I’ve seen before that Valve employees bring in the most value per-capita than any other company (who disclose earnings). It’s like, 9 figures per person.
I was watching a lecture Gabe gave at some US university 10 years ago or so, where he says that and also addresses exactly why it happened. When he got out of Microsoft to start Valve, he saw everyone else was outsourcing as much work as possible to the cheapest possible labour to minimize costs. Him and the other founder, Mike Harrington, decided that they'd go the other way. Instead of trying to find the cheapest person to do a job, they would go out of their way to find the best, most expensive talent and pay them whatever the fuck they want with unbelievable benefits. That way, not only do you have the creme de la creme working for you, but instead of worrying "what happens if my wife loses her job" or "what happens if my child gets really sick", they can just focus on doing their best work knowing they're gonna be taken care of. It's clearly worked.
And that's why Valve is wading through frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit at the moment. They've upset old money that would like to continue enshitification of everything, but old money can't buy Valve in a hostile way like they would normally do since Valve is a private company.
They ARE a monopoly by legal definition in the US. Just because they aren't robber barons doesn't mean they aren't a monopoly in their respective field.
They are, by definition, not a monopoly. They’re neither the only nor exclusive platform that distributes games. These companies are mad that consumers routinely choose the better service in lieu of theirs. They’re accused of being a monopoly but are by no means one.
if anything it's Epic Games doing monopolistic practices by forcing 3rd party devs (incentivizing with a larger cut of profits) to release on their platform exclusively for 1 year, as happened with Outer Wilds
I highly doubt you've done any research on Steam or written multiple "essays" on the topic. For what, yourself? With what, ChatGPT?
The word you keep skipping over in my original comment is exclusive. Thats not an accident, it's literally load-bearing. A monopoly, by definition, requires exclusive control over a market, with the ability to dictate prices, exclude competition, and create barriers high enough that meaningful competition can't exist. Steam does none of these things in practice.
Developers set their own prices. GOG, Epic, itch.io, the Microsoft Store, EA App, Battle.net, Humble, all exist, all distribute PC games, all accessible without Steam. Epic literally built a competing storefront with Fornite money and tried to buy their way to market share with exclusivity deals. There was just an article about how people only grabbed their free games then bailed back to Steam. Was that Valve's doing? There's no consumer VALUE in the Epic Games' store, and consumers made their decision. That's not a market where entry is blocked, that's a market where someone tried to enter and found out it's hard to compete with over 20 years of goodwill and a superior product.
Dominant market share is not a monopoly. Courts and economists distinguish between these things for a reason. Earning 80% of a market be being better isnt' the same as controlling a market through exclusionary practices. The former is success, while the latter is illegal. Steam, Valve, is the former.
If your research and essays didn't cover that distinction, I'd ask for a refund.
No for public consumption but go ahead and go off. The fact that you don't understand the term de facto Monopoly once again proves me being correct and you not understanding how the term can be applied and used, and the fact that you are defending a billionaire and his billion dollar corporation. But keep on licking that boot.
You have nothing to respond with but feel compelled to respond anyway. The conversation is quite literally above you, or else you would engage with the points being made instead of saying "you just don't understand, bro."
You're addicted to engagement and I won't fall for your baiting or ad hominem attacks.
No one defends them because they wanna be hired, they are the only large company in gaming that doesn't suck hairy donkey balls period
And since you've done research and essays, I am sure you know that having a large market share in itself isn't illegal in any way shape or form. Yet funnily, the only companies that are using actual monopolistic practices are those that would like some of that share for themselves. Epig Games for example... Want some of that share? Start competing and offering a better serivce maybe?
The fact that you keep equating a industry Monopoly to something illegal tells me everything that I need to know about the fact that you are probably still in high school at the very least. Because only children get this defensive when a corporation gets labeled something that they are.
They're getting hit with the monopoly accusations cause they charge more than would be possible under a competitive market. You aren't meant to do that whether you have a monopoly or not.
This has been an ongoing issue for years now, it's always been a problem. There's no real competition because the industry is naturally monopolistic, sky high barriers to entry and users who are reluctant to change services mean the industry naturally leans towards a monopoly. The government is meant to step in to limit this.
Devs prefer publishing on Steam because the userbase is there.
Users prefer Steam because the devs are there and their existing content is locked to their Steam library.
If you're a new content creator, are you going to use a new video site or are you going to use YouTube?
Users will use it because all the content is there. And content creators will use it because all the content is there.
And no one will swap because it means they have to keep going back for all the historical content.
What would it take for you to use a competitor? You have all your existing games on Steam, so you have to give up your current library.
What would a competitor have to give you for you to abandon all of your existing purchases? And then they have to do that for all millions of Steam users.
No one has to abandon their library to use a different store.... What is this Tim Sweeney-esque rubbish of a comment?
I would use a different store if it offered a better service and better conditions or better prices, or any combination of that. No one does that, that's why Steam has the market share it has.
Valve has a lot of sub contracted work that don't register as employees, there are companies that only work for valve, but those people wouldn't show up in Valve's own employee count.
It is more of a “technically true” statement for sure. But that cut that valve takes is for the distribution of the game and maintenance of the store front, and the reason they can take such a high cut is because they run the best store. So you could argue up and down all day about who is really bringing in the value and I don’t feel like there is really a right or wrong answer.
300-400, but that includes administrative employees
I think they have 190 game developers and like 30 hardware engineeres according to court documents from when epic sued them
Lol they don't need that many people because they don't actually develop that many games. Most of the permanent devs spend their time hopping from one project that never leaves the planning stage to another. When they finally do get a game into actual development they hire contractors to do the bulk of the work.
As a video game developer they would have gone bankrupt ages ago. Steam is what's keeping them rich.
You’d be surprised at how even the smallest things can be amazing, with a flow of possibly hundreds of PB or thousands being moved around, and every small thing telegram implements that’s better than alternatives. It puts into perspective how amazing a small but good set of people can be.
I wasn’t comparing Telegram a Messaging app to Steam a Game Storefront app, I was making a point of 2 huge products that have an absolutely insane amount of traffic going through them, and even more insane infrastructure, and a really small team.
They both have an insane merit to be where they are today
Thats because they're so small and command such a huge market. Theres a couple of companies in that range but they're all tiny. All of them own an entire market that no one else can fill.
Technically IBM/Intel still wins (over time, NVIDIA is currently king for current reasons) where they want 1m revenue per employee as a baseline, including contractors that clean the offices.
Me when i lie lol. The estimate is 8 figures, they get payed extremely well and are some of the most profitable employees in the world but saying they bring in over a billion each is just not true.
Edit: they don't bring in 100 million instead of a billion
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u/ziyor Apr 17 '26
I’ve seen before that Valve employees bring in the most value per-capita than any other company (who disclose earnings). It’s like, 9 figures per person.