Valve is a fraction of the size of EA, Ubisoft and even some AAA devs.

You left out the best part:

Here's the topline from 2021: Of those 336 employees, 79 directly worked on Steam, while a whopping 181 remained in the "Games" department⁠—pretty much the reverse of what I expected, given Steam's importance to company profits and how rarely Valve releases new games. There were just 41 employees working on hardware development at that time, right on the eve of the Steam Deck's launch, and the remaining 35 employees were in admin.
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Guilty_AI said:
Easy, they make games but just shelve everything. Or they shelve a new game every time we ask for half life 3.
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I've heard they shelve a lot of ideas.as for half life 3, I still can't believe they have just left is hanging all these years. It's been like, what?….. 20 years since half 2: episode 2?
 
RickMasters said:
I dunno. I guess I just had them pegged as a larger company considering they are the biggest game store on PC.
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They really were never that large even in terms of market value, they're estimated around 8 billion dolars which is an average price for a large AAA company. Its only a fraction of Nintendo or even major AAA publishers like Activision and EA games, which are all estimated to be in the dozens of billions.
 
Does it say anywhere how many contractors work at Valve?

Contractors don't count as company workforce as they arent technically considered employees, but hired guns for a duration.

A company can have 1,000 "workers". 1 guy is owner as CEO. He hires 999 contractors. Technically, his company has 1 employee.
 
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Their leadership, knows how to get shit done, and knows what/where/how the customer wants.

GabeN said:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."
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That's someone who understands how business works, IRL.

When you have someone with a mindset like that, leading, everything else, ranging from gamedev, hardware R&D, publishing etc, just becomes a whole lot easier, with minimal resource.
 
The bigger the company the less focus they have on what the customer wants and there is this misconception that size = efficiency.

Two people with hyper focus and a clear idea of what they want to do and how to do it is far more efficient than 50 people tha travel their own disparaging opinions and approaches.


Valve is clearly focused on providing the user base with exactly what they need and want.
 
I don't for one second believe that 41 people handle all their hardware R&D. The amount of software support the Deck must require will need at least 20 people. Then you have the Index too with it's API suite. Ongoing support network for developers building/verifying against the hardware. The 'Game' department must be involved.
 
because no one can take control of the PC platform market and Steam is not longer consider as a "gaming" studio, it is also a very very successful and stable platform.
Majority of their profit is coming from these platform distribution fees.
Most of the staff probably just incharge of maintenance and improving the steam ecosystem.

Unless steam messed up big time, they going to stay for a very very long time even WITHOUT RELEASING A SINGLE GAME MADE BY VALVE.
 
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VolticArchangel said:
Their leadership, knows how to get shit done, and knows what/where/how the customer wants.



That's someone who understands how business works, IRL.

When you have someone with a mindset like that, leading, everything else, ranging from gamedev, hardware R&D, publishing etc, just becomes a whole lot easier, with minimal resource.
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At Valve, work can be slow because if an employee is working on Steam UI improvements and suddenly no one else at the company wants to work on those improvements, no one will force them to continue.

RickMasters said:
I dunno. I guess I just had them pegged as a larger company considering they are the biggest game store on PC.
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Making games require alot of people. They also let the communitys do alot of their work and automate alot of other processes. Why would you think they have more people? The reason their launcher is by far the best is they are focusing on that and had a big fucking headstart.
 
It's a collage for senior devs, endless experimenting on projects that don't ship because they don't have to because they don't have external pressures to actually release stuff and endless amounts money.
 
Valve could probably be one of the most, if not the most efficient company in the world with this headcount.
Considering that they have around 70% of the entire PC gaming distribution market, a revenue around USD 10-15 bi yoy and a estimated valuation in its 10s bi.
 
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Valve is essentially the gaming industry equivalent of a research lab with nearly unlimited funding where experienced devs and engineers can endlessly experiment and work on ideas that are unlikely to pan out. They'll release something every once in a while (most recently Half-Life: Alyx and presumably Deadlock in the near future), but most of it will never see the light of day.
 
VitoNotVito said:
Why is it surprising? They do nothing but maintaining a storefront…
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It is surprising that they don't want to chase success with the popular game franchises they have. Nothing prevents them from staffing up a big studio to crank out some half life games, yet they don't do that. Not being a publicly traded company is a big part of that.
 
All of their current structure is oiled perfectly, everything is run by machines. My guess is half of the roster is lawyers and financial savants, and the other half is engineers for their structure
 
KungFucius said:
It is surprising that they don't want to chase success with the popular game franchises they have.
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No need to chase something when you already have it. I'm fairly sure that even if all third-party games disappeared from Steam tomorrow, Dota, CS2 and TF2 would still bring in enough money to keep them afloat without having to make another Half-Life game.
 
LazyParrot said:
No need to chase something when you already have it. I'm fairly sure that even if all third-party games disappeared from Steam tomorrow, Dota, CS2 and TF2 would still bring in enough money to keep them afloat without having to make another Half-Life game.
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Their profits would drop considerably but they have 3 live service games. Any other company would be getting lambasted for not creating any games like half life, portal, or left 4 dead like they did in the past and concentrating mostly on 3 old GaaS games.

hemo memo said:
Maybe because Valve hire by competency rather than meeting some quota?
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It's because they barely make games like EA or Ubisoft, nothing else. No need to invent a political boogeyman.
 
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Three said:
Their profits would drop considerably but they have 3 live service games. Any other company would be getting lambasted for not creating any games like half life, portal, or left 4 dead like they did in the past and concentrating mostly on 3 old GaaS games.
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I mean, they do get lambasted for that all the time. It's just become a meme at this point, so people don't even notice it anymore.
 
Topher said:
Valve released Counter-strike 2 last year.
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It was a free update to Counter Strike: Global Offensive an old game from 2012 on source 2 but yes technically you're right.

Still, you get my point. if people are going to compare employees of Valve to publishers of all things, like Ubisoft or EA, look at what work they're actually publishing

ie

Valve 2023-24
CS2

Ubisoft 2023-24
Assassin's Creed Mirage
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
The Crew Motorfest
Just Dance
The Settlers: New Allies
OddBallers
Assassin's Creed Nexus VR
Riders Republic: Skate
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home
XDefiant
Assassin's Creed Shadows
Star Wars Outlaws
Skull and Bones
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
The Rogue Prince of Persia

So why are people surprised they hire less people? Their output as a publisher is abysmal in comparison. It's common sense.
 
Three said:
It was a free update to Counter Strike: Global Offensive an old game from 2012 on source 2 but yes technically you're right.

Still, you get my point. if people are going to compare employees of Valve to publishers of all things, like Ubisoft or EA, look at what work they're actually publishing

ie

Valve 2023-24
CS2

Ubisoft 2023-24
Assassin's Creed Mirage
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
The Crew Motorfest
Just Dance
The Settlers: New Allies
OddBallers
Assassin's Creed Nexus VR
Riders Republic: Skate
Valiant Hearts: Coming Home
XDefiant
Assassin's Creed Shadows
Star Wars Outlaws
Skull and Bones
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
The Rogue Prince of Persia

So why are people surprised they hire less people? Their output as a publisher is abysmal in comparison. It's common sense.
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Valve's lack of output in those key franchises that you pointed out is by far my biggest complaint about Valve. But at the same time, Valve is incredibly good at what they do. The contrast between Steam and other store fronts is stark.

Badlucktroll said:
I wish they would become publicly traded, want to buy in
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I think that would probably be the worst thing that could ever happen to PC gaming.
 
Rentahamster said:
It's easy to have few employees when all it takes is to do nothing and still win.
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It's easy to win when you do all the right things, compared to the trial and error of other companies, this is just effortless.

Steam could make the wrong decisions on how to use those 300 employees, and end up like other companies chasing success through trial and error.

Making those correct decisions is "doing something".
 
KungFucius said:
It is surprising that they don't want to chase success with the popular game franchises they have. Nothing prevents them from staffing up a big studio to crank out some half life games, yet they don't do that. Not being a publicly traded company is a big part of that.
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Why would they pursue that?
Making games is a huge risk nowadays…
 
Buggy Loop said:
Are we ignoring that they released one of the best gaming experience in the past decade if not more with Half Life Alyx in 2020?
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It's vr so not widely accessible, but also it's been almost half a decade. Games that got entries that year are getting their sequels now
 
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