3mo ago

Lawsuit paperwork reveals Valve employs around 350 people – and less than 100 work for Steam. Most of Valve's payroll is still committed to game dev roles.

www.gamesindustry.biz Lawsuit paperwork reveals Valve employs around 350 people – and less than 100 work for Steam

New details of Valve's structure, employment practices, and headcount have emerged as part of an antitrust lawsuit agai…

37 comments

Steam has to be one of the most profitable companies on a per-head count basis of all time.
- Steam is a product, Valve is a company.

I'm not surprised they have a lot of people in game dev roles. They are making games and an entire engine.
- they are making games
  Are they?
  
  I'm just going to copy my reply to someone.
  They still make Dota. They released a new Counter Strike. Not that long ago they did Underlords and Artifact. And not all that long ago there was The Lab and Half-Life Alyx
  
  HL3 is on the way bro, trust me!

Sure would be nice to see a game from them. I don’t even care about any of the third sequels we all want. I just want to see something.
- They still make Dota. They released a new Counter Strike. Not that long ago they did Underlords and Artifact. And not all that long ago there was The Lab and Half-Life Alyx. So what exactly are you looking for?
  
  Something more substantial than isn't just some endless live service game or limited to VR only. I think people wouldn't keep saying this about valve if alyx wasn't just for vr.
- I'm play testing a new game for them right now lol, it's good. There's leaks if you are curious, but we aren't supposed to talk about it if you Google it there's tons of stuff

One word: Contractors

Translation: They outsource a lot.
Edit: Lol, downvoted by people too dense to realize you need way more than 100 people to operate in over 200 countries with as much business as they do. OFC they outsource a lot. Your local Walmart has 100 employees.
- Translation: When not accountable to greedy-ass shareholders, they don't have to do the whole "If you're not growing you're dying!" bullshit; and can just keep the employees they need without constantly expanding and enshittifying their services.
  
  Steam is available in over two hundred countries and you think 100 employees is enough to manage that? To do the account support, billing support, vendor support, user content moderation, technical support, hardware partnerships, server management, platform development, legal compliance, business development, web development, database management, HR, accounting...etc in multiple regions and in every respective language? One employee per every two countries?! Figure it out.
  
  Steam has certainly degraded over the past 15 years, it just gets a pass because the pointless economies it created to capitalise on are player-driven: steam workshop & steam community market.
  Neither offer something which didn't already exist, they just do so in a way which generates income for Valve. Including in ways that are predatory toward people predisposed to gambling etc behaviours, and enable exploitation by 3rd parties (which Valve also profits from)
- Why do you think they need outsourcing? Do you really think that 100 people is not enough?
  
  They do outsource. There are contractors checking to make sure that, when you submit a game to Steam, it isn't malware and has all of the features that you say it has. And those are just the ones I know about.
  
  Steam claims they're available in over two hundred countries. Do you really think that one employee for every two countries is enough?

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