How many times has this been posted now? Genuine question: why is this such a big deal?
Genuine question: why is this such a big deal?
These are not all video game companies, but for reference:
AMD: 26,000 employees
EA: 14,000
Facebook: 84,000
Netflix: 11,000
Spotify: 9,000
Twitter: 7,500
Yep. But it also seems like people are so shocked by the data that maybe they're missing the moral of this story, too? ...sure it's impressive that Valve has done so much with such a small workforce, but I think the reason they've been able to move so quickly is because they have such a small workforce. Companies get slow because they get big...I don't care how much you tout your SAFe processes; you will always lose efficiency as you grow. It's the difference between steering a canoe vs a cruise ship...the more you grow, the more you have to fight against momentum. So, my takeaway from this is that they figured out the secret to continued success as a maturing company, and good for them.
Now, I say all of this with sincere hopes that they don't work their smaller number of employees to death and ask them to take on inappropriately burdensome workloads. Because if that's the case, they should fuck right off with the rest of their peers.
From what I understand, they basically have a very open work structure. People are free to work on what they want, when they want. They actually are against high workloads and do everything they can to prevent employee burnout.
I can't say if that extends beyond the development teams to other departments like server management, but everything I've ever seen about them says they're all just in it to have fun, make cool shit now and then, and of course make tons of money. The fact that their sales platform basically just prints money helps support that culture, obviously.
It didn’t work out
That's a bummer, but also not entirely surprising when you consider Half-Life 3...
Yeah it’s great to think letting your employees do what they want is good, which it is, but yeah everyone’s going to have their own idea and want to work on it. So who gets funding, etc.
It’s strange the person said they move fast, that’s not something I’ve ever heard in reference to steam/valve before, and so many upvotes? What’s going on here.
I think it speaks to developing for gaming over developing for infrastructure. What does it say about gaming where, a company that has a healthy attitude about work in general, has staff that prefer to work on addressing Steam bugs over working on a prestige game?
But it’s basically a store front and they contract almost everything out. Like how many people does it take to run some servers? They don’t make games, the steam deck and the VR are the few things they’ve done. And that could be done by a couple dozen engineers and contract everything else.
Like how many employees should they have?
Okay I shouldn’t have taken a shot at their game making ability, but it legit fucking sucks and they acknowledge it, people bash them for it sometimes, take it easy guys.
They don’t make games
DOTA and CS beg to differ. Spotify is a "storefront" that produces nothing but has about 25x more employees.
Slow Newsweek for gaming, I guess. They have had a public employee directory on their website for as long as I can remember; it's not really news.
Valve is an excellent example of a sustainable tech company. It's not on the growth at any cost, boom and bust cycle
Steam is successful because they're the only company in that market treating customers right.
I'd be very upset if the courts side with EA.
and because they are not publicly traded company.
Well that's why they actually do right by their customers. That said I definitely agree
They're also one of the few (possibly only) that has not gone public.
Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
I think people often hate steam for their success, but fail to see it's the result of customers'choice in a free market. (I see it enough I'm not sure if people get paid to hate on them... To ruin the thing they have most of customer respect)
Steam is not publicly traded and does not act like every other publicly traded company. It invests in its customers experience and custtomer come back for that. It does not nickel in dime or use its position to hold its customer captive and enshitfify its product. It's not an ISP...
It invests in hardware and software development it believes the industry needs not to make a massive profit but to be a champion of what gaming should be (Linux, steam link, index, bug picture, steam controller, steam deck) These products are experimental and usually sold at or near cost not to make money but to prove to the market there is a need and a demand.
They are often a champion and voice of the gamer.
They could have tried to be like Bethesda and tried to monetize their workshop but they didn't.
Sometimes they're quiet and we don't hear anything about what they're working on, but that doesn't mean they aren't working on things.
I can't imagine pc gaming would have survived and resurged without steam. And I hate to think what it would be like if there were just 5 epics, origin, Uplay, whatever other launcher. I think gaming would look like mobile games..,.. which takes a 30% cut too and can only sell in apple or android markets.... No one bitches there and they offer no services.
I think people often hate steam for their success
I hate them for forcing me to use a kind of DRM which will stop working once their servers stop.
Halflife was just fine without steam. Adding steam seemed to be a way to stop players from sharing CD keys.
Luckily steamless is piss easy to use because Steams "DRM" is only meant to be preventative. As in, you're playing it on steam for the community, workshop, cloud saves, per game notes, control scheme setups, etc etc.
Quick! Let's add about 800 useless Managers!
Who each will need a couple of consultants from McKinsey, PWC, you name it, to do their jobs!
700 should suffice for the first level, but then, you need more than one level.
This number doesn't seem to include support staff who iirc are contract workers so might not count as "employees".
Most of the support staff is their customers and users actually.
Most of the store is curated and moderated by the developers and publishers, but you’re not wrong about stuff like server farms and development.
But I’m also curious, there’s a line, so where is it? No business is going to include the plumber and electrician they hire to do occasional or even routine work and maintenance. So do the same techs working on server equipment count or not? Where’s the line on this who’s a contracted employee instead of contracter.
Economists are praising it‘s efficiency but there are massive shortcomings when it comes to costumer support. A couple years ago I was told they have a whopping single person dedicated to matters in the german market for example. Anyone who has any idea about the german bureaucracy hellscape knows this is far from sufficient to deal with any issue whatsoever. And I suspect it‘s not running much smoother elsewhere.
costumer
I don't think valve owes the cosplay community squat.
in a serious reply to your point though:
I appreciate their line of thought - why dedicate resources for roles that don't add value to steam's development just to engage with every country's unique bureaucracy? until those countries fine valve for noncompliance it seems like an easy choice to make.
8500 million in revenue and 350 employees.
Gaben owns 6 yatchs and spends 70 to 100 million maintaining them.
There is absolutely nothing that differentiates valve from the other stores front to justify this. The whole store front industry should be tightly regulated. No billionaire should exist and if you find yourself defending one, it just means they have a good marketing team.
This is having a negative impact on the industry and the only ones benefiting are Gaben, Nintendo, Microsoft, Epic, etc. it's clear collusion.
Can't wait for all the downvotes and simps coming to defend him because "Gaben isn't your average billionaire".
Sounds like they're using computers effectively. Not sure why this is news.
THB, they could use a few more employees and it shows. Community moderation is awful and there are many nazi groups. The whole trading ecosystem is ripe with frauds and many games released are cheap shovelware, asset flips or broken. And don't get me started on the problems with abandoned Early Access games. Valve could hire a few more people and maybe try to tackle those issues.
The shitty games released on steam are the outcome of it being relatively easy to publish a game on the steam, and that should absolutely not change. Let people publish their crap that nobody will play, you don't see the vast majority of it.
Is this why they suck with CS2?
laughs, then immediately weeps in tf2
Watch the heavy update will drop any second now!
Annnyyyy second now....
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
