?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
152M

If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

Minecraft, Star Sector, Dwarf Fortress until recently. Stores like Epic and GOG and itch.io.

Plus Steam gives you content distribution, discussions, patches, all for free.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

If I’d say to my publisher „but I don’t want to publish on Steam“ I can look for another publisher. You don’t need to defend Steam, I didn’t attack it by stating that you need to publish on the biggest platform.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
262M

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…

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
232M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-42M

Yeah sure, but acting like I don’t need Steam for my game to sell is untrue.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
112M

Sure, but the point I’m making is, it’s not Steam’s fault; they’re simply doing a better job than their competitors of making their storefront attractive to consumers. Rather than blaming Steam, you should be blaming the other storefronts for not being able to capture market share.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-12M

I‘m not blaming anyone.

Truscape
link
fedilink
English
22M

Hey look, the contrarian is back! Wow! I thought you would take some time to reflect after your wack takes.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
52M

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.

Truscape
link
fedilink
English
3
edit-2
2M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

Yes, harassing users without context based on previous comments in other threads is much more valuable for a community. I don’t even remember having contrarian opinions about Portal or Half-Life, they are my favourite series‘.

Meldrik
link
fedilink
English
112M

You can sell your game on Steam, in addition to other platforms as well.

TheTechnician27
link
fedilink
English
42M

You’re not contradicting anything they said, and you’re not contradicting that Steam is a monopoly.

Bob Robertson IX
link
fedilink
English
222M

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

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

It did well because EGS is so great /s It’s obviously the exception.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

You don’t even have to release your game on pc to sell… Some don’t at all. Sticking to only consoles.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

I see what you’re going for, but most people seem to choose money over doing the right thing. Which brings us right back to capitalism ruining everything, again.

Yerbouti
link
fedilink
English
62M

Yeah, why do you buy things if you’re against capitalism? Checkmate.

artyom
link
fedilink
English
42M

All of them.

anguo
link
fedilink
English
62M

Doesn’t make it less of a monopoly.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, ‘single, alone’ and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, ‘to sell’) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller’s marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.[1]

Steam is not the only supplier of particular goods, they do not own the market, they have not the highest price and do not lack competition. It is just that their service is far better than whatever competition offers. Nothing stops Microsoft, EA and Epic to implement same features Steam does. Like, literally nothing. These companies have money to do so. They just chose not to.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
302M

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.

warm
link
fedilink
192M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-2
edit-2
2M

Amazon doesn’t either. Most of the arguments defending Steam can easily apply to every other “bad” company.

The only thing that differentiates steam is their marketing budget targeting small forums and Reddit.

warm
link
fedilink
72M

I never mentioned Amazon, but it’s really no comparison, even the FTC in the USA has filed suits against them for monopolistic and illegal behaviour.

Ive never seen an advert for Steam myself, outside of on their own platform or a video on their own YouTube channel. They sell largely through word of mouth. I suppose recently they offered journalists to visit their HQ to show off their new hardware.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-4
edit-2
2M

Valve has lawsuits in the work, although not from the FTC. The fact is Valve is just slightly above the other companies, but it’s a very low bar and that doesn’t negate their very real effect on the industry.

I bring up Amazon because your arguments apply to them. If I told you Bezos deserves all his wealth because he has a better platform then his competitors (all three of them) and offers an easy to use website with cheap delivery, you would probably call me a bootlicker.

All billionaires and their profit making machines are bad, no exceptions imo.

Fuck valve too. Gabe has over a billion dollars worth of boats. Fuck him to hell and back

warm
link
fedilink
162M

Technically Steam isn’t a monopoly by actual definition.

What you, and others often mean with the term, is that they hold a majority market position.

[deleted]
link
fedilink
English
92M

Not to mention the companies that have legal decisions declaring they are a monopoly when they are only 80%+ of a market are in the context of those companies (Microsoft, google) behaving in an anticompetitive way using their majority market position.

So not technically a monopoly and not comparable to legally declared monopolies.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
122M

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)

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
32M

You could defend Amazon with that logic. the fact that the barrier of entry is high is exactly what let’s Steam, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo abuse of their soft monopoly.

Nothing justifies owning a billion dollars worth of of boats.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

Amazon tried and failed, too.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

Which is surprising, considering how much money they generate off amazon store.

All it takes is to give a good service like Valve does. But somehow, as in Zippy’s pic, competition keeps shooting themselves in a foot. Probably due to shareholders that Valve does not have.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

Tbf, I wouldnt even touch Amazon with a kilometer long pole even if the game was free.
I order on Amazon only if the physical item is the cheaper AND easier option to order from (usually because I can only get thing A but not B).
If I can avoid it, I will try to.

Bob Robertson IX
link
fedilink
English
72M

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.

FishFace
link
fedilink
English
02M

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.

Bob Robertson IX
link
fedilink
English
72M

And Steam controls 80%-90% of the video game market?

Chloé 🥕
link
fedilink
English
22M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
42M

Now include consoles and phones.

FishFace
link
fedilink
English
22M

You can analyse markets at different levels.

FishFace
link
fedilink
English
12M

of the PC video game market, yes.

warm
link
fedilink
32M

Technically Steam is not a monopoly, but the way people commonly use the term these days is as simple as “majority market share”.

Bob Robertson IX
link
fedilink
English
92M

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.

FishFace
link
fedilink
English
-52M

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.

Bob Robertson IX
link
fedilink
English
62M

You are equating “monopoly” with “abusive monopoly.”

No, I’m not. I’m saying they aren’t a monopoly by the simple fact that they aren’t the only providers of the service they sell. And while they are currently in a position to use their power to make themselves a monopoly, they are not doing that and instead are playing fair with their competition.

FishFace
link
fedilink
English
-22M

I refer you to the other comment subthread where I mentioned textbook examples of monopolies which had 80-odd percent market share, you asked me if Steam had that, I said yes, and then you went quiet.

Don’t bring up points that you were already challenged on and had no reply to - it’s lying, because you already know it’s wrong.

Bob Robertson IX
link
fedilink
English
52M

The gaming market is much larger than PC gaming.

And Steam does not have an 80% market share on PC gaming, so who’s lying?

And finally, who the fuck do you think you are that I owe you a response?

warm
link
fedilink
82M

No, Google pays off other browsers to use Google as the default search engine, among many other actual monopolistic practices. Steam does none of that and simply provides a product.

FishFace
link
fedilink
English
-32M

Paying people to promote your stuff is not an abuse of monopoly position, because Duckduckgo is perfectly capable of doing the same thing.

Abuse of monopoly position would be leaning on search results to promote Chrome or Android (for example). And they have been caught doing some anti-competitive shit.

zippy
link
fedilink
English
212M

I wouldn’t describe it as a “monopoly” per say. I’d describe it as “all of the competition is filled with idiots”:

newell competition shooting themselves in the foot

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
49
edit-2
4d

deleted by creator

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
102M

Hey that’s not fair.

Gabe is also spending all that money on Aston Martins Valkyries to race around the world.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
922M

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

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
632M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
292M

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…

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
162M

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.

Coelacanth
link
fedilink
English
322M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

The lowest earners making the company work aren’t mentioned here. It’s probably an external company cleaning the toilets, for hourly rates you probably don’t want to know.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
82M

What does administration mean there? Like accounting, human resources and so? How could they make, in average, way more that developers??

Fushuan [he/him]
link
fedilink
English
242M

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.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
132M

The C-suite being included there made sense of that disparity.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
8
edit-2
2M

I mean yeah and no. I manage a team, I make 10%-12% more than the team even though technically we do the same tasks. The difference is I need to know their job, but also manage a schedule, and allocate resources, while planning sales for the future stream so they don’t run out of work. It’s a different skillset on top of the team skill requirement.

Not justifying a C suite at 20 million over dudes making 60k though

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
242M

Would make him the first billionaire in history to pay his workers their worth, so… Not a fucking chance.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
-15
edit-2
2M

Unfortunately that isn’t true, by accident this has been tested by tech companies like Netflix they were paid in stocks when the company was worth nothing but as it grew they got paid more and more until it became apparent that they didn’t actually have to work anymore entire companies became filled with zombie employees people who don’t work like at all beyond what they are contractually obligated to do, it created huge discontent between the teirs of worker the one’s actually doing the work and the ones getting paid, you almost can’t pay people beyond a certain amount because they don’t work for you then they don’t need to they can live a perfectly fine life without working and nothing gets done so you just have to higher a new staff who once again you can’t in pay too much or they won’t need to work and you’ll just have more zombie employees.

It is actually very well established:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-008-0063-2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0030507368900093

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_crowding_theory

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3906839/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214804322001422

https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-effects-on-intrinsic-motivation.pdf

Boomer Humor Doomergod
link
fedilink
English
82M

That sounds a lot like the violence inherent in the system

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
26
edit-2
2M

people who don’t work like at all beyond what they are contractually obligated to do

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. Why do you frame the workers doing the work they’re paid to do as bad?

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
152M

No no Gabe just works 31.244.670 times as much as his employees.

flandish
link
fedilink
English
42M

capitalism gonna capitalism, man. you know the answer.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
372M

A highschool friends dad worked at Valve and they’d take the entire company and their families to Hawaii every year.

Seemed like a good place to work.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
292M

Not hard, if you don’t have 20k employees.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
22M

I can’t wait for your company to do the same. You know, because it’s not hard. Heck, I invite you to do the same with 10 employees, since it’s so not hard.

@[email protected]
link
fedilink
English
12M

I said it’s not hard to reach that high of a revenue per head measure if you don’t have 20k employees.
Google, MS and so much other mega corps have a similar revenue (dunno exact numbers), so they obviously have lower numbers.

So calm down.

Leuthil
link
fedilink
English
12M

That’s the whole point though. Most companies keep hiring to make more money. Staying lean takes discipline.

Create a post

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Spam or Porn.
  3. No Advertising.
  4. No Memes.
  5. No Tech Support.
  6. No questions about buying/building computers.
  7. No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
  8. No Let’s Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
  9. No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
  10. Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
  • 1 user online
  • 170 users / day
  • 485 users / week
  • 1.07K users / month
  • 3K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 6.85K Posts
  • 53.5K Comments
  • Modlog