• Grimy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    163
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    336 people

    30% grabbed from every game

    8.56 billion in revenue

    • ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      62
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      The service they privide to devs and customers is worth it, but valve doesn’t even really take 30% anyway. Watch pirate software’s video on it.

      • erwan@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        45
        ·
        4 months ago

        I love Steam and I love Gabe, but the system we have that let Steam extract so much money out of the gaming industry is broken.

        And that’s true for software or online services in general, and I’m saying that as someone who benefit from that system as a software engineer.

        • Xenny@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          26
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          4 months ago

          Then why are publishers and customers so loyal then? There has been attempt after attempt to create a competitor but they all fall short. Steam offers so so so much in comparison to the competition it’s not even funny. The 30% is justified.

          • Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            9
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            Because everyone believes that the competition will be worse in 5 years, but Steam, on the other hand, will be better.

        • LazyBane@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          20
          ·
          4 months ago

          I’d argue that Valve does more than just take 30% as a middle man. Between Steam Input, Proton, the beta built in recording system, the Forums for every game, community system and the marketplace, having your game on Steam is a massive value generator for the consumer and by extension developers.

          30% might not be what the industry standard should be, but Valve isn’t just providing a standard digital distribution service.

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            its good that they are doing good things for the industry.

            its bad that only they can/will.

        • it_depends_man@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          19
          ·
          4 months ago

          It is broken in the sense that it’s absolutely insane that they can take 30% and nobody can build a competing product that only takes 20%.

          It is not broken in the sense that they keep doing what they are doing and developers and customers consistently choose their offer.

          It’s not a monopoly because they exploit their position.

          It’s a monopoly because nobody else is trying hard enough.

          • erwan@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            4 months ago

            It’s a monopoly because gamers go where games are, and developers go where customers are.

            For the same reason Apple App Store / Play Store is a duopoly.

          • erwan@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            Steam is the best, and we’re lucky that Steam is the one that won rather than another. Which could definitely have happened because once one of them is in place it’s extremely hard to change.

            So the situation is good for gamers, but from an economic point of view it’s bad.

    • firadin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      289
      ·
      4 months ago

      Because they don’t pay any of their actual workforce: the game devs they steal 30% from for every game sold.

      • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        164
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        4 months ago

        You mean the game devs that they take 30% from in a contract the devs agree to in order to list their game on the largest PC gaming store?

        Besides that, steam has an incredibly low financial requirement to start selling your games on their platform. $100 usd per game (at least in the US) and you get it back if your game sells enough copies (100 maybe? I forget tbh.) It’s a great platform for indie devs which is why we’ve seen indie PC gaming boom so much in the past decade or so especially.

      • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        129
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        4 months ago

        You mean the game devs they provide CDN at no additional costs, networking features a dev environment that is far more comfortable than any competitor and various additional revenue streams (such as trading cards and items)?

        • Azzu@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          13
          arrow-down
          68
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          It’s still stealing if the profit is this extremely high. Of course a successful business includes providing a useful product. But if you make so much more money per employee than any other company, that means the amount you’re charging is disproportional. They could change Steam fees to 5% and still be extremely profitable. They choose not to because of greed.

          This is not me condemning them by the way, I think their greed and what they do with the money available to them is still mostly better than what other people do, but it’s still greed.

          I define all excessive profit as stealing. In an ideal world everyone would be earning roughly the same. (Or no earning being necessary at all, but I don’t want to go into every detail)

            • Azzu@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              20
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              Who said anything about costs/bills? I’m talking about excessive wealth extraction. If a group of people gets massively wealthy by taking lots of money from other people, one should wonder if they really need all that money.

              • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                But where do you draw the line? Don’t get me wrong, I am against the idea of, as you say, “excessive wealth extraction”. But what classes as excessive? If I ran an independent Etsy shop making cards, and I had an 80% profit margin, is that stealing?

                I should also like to point out:

                I define all excessive profit as stealing.

                All profit is excessive by nature, isn’t it?

                • Azzu@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 months ago

                  But what classes as excessive?

                  That’s a good question, one that I have not defined for myself perfectly.

                  I think part of it is the nature of the transaction. When you sell something off your Etsy shop, you create a thing, you sell the thing, you can’t sell the thing again. A shop like Steam continuously takes money from you for the exact same service. Of course it takes money to run the servers and any other running costs, and I’m not saying those shouldn’t be covered. But theoretically, if they have set their automated systems well, Steam runs by itself without intervention from anyone. Whoever owns Steam basically makes money on their sleep. They created it once and it continually makes money for them.

                  When a game sells well, this game will be downloaded more often, so the relative load/usage of the Steam servers increases. So it is fair to take more money from games that sell better, so tying it to “amount of games sold” makes sense. But does the load on the Steam servers really change if a game is sold for 50€ or 10€? No, what really matters is the size of the game, the amount of updates the developers push and so on. So tying the costs to sale price is also not necessarily fair.

                  Apart from that, it’s hard to define something as “excessive” without comparing it to other things. As I mentioned once, I don’t think a teacher is doing a less valuable job than a CEO of some big company. Most jobs are benefitting others/society in some way, so I actually value most jobs roughly the same. In conclusion, I would define as “excessive” anything that is a large deviation from mean income, completely arbitrarily I might say if your income is more than double the mean, it would be excessive.

                  All profit is excessive by nature, isn’t it?

                  I don’t necessarily think so. People die, so their accumulated wealth disappears or is transferred to someone else. Human beings are made to acquire more resources. But death is a natural endpoint to this process. There is probably an equilibrium point of profit that is sustainable with a certain population.

            • Azzu@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              31
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              If the amount of money massively outweighs your bills, then I would say yes. Also if your “bills” are extreme luxury, then even without that. We really need to stop with this massive wealth inequality. Our economy works on transactions. If the profit margin on any transaction (including labor) is exorbitantly high, then something is going wrong. An investment banker is not more valuable than a teacher. A CEO is not more valuable than a janitor.

          • azuth@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            28
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            How much is the profit? 30% is revenue not profit.

            Why is money per employee a useful metric? One would expect most costs of a store like steam to be in hardware and network not in labor.

            • Azzu@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              13
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              Exactly. The question is how much is really necessary to operate that service. We as a species really need to stop thinking about constant growth and more and more wealth, and that includes growth and wealth that is “reasonable” compared to other extremely greedy people. Right now it looks like Steam is growing to infinity and making more and more money. They’re the same like everyone else trying to make more and more money. Of course they’re more ethical and they return value for that money, but they’re still part of the same system of infinite growth that is not sustainable.

              This infinite growth is happening because they extract more value than they require. If they extracted as much value as they require to sustain their business, they wouldn’t grow. But of course constant growth is what everyone expects and thus no one sees a problem with it.

              I see it as stealing.

          • denshirenji@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            21
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            It isn’t 30% profit. It’s a 30% charge. Servers, broadband connections, etc… are expensive. Those numbers may be pulled out of someone’s ass, so I don’t know their veracity, but 30% might not be too much.

            • firadin@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              22
              ·
              4 months ago

              This is a thread about how Valve makes over 8 billion dollars despite basically all their revenue coming from an in-game store that sells other people’s content. Of course its too much.

              • denshirenji@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                9
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                Do they bank 8 billion dollars or does 8 billion dollars make its way from our hands to theirs. There is a difference. How much of that 8 billion goes to managing infrastructure?

                In fact:

                1000002026

                1000002025

                Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/547025/steam-game-sales-revenue/

                To be clear, I agree that the way our model works is broken. Wall street and infinite profit gains can only work so long until the system collapses, and Steam is a part of this. Some of the statements made here are just not factual and I feel the need to be pedantic, because I don’t believe that spreading misinformation will help anything. Attack CEO pay disparity or something useful and true.

                Edit: I woke up and answered you without fully reading your post. Apologies, I didn’t answer you point, because I was on a soap box. The point still stands that the revenue they make could very well be going to infrastructure costs, necessitating a charge for using their store that is on everyone’s computer. If all you have is potato servers then what quality will the store front be?

                I stand my last paragraph in the above, especially the last sentence.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            66
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            They can even list there and sell Steam keys on their website and not pay any of that to Valve, with the only stipulation that Steam keys cannot be sold for less than on Steam itself.

            So basically:

            1. You don’t need to publish there
            2. But if you do, you can still publish elsewhere
            3. And you can sell Steam keys directly with no cut to Valve

            You only pay the 30% cut for sales made through Steam.

            That’s incredibly reasonable.

          • Grimy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            38
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            There aren’t many option and all of them except one are predatory. Regulation that would limit the amount taken would be a real boon to the industry. Steam, Epic, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all guilty of this. The government should step in but they don’t because of lobbying and donations.

            No one defends Microsoft when it comes to this. Gaben gets a free pass because he pretends to be a cool guy when he’s just another billionaire essentially robbing his workforce and customers.

            • sep@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              41
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              Steam is the only store putting the customer first. The refund policy is top notch. Heck just making proton, giving gamers the choice of os, is the best thing for gamers since computers was invented!

              https://youtu.be/gwoAmifo9r0

              • richmondez@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                9
                ·
                4 months ago

                Putting the customer first? Call me when I can transfer my license to anyone else I want without valve having to okay it like I can a physical copy then we are talking about putting the customer first.

                • sep@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  9
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  That they are miles better then the competition, does not mean there are no room for improvements.

              • Grimy@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                26
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                Microsoft’s refund policy is top notch too and I see proton as leveraging open source to avoid dev costs.

                More importantly, everything steam does could be done with 5% instead of 30% and Gaben would still be filthy rich.

                Steam is as greedy as the other platforms and it’s us, the consumers, and the indie scene that suffer for it. Are you okay with your favorite indie studio closing and your favorite game not getting a sequel because Gaben wants 8000 million a year instead of 1000 million a year?

                There is most likely collusion and soft monopolies, these platforms are clearly not competing in good faith.

                • HERRAX@sopuli.xyz
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  22
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  Dude, unless you’ve ever tried publishing your own game you should stop parroting stuff you hear online. I’ve released a (borderline shovelware) game I made for educational purposes, and steam is god damned amazing and has such good support for a novice like myself. On the complete opposite of what you’re claiming, the gamers and indie companies stand to gain the most from a service like steam.

                  It’s not surprising that it’s more or less only people from huge companies like blizzard and Ubisoft who complain and try to gaslight Valve. If I were to release a game again I’d rather publish it on steam if they took 60% of the cut than anywhere else. (Unless you want to pay me a godly amount of money for exclusivity Epic Games, then hmu lol)

                • xthexder@l.sw0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  12
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  proton as leveraging open source to avoid dev costs

                  As a developer, I have no problem with this. Why do work that doesn’t need to be done?

                • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.de
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  Hold up, how is proton leveraging open source to avoid dev costs? Are you referring to steam using and contributing to existing projects instead of reinventing the wheel? Or to game developers that use it as a reason for not making native Linux versions, which wouldn’t be Valve’s workforce in the first place?

                  I can see how the things Valve does contribute to their business model - steam input giving their controller compatibility with games, proton letting them launch a Linux-based handheld, and the new recording feature probably there for the steam deck… But the thing is, Valve is still providing all those things to customers for no extra charge, and they keep adding new stuff.

      • BigSadDad@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        69
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        4 months ago

        This thread contains a lot of great bangers. But let’s play devil’s advocate for just a minute.

        Let me know when you build a global distribution platform with 5-9 uptime, credit card processing, full compliance with all of the various laws in all the countries you serve and also provide a cdn for my game for free.

        I’ll be waiting. You better pull through on this, you owe the community your labor

        • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          4 months ago

          Taking a different and hopefully more productive stance than the other guy, I just want to explore people’s thoughts.

          People already have built these alternatives. Itch.io, EGS, Humble Store, Microsoft Store, GOG. These platforms exist, but they struggle to achieve the full market dominance that Steam has as the “default” platform, meaning Devs are borderline forced to accept the 30% cut if they have any hope of making sales.

          As shown by Steam’s huge profits, they certainly take a higher cut than they have to, and they can definitely stomach a smaller cut

          • BigSadDad@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            12
            ·
            4 months ago

            I’ve made a comment before in the past when dealing with game publishing. All of the things Steam provides, including worldwide distribution to a lot of regions EGS, MS store, etc don’t sell in because of a variety of laws, Steam just does better.

            You pay less because you get less. I’m selling a product. The last thing I’m going to cheap out in is sales. I’m not going to see great sales from the EGS because A)Nobody uses it and B) the shopping experience is terrible. I don’t have access to the same makers and (hearsay) the actual process of getting your game distributed is a pain. I wouldn’t know, I don’t sell on EGS.

            Further, we were having a conversation about a problem that doesn’t exist. You’re more than welcome to use Steam and other storefronts.

            Hell, you can handle all of the sales yourself AND put it on steam. Most people will buy it on steam simply because that’s where all of the customers are.

            Asking Steam to lower their prices because that’s where you’d make the most money is a mind bender.

            It’s like trying to sell your hand made Combs. The gas station on the corner is happy to take only 20% of the profit. They’re all over the place and accessible. But you really want to sell it at the boutique shops because they have more comb-seeking customers. But then when they ask for 30% of sales, you balk and tell them that’s too high and they should lower their cut to that of the gas station.

            • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              5
              ·
              4 months ago

              You pay less because you get less. I’m selling a product. The last thing I’m going to cheap out in is sales. I’m not going to see great sales from the EGS because A)Nobody uses it

              That’s exactly it, Devs have to accept Steam’s cut because it’s essentially the only place you can sell things. It makes logical sense, but do you not see why this is a disadvantageous position for the Devs to be put in?

              It’s like trying to sell your hand made Combs. The gas station on the corner is happy to take only 20% of the profit. They’re all over the place and accessible. But you really want to sell it at the boutique shops because they have more comb-seeking customers.

              This would be a fine analogy, if there weren’t a single digit amount of storefronts. Steam and EGS are more equivalent to supermarkets. Sure the odd person is going to go to speciality stores on occasion, but the vast majority of sales are done through supermarkets. Steam is a supermarket competing against speciality stores. The only other real supermarket in town is EGS and as you’ve discussed, it’s such a dumpster fire no one shops there.

              I’m not disagreeing that Steam deserves its position, it does for sure. But we live in a world where it has no meaningful competition, and one of the ways it exercises its position is by maintaining their 30% cut. A cut which was established by stores that had to manage the logistics for real physical copies of the games.

              My point is that there isn’t a reason that Steam has such a high cut, other than it wants more money, and has the market saturation to command more money

        • firadin@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          arrow-down
          39
          ·
          4 months ago

          Me: “Rent seeking is an illegitimate practice, landlords steal money from laborers by extorting them for a necessary good!”

          You: “Oh yeah? Why don’t you just buy your own land and build your own apartment building?”

          You’re a dumbass.

              • BigSadDad@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                22
                arrow-down
                6
                ·
                4 months ago

                That you’re like, 12 years old? Or at least have the fundamental world view of a 12 year old.

                Fukkin lmao “steam is a necessity they owe me to make it cheaper”

                Get the fuck back to reddit child. Enjoy your block.

                • firadin@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  arrow-down
                  24
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  You’re the type of person who would call universal healthcare “socialism”, and it really shows.

          • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            16
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            How is Valve supposed to pay for the infrastructure and maintenance without charging devs for using their enormous platform? I’m genuinely curious what ideas you have. Disregard everyone’s non-sequiturs here, please.

            • firadin@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              16
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              By charging 3% instead of 30%? Do you really think their servers cost $8.5b? Does the work to distribute a game and process payment equal 30% of the labor required to make a game?

              A more advanced answer would be a cost plus profit model, so if it costs Valve $1 to transfer 1TB of data transfer (in terms of server costs), then charge $1.10 for 1TB. That’s obviously very difficult to calculate though I bet Valve has some internal metric of costs.

              Valve today does the exact thing Unity was trying to do, charging a percent of revenue for providing infrastructure. Unity got raked over the coals for it.

              • Xenny@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                18
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                4 months ago

                Unity was changing the rules after they were already set in place. Valve has never done such a move.

                Imagine though if steam suddenly went to a flat fee per install instead of charging the 30% of the sale on their platform.

                They would rightly be raked over the coals. But they won’t make such a dumb fucking move because it’s a dumb fucking move.

                I’m not one for Corpos but as far as attacking them goes valve is certainly near the bottom of the list.

                • firadin@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  19
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  They would rightly be raked over the coals. But they won’t make such a dumb fucking move because it’s a dumb fucking move.

                  What a wild thing to assert without any reasoning.

              • Charzard4261@programming.dev
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                4 months ago

                Side note: Valve isn’t doing the thing Unity tried to do. Unity tried to charge you every time someone installs the game. And you’re not even hosting the game’s data on Unity’s servers.

                Steam takes money when you purchase, then will let you download it for free, anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Completely different.

                Back on topic: It would be really interesting to see the actual server and bandwidth costs for hosting and distributing all those games. There’s no way it’s super low, or any of the competition surely would have caught up by now.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        56
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        If you don’t want a publisher to take a cut: self-publish. Every publisher takes a cut. Valve just takes 10% more than everyone else, while also providing more tools and support than anyone else to those devs.

        • rdri@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          4 months ago

          Valve just takes 10% more than everyone else

          What do you mean? 30% is used by almost every digital store.

        • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          Valve is not a publisher they are a store. The percentage they take is in line with every other digital store, except itch.io Also compared to releasing in brick and mortar stores that percentage is low.

            • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              4 months ago

              Okay Valve is also a publisher but how many games have they published from outside developers? The only one I can think of is Garry’s mod and a Portal spin-offs. So it’s virtually impossible to get your game published by Valve the publisher. The person above said that Valve takes a 30% cut, they were obviously referring to the store fee. But then you replied “don’t work with a publisher then” Which doesn’t make sense since Valve only publishes their own games.

              • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                Okay Valve is also a publisher but how many games have they published from outside developers?

                Literally every game on Steam that isn’t their own. 🤦‍♂️

                It sounds like you don’t know what publishing means.

                • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 months ago

                  Dude running a store isn’t publishing. 🤦‍♂️Like a book publisher and a book store are two different things. I work in the games industry nobody says that their games are published by Valve when they put their games on Steam. Valve does digital distribution which is different from publishing. Does Valve make the store art for each game, write the marketing blurb and game description, do they create a press release and contact journalists/streamers for each game and create the trailer for each game? No Valve does non of that, since that’s the job of the publisher the developer works with. Steam has literally a text field on each game page that says who the publisher of each game is and only on Valve games it says that the publisher is Valve. Sounds like you don’t know what publishing means.

      • explore_broaden@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        I prefer not to buy games on steam, and when a game is available from another channel (for example Factorio is available on the devs’ website) I will buy it there. And yet, most games are only on steam, so the devs really don’t seem to care about trying to avoid that 30% cut when they can.

  • Crampon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    83
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    4 months ago

    Gabe is the smartest guy in business. Guy is rolling in cash, only for himself and those he choose to share it with.

    Idk what they teach you in business school, but it’s probably wrong.

    • cheers_queers@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      82
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      4 months ago

      i took one year of business school, and they teach you to offshore outsource as much as possible and to prioritize your shareholders at all costs. so, nothing surprising.

      • Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        It’s just the Jack Welch playbook over and over. Even though people finally started to realize Jack was a fucking idiot and ruined GE.

        He got rich. But fucked one of the most well known and respected companies in the world doing it.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    4 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    As spotted by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, some data in the document was viewable despite the black redaction boxes, including Valve’s headcount and gross pay across various parts of the company over 18 years, and even some data about its gross margins that we weren’t able to uncover fully.

    The data breaks Valve employees into four different groups: “Admin,” “Games,” “Steam,” and, starting in 2011, “Hardware.”

    If you want to sift through the numbers yourself, I’ve included a full table of the data, sorted by year and category, at the end of this story.

    In November 2023, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais told The Verge that he thinks “we’re firmly in the camp of being a full fledged hardware company by now.”

    The small number of staff across the board seemingly explains why Valve’s product list is so limited despite its immense business as basically the de facto PC gaming platform.

    While we haven’t seen any leaked profit numbers from this new headcount and payroll data, the figures give a more detailed picture of how much Valve is spending on its staff — which, given the massive popularity of Steam, is probably still just a fraction of the money the company is pulling in.


    The original article contains 620 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • etchinghillside@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      4 months ago

      Im struggling to convince myself if I should read the article and see if some actual numbers were ever mentioned.

      • Seraph@fedia.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        Valve employee data, 2003 - 2021 Year Category [Presumably: Gross pay] [Presumably: Number of employees] 2003 Admin $454,142 5 2004 Admin $548,833 8 2005 Admin $11,644,172 9 2006 Admin $7,905,166 11 2007 Admin $1,997,107 12 2008 Admin $19,519,296 14 2009 Admin $20,300,752 18 2010 Admin $34,754,590 19 2011 Admin $35,216,732 22 2012 Admin $68,925,186 24 2013 Admin $48,462,690 20 2014 Admin $90,406,510 23 2015 Admin $91,496,697 24 2016 Admin $95,444,499 35 2017 Admin $83,146,640 38 2018 Admin $103,479,550 39 2019 Admin $109,720,296 39 2020 Admin $118,435,121 39 2021 Admin $157,999,567 35 2003 Games $3,933,064 57 2004 Games $4,471,342 61 2005 Games $18,122,549 81 2006 Games $17,260,260 97 2007 Games $12,768,984 100 2008 Games $39,677,549 136 2009 Games $44,076,164 148 2010 Games $66,201,302 173 2011 Games $68,173,834 175 2012 Games $135,484,323 186 2013 Games $107,654,658 188 2014 Games $152,351,554 185 2015 Games $181,769,451 160 2016 Games $174,660,830 175 2017 Games $221,488,403 184 2018 Games $216,249,204 192 2019 Games $236,798,782 201 2020 Games $199,306,798 189 2021 Games $192,355,985 181 2003 Steam $1,038,091 16 2004 Steam $1,113,136 16 2005 Steam $2,840,825 23 2006 Steam $3,424,485 29 2007 Steam $3,128,634 34 2008 Steam $5,053,283 40 2009 Steam $7,339,922 51 2010 Steam $17,732,609 60 2011 Steam $16,369,045 101 2012 Steam $42,966,257 127 2013 Steam $44,515,505 128 2014 Steam $52,338,579 119 2015 Steam $72,391,837 142 2016 Steam $56,390,975 125 2017 Steam $64,945,395 102 2018 Steam $70,814,165 82 2019 Steam $66,481,253 80 2020 Steam $71,752,682 82 2021 Steam $76,446,633 79 2011 Hardware $2,252,828 7 2012 Hardware $3,460,641 14 2013 Hardware $5,369,203 20 2014 Hardware $10,180,424 27 2015 Hardware $12,396,140 27 2016 Hardware $11,001,217 36 2017 Hardware $16,724,365 39 2018 Hardware $19,578,951 47 2019 Hardware $15,831,572 47 2020 Hardware $12,008,996 31 2021 Hardware $17,706,376 41

        • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          needed some formatting:

          Valve employee data, 2003 - 2021
          Year Category [Presumably: Gross pay] [Presumably: Number of employees]
          2003 Admin $454,142 5
          2004 Admin $548,833 8
          2005 Admin $11,644,172 9
          2006 Admin $7,905,166 11
          2007 Admin $1,997,107 12
          2008 Admin $19,519,296 14
          2009 Admin $20,300,752 18
          2010 Admin $34,754,590 19
          2011 Admin $35,216,732 22
          2012 Admin $68,925,186 24
          2013 Admin $48,462,690 20
          2014 Admin $90,406,510 23
          2015 Admin $91,496,697 24
          2016 Admin $95,444,499 35
          2017 Admin $83,146,640 38
          2018 Admin $103,479,550 39
          2019 Admin $109,720,296 39
          2020 Admin $118,435,121 39
          2021 Admin $157,999,567 35

          .

          2003 Games $3,933,064 57
          2004 Games $4,471,342 61
          2005 Games $18,122,549 81
          2006 Games $17,260,260 97
          2007 Games $12,768,984 100
          2008 Games $39,677,549 136
          2009 Games $44,076,164 148
          2010 Games $66,201,302 173
          2011 Games $68,173,834 175
          2012 Games $135,484,323 186
          2013 Games $107,654,658 188
          2014 Games $152,351,554 185
          2015 Games $181,769,451 160
          2016 Games $174,660,830 175
          2017 Games $221,488,403 184
          2018 Games $216,249,204 192
          2019 Games $236,798,782 201
          2020 Games $199,306,798 189
          2021 Games $192,355,985 181

          .

          2003 Steam $1,038,091 16
          2004 Steam $1,113,136 16
          2005 Steam $2,840,825 23
          2006 Steam $3,424,485 29
          2007 Steam $3,128,634 34
          2008 Steam $5,053,283 40
          2009 Steam $7,339,922 51
          2010 Steam $17,732,609 60
          2011 Steam $16,369,045 101
          2012 Steam $42,966,257 127
          2013 Steam $44,515,505 128
          2014 Steam $52,338,579 119
          2015 Steam $72,391,837 142
          2016 Steam $56,390,975 125
          2017 Steam $64,945,395 102
          2018 Steam $70,814,165 82
          2019 Steam $66,481,253 80
          2020 Steam $71,752,682 82
          2021 Steam $76,446,633 79

          .

          2011 Hardware $2,252,828 7
          2012 Hardware $3,460,641 14
          2013 Hardware $5,369,203 20
          2014 Hardware $10,180,424 27
          2015 Hardware $12,396,140 27
          2016 Hardware $11,001,217 36
          2017 Hardware $16,724,365 39
          2018 Hardware $19,578,951 47
          2019 Hardware $15,831,572 47
          2020 Hardware $12,008,996 31
          2021 Hardware $17,706,376 41

      • FalseMyrmidon@kbin.run
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        4 months ago

        There are no actual numbers. There are gross payroll numbers and number of employees per high level department, but no indication of how that’s distributed or if it includes things like benefits. Basically useless info in a vacuum

      • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        "Hardware,” to my surprise, has been a relatively small part of the company, with just 41 employees paid a gross of more than $17 million in 2021

        That’s the only one I saw that meant anything that useful. They have ~10x that for game development but no indication of number of people there, and 79 people working on Steam.

        • mozingo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          4 months ago

          Number of employees working on games is in the list at the bottom of the article. 181 as of 2021.