- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.zip
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To be fair, Valve only has around 350 employees. The other companies have thousands more.
The business hive mind cannot comprehend a company making so much money without shareholders demanding line go up every hour
Revenue. Revenue is not profit.
Correct. The article is discussing revenue.
The headline is misleading, it was worth mentioning.
It’s not misleading, you’ve just purposely ignored the meaning of the words to instead imply your own.
Have you ever considered that different people can interpret things differently? Why are you jumping down someone’s throat for clarifying an ambiguous title?
Is this fun for you?
I don’t think it’s misleading, “generating” implies gross profit, not net. It’s not explicit, but it’s also not misleading.
“Makes”.
I “make” my gross pay. I don’t really talk about “making” my net pay. I don’t much think about my net pay, outside of actual budgeting.
Again, implying gross profit, not net. It didn’t say “makes” 50 million profit. You are inferring something that is not otherwise implied.
Nah he’s right. Nobody buys a widget for 5 bucks and sells it for 10 bucks and says, “I made 10 bucks”. By your rational I could buy a car new for 25 grand, sell it 10 years later for 12 grand and say I “made” 12 grand off it.
“Make” has typically implied profit for as long as I can remember.I interpreted it as profit.
Considering that I’ve seen conflation of revenue and profit from actual journalists, I stand by my previous statement.
Buddy. Take a breath for a moment. I mean this constructively; it’s an opportunity to learn.
What you’ve just said here is essentially this:
- Some journalists sometimes make errors.
- Therefore I choose to make an interpretive error.
Please remember, we all make errors (myself included). The best of us learn from them.
Then again, somehow I don’t expect Valve’s expenditures are that high, except download server costs.
Eh, that could also include sales revenue, of which Valve pays out 70% to right holders.
People are the biggest cost for sure. Then servers probably.
Not hard, if you don’t have 20k employees.
I wonder if they’re also getting paid more or does greedy Gabe just take it all to fund his mega yachts.
Did a little digging, apparently in a 2021 lawsuit, documents were released with bad redactions (they blacked out over the data, but the underlying information was still able to be highlighted and copied/pasted. Very common error when redacting PDFs)
I haven’t checked the data myself but according one user this was the breakdown:
“Total staff as of 2021: 336 people
Administration: 35 people making an average of 4.5 million a year
Game Developers: 181 people making an average of 1 million a year
Steam Developers: 79 people making an average of 960k a year
Hardware Developers: 41 people making average of 430k a year”
Normally I would guess that “average” here probably means a few people making a ton of money while others get shafted. But I think “admin” probably accounts for that. We have no official way of knowing the true breakdown since this info is not supposed to be public
This actually seems like not a terrible spread. The average for the top earners is a little more than 10x the average for the lowest earners… Obviously outliers could be skewing that data (there could be one hardware developer making 30 million while the others work for poverty wages) but from the data we have, this isn’t nearly as wide a gap as I would have expected.
Valve moved into hardware long after its other ventures, so it’s not surprising the hardware devs make less – they’re newer. Still, $430k/yr is an enviable salary…
This was from 2021, so prior to the Steam Deck… that was really their break-out moment, I think, with regards to hardware. The Steam Link and Steam Controller were neat but didn’t really capture their respective markets, and the Index was widely considered one of the best VR headsets on the market but that’s a relatively small market, and it priced out all but the enthusiast tier consumers. The Steam Deck on the other hand had mass appeal and basically ushered in a golden age of handheld PC gaming… not to mention the immense hype around their recent hardware announcements. Could be that their hardware team is making more now.
Wouldn’t surprise that much, as far as I’ve heard from as far as I remember Valve is a great place to work and by all accounts treat their employees well.
What does administration mean there? Like accounting, human resources and so? How could they make, in average, way more that developers??
I’d think it’s marketing teams, HR, managers, the C-suite.
Those who manage people usually make more than those who dos tuff because they take on more responsibilities.
Yeah I know that’s bullshit and that they shift responsibilities all the time, but good managers do shoulder bullshit so workers can work.
The C-suite being included there made sense of that disparity.
I mean yeah and no. I manage a team, I make 10%-12% more than the team even though technically we do the same tasks. The difference is I need to know their job, but also manage a schedule, and allocate resources, while planning sales for the future stream so they don’t run out of work. It’s a different skillset on top of the team skill requirement.
Not justifying a C suite at 20 million over dudes making 60k though
Hey that’s not fair.
Gabe is also spending all that money on Aston Martins Valkyries to race around the world.
A highschool friends dad worked at Valve and they’d take the entire company and their families to Hawaii every year.
Seemed like a good place to work.
Would make him the first billionaire in history to pay his workers their worth, so… Not a fucking chance.
Unfortunately that isn’t true, by accident this has been tested by tech companies like Netflix they were paid in stocks when the company was worth nothing but as it grew they got paid more and more until it became apparent that they didn’t actually have to work anymore entire companies became filled with zombie employees people who don’t work like at all beyond what they are contractually obligated to do, it created huge discontent between the teirs of worker the one’s actually doing the work and the ones getting paid, you almost can’t pay people beyond a certain amount because they don’t work for you then they don’t need to they can live a perfectly fine life without working and nothing gets done so you just have to higher a new staff who once again you can’t in pay too much or they won’t need to work and you’ll just have more zombie employees.
It is actually very well established:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-008-0063-2
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0030507368900093
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_crowding_theory
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3906839/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214804322001422
https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-effects-on-intrinsic-motivation.pdf
people who don’t work like at all beyond what they are contractually obligated to do
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. Why do you frame the workers doing the work they’re paid to do as bad?
I don’t get it. Are there any sources for this?
Are you saying the more people get paid the less work they do? This doesn’t make sense to me. This sounds like a management and hiring issue. If someone doesn’t want to work, you replace them with someone who does. Don’t hire lazy fucks, hire competent people.
If I had a job that pays say 1 million a year, and I know I won’t be able to get paid nowhere near as much at another company, I would make sure I work hard enough not lose that amazingly paid job, because otherwise I will have to work for half that and give up my rich lifestyle.
Again, a management issue for letting employees become zombies and a hiring issue for hiring lazy bums.
It is actually very well established:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-008-0063-2
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0030507368900093
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_crowding_theory
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3906839/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214804322001422
https://www.bsfrey.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/crowding-effects-on-intrinsic-motivation.pdf
The research is mostly about overpaying, not high but equal pay for everyone doing the same job. It happens when people compare their effort to others’ and if they feel over-rewarded it can actually lead to two outcomes:
- Increasing effort to justify it, or
- reducing effort
And the evidence is actually mixed between the two outcomes, because different people respond differently to different incentives, like flexibility, holidays, etc.
Equity theory mostly applies only when the work is measurable and the teams/individuals compare themselves constantly.
IMO this can be solved by better management and equal pay for equal work/skillset.
There are also other incentives that can crowd out internal motivation, such as surveillance, pressure, inequality. But obviously management doesn’t want to talk about those, much more profitable to reduce the pay.
High pay alone doesn’t really trigger crowding out.
I still maintain my position that this is largely a management and greed issue. And high and equal pay alone doesn’t create a lazy, zombie workforce.
Here’s some studies and theories arguing the opposite:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33705159/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency_wage
https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/275/pdfs/efficiency-wages-variants-and-implications.pdf
That sounds a lot like the violence inherent in the system
No no Gabe just works 31.244.670 times as much as his employees.
capitalism gonna capitalism, man. you know the answer.
That tends to happen when you have a monopoly on an industry where you get 30% of the revenue from other people’s hard work.
I wouldn’t describe it as a “monopoly” per say. I’d describe it as “all of the competition is filled with idiots”:
Go do your own game shop with the feature set of steam.
We have seen how well that was executed with Epic.I wouldnt even call the GOG implementation bad but it obviously lacks the PR in comparison (+ games like CP2077 are also available on Steam)
You could defend Amazon with that logic. the fact that the barrier of entry is high is exactly what let’s Steam, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo abuse of their soft monopoly.
Nothing justifies owning a billion dollars worth of of boats.
Amazon tried and failed, too.
Which is surprising, considering how much money they generate off amazon store.
All it takes is to give a good service like Valve does. But somehow, as in Zippy’s pic, competition keeps shooting themselves in a foot. Probably due to shareholders that Valve does not have.
Tbf, I wouldnt even touch Amazon with a kilometer long pole even if the game was free.
I order on Amazon only if the physical item is the cheaper AND easier option to order from (usually because I can only get thing A but not B).
If I can avoid it, I will try to.
Remind me again which game developer had to release their game on Steam? Or which publisher had no choice but to market on the platform? And are you the sole user forced to use Steam, or was that someone else…?
If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
Minecraft, Star Sector, Dwarf Fortress until recently. Stores like Epic and GOG and itch.io.
Plus Steam gives you content distribution, discussions, patches, all for free.
You don’t even have to release your game on pc to sell… Some don’t at all. Sticking to only consoles.
I know! There’s this great game called Fortnite that no one has ever heard of because you can’t get it on Steam. /s
It did well because EGS is so great /s It’s obviously the exception.
Interesting that first part… Respectfully, no one is entitled to sales on any platform. As a consumer, I’ve tried other launchers and stores. I hate them all. I choose to only use Steam (for the time being). It’s simply choosing the superior option, but it is an option. I can’t say the same for my internet, energy, or cable companies…
Respectfully, no one is entitled to sales on any platform.
I’ve never said that. Of course if I‘m publishing a game I want it to be successful. If I was a book publisher, I‘d have to sell via Amazon, too, simply because a lot of people never buy anywhere else. It is a requirement to sell on Steam for a successful campaign, and OP implied otherwise.
It would really help if the would-be competitors focused on consumer-facing features rather than… whatever it is they’re doing. GoG is doing a great job of this, but EGS is still missing even the most basic features years later, because they keep trying to get market share through buying exclusives and giving away free games and that’s sadly never going to work out. They just don’t understand what the consumers in the industry they’re trying to operate in want.
Yeah sure, but acting like I don’t need Steam for my game to sell is untrue.
Sure, but the point I’m making is, it’s not Steam’s fault; they’re simply doing a better job than their competitors of making their storefront attractive to consumers. Rather than blaming Steam, you should be blaming the other storefronts for not being able to capture market share.
I‘m not blaming anyone.
Hey look, the contrarian is back! Wow! I thought you would take some time to reflect after your wack takes.
I don‘t think it’s very contrarian or whack to acknowledge the fact that I may need to sell on the biggest platform if I want my game to do well.
I’m referring to your prior comments and history speaking in communities. The most recent one I remember involved Portal, Half-life, and counterstrike.
You’re not at Lembot_0005 level comments yet tho, so that’s good.
Yes, harassing users without context based on previous comments in other threads is much more valuable for a community. I don’t even remember having contrarian opinions about Portal or Half-Life, they are my favourite series‘.
You can sell your game on Steam, in addition to other platforms as well.
You’re not contradicting anything they said, and you’re not contradicting that Steam is a monopoly.
Doesn’t make it less of a monopoly.
Steam is not the only supplier of particular goods, they do not own the market, they have not the highest price and do not lack competition. It is just that their service is far better than whatever competition offers. Nothing stops Microsoft, EA and Epic to implement same features Steam does. Like, literally nothing. These companies have money to do so. They just chose not to.
Technically Steam isn’t a monopoly by actual definition.
What you, and others often mean with the term, is that they hold a majority market position.
Not to mention the companies that have legal decisions declaring they are a monopoly when they are only 80%+ of a market are in the context of those companies (Microsoft, google) behaving in an anticompetitive way using their majority market position.
So not technically a monopoly and not comparable to legally declared monopolies.
I think the difference here is that Valve isn’t forcing a monopoly in the way our tech overlords like Google and Amazon do through acquisitions and regulatory capture.
Several companies have tried and mostly failed to compete with Steam, I’m primarily thinking of whatever the EA and Ubisoft launchers are. The two closest have been GOG whom I would argue is fairly successful considering what their goals are and Epic, whom I would say is much less so.
This is the key point people are missing.
Valve arent paying for exclusives or anything, they are just delivering a far better product than anyone else. GOG has it’s DRM-free market, but outside of that, there’s nothing close. Even if Epic Games had feature parity, fuck that company.
Fuck valve too. Gabe has over a billion dollars worth of boats. Fuck him to hell and back
Amazon doesn’t either. Most of the arguments defending Steam can easily apply to every other “bad” company.
The only thing that differentiates steam is their marketing budget targeting small forums and Reddit.
I never mentioned Amazon, but it’s really no comparison, even the FTC in the USA has filed suits against them for monopolistic and illegal behaviour.
Ive never seen an advert for Steam myself, outside of on their own platform or a video on their own YouTube channel. They sell largely through word of mouth. I suppose recently they offered journalists to visit their HQ to show off their new hardware.
Valve has lawsuits in the work, although not from the FTC. The fact is Valve is just slightly above the other companies, but it’s a very low bar and that doesn’t negate their very real effect on the industry.
I bring up Amazon because your arguments apply to them. If I told you Bezos deserves all his wealth because he has a better platform then his competitors (all three of them) and offers an easy to use website with cheap delivery, you would probably call me a bootlicker.
All billionaires and their profit making machines are bad, no exceptions imo.
Yeah, why do you buy things if you’re against capitalism? Checkmate.
All of them.
Mono=one poly=seller… and last I checked Steam is not the only seller of video games. They aren’t even the only seller of digital video games. They aren’t even the only seller of digital video games for SteamOS.
They are the largest because they do what’s right by their customers and employees. As a ‘for instance’, I bought Portal 2 for the PS3 many years ago. I no longer have my PS3 but I can still play Portal 2 (as well as Portal which was just thrown in for me) on any PC.
Technically Steam is not a monopoly, but the way people commonly use the term these days is as simple as “majority market share”.
Treat customers right and you get rewarded. They are the majority market shareholder because they have earned it, not through deceptive business practices but through being a great company.
If they were a monopoly they wouldn’t allow other game catalogs on their systems, yet I have GOG and Epic on my Steam Deck. In fact, there isn’t even a requirement for me to have Steam on my Steam Deck. Just because a company is the market leader doesn’t mean they got there through unethical means.
You are equating “monopoly” with “abusive monopoly.”
Google got its monopoly in internet search by being better than the competition. It’s still a monopoly, even though it mostly plays by the rules.
No, Google pays off other browsers to use Google as the default search engine, among many other actual monopolistic practices. Steam does none of that and simply provides a product.
Paying people to promote your stuff is not an abuse of monopoly position, because Duckduckgo is perfectly capable of doing the same thing.
Abuse of monopoly position would be leaning on search results to promote Chrome or Android (for example). And they have been caught doing some anti-competitive shit.
You are equating “monopoly” with “abusive monopoly.”
No, I’m not. I’m saying they aren’t a monopoly by the simple fact that they aren’t the only providers of the service they sell. And while they are currently in a position to use their power to make themselves a monopoly, they are not doing that and instead are playing fair with their competition.
I refer you to the other comment subthread where I mentioned textbook examples of monopolies which had 80-odd percent market share, you asked me if Steam had that, I said yes, and then you went quiet.
Don’t bring up points that you were already challenged on and had no reply to - it’s lying, because you already know it’s wrong.
The gaming market is much larger than PC gaming.
And Steam does not have an 80% market share on PC gaming, so who’s lying?
And finally, who the fuck do you think you are that I owe you a response?
Ah OK, so the classic monopolies in American History (Standard Oil - controlled 90% of its market; American Tobacco - controlled 80% of its market) were not monopolies.
And Steam controls 80%-90% of the video game market?
steam has a 75% marketshare of PC games distribution in the US. the 2nd biggest player, epic games, has a market share estimated from 3% to 7,5%. i can’t find data for steam’s market share outside the US, but i’d expect it to be even higher.
if google can be considered to have a monopoly on web browsers with 73% of the marketshare, even as alternatives (like safari, 13%) exist, i don’t see why steam wouldn’t count as well.
Now include consoles and phones.
You can analyse markets at different levels.
of the PC video game market, yes.
Do they have any kind of profit sharing program?
I’d be kind of pissed if I worked there and made like $70k or whatever, only to read this shit.
Their lowest paid employees still very likely make 6 figures. Valve has historically taken very good care of their employees.
Doubt it. But, for what it’s worth, last I heard, valve was one of the most sought after employers in the business. Apparently the salaries are generous and you get to work on whatever you want, not on what a manager tells you to.
If I remember correctly they have performance based bonuses
Valve still makes a ton of money from kids gambling. They don’t care about anything else than money and yet gamers keeps kissing their ass.
Call me a shill, but Valve’s actions indicate that they care about the money that comes from improving a product or service. That differentiates them from many publicly traded companies that care about money at the expense of the quality of their own products and services.
Both things can be true. They make good products while also making millions from kids gambling.
You are correct, though it bears stating that they make millions from kids gambling and they make billions for their software distribution platform, as one indicator of Valve’s priorities as a for-profit company.
They probably should hire more people and reduce profits. But you can’t just hire anybody and that’s a lot of work.
That’s how you go from sustainable to unsustainable due to chasing constant exponential growth then eventual enshitification that hits consumers to try to recoup all the lost money.
You’re describing the shitty business models of publicly traded companies that hire thousands then lay off thousands and keep trying to do whatever they can to raise stock prices due to not targetting a sustainable stable company for the longterm but quarter by quarter profit targets.
That steam has been more conservative with hiring is probably why they’ve been able to have the resources to go into hardware even if it flops unlike EA, Ubisoft, and Epic despite having way more employees.
why?
In order to provide more goods and services to their customers to entrench their position.
This is revenue not profit. They need to pay their operating costs with these funds. Their operating costs are probably pretty high considering their global network and distribution. Hiring more people would likely have a minimal impact on their operating costs and each new person may not contribute much to their revenue considering their business model.
Didn’t catch that, thanks. What is their actual profit before personal cost?
They are a private company, so they don’t have to disclose that.
Profit is always after all costs, including personnel.
