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Valve makes almost $50 million per employee, raking in more cash per person than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft — gaming giant's 350 employees on track to generate $17 billion this year (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 57 points 11 months ago

The business hive mind cannot comprehend a company making so much money without shareholders demanding line go up every hour

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    [–] 160 points 11 months ago (17 children)

    Revenue. Revenue is not profit.

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  • [–] 65 points 11 months ago (13 children)

    Correct. The article is discussing revenue.

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  • [–] 35 points 11 months ago (12 children)

    The headline is misleading, it was worth mentioning.

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    I don't think it's misleading, "generating" implies gross profit, not net. It's not explicit, but it's also not misleading.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    "Makes".

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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Again, implying gross profit, not net. It didn't say "makes" 50 million profit. You are inferring something that is not otherwise implied.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Considering that I've seen conflation of revenue and profit from actual journalists, I stand by my previous statement.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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:

    1. Some journalists sometimes make errors.
    2. Therefore I choose to make an interpretive error.

    Please remember, we all make errors (myself included). The best of us learn from them.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Not just that but I mean journalism geez. I can't think of a profession that has had more of a fall from grace in the last 20 years. Furthermore the implication here is video game journalism, which has always been the lowest form of Journalism.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    It's not misleading, you've just purposely ignored the meaning of the words to instead imply your own.

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Then again, somehow I don’t expect Valve’s expenditures are that high, except download server costs.

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    • [+] 50 points 11 months ago* (21 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 92 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    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

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  • [–] 63 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 28 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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...

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    What does administration mean there? Like accounting, human resources and so? How could they make, in average, way more that developers??

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago*

    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

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Would make him the first billionaire in history to pay his workers their worth, so.... Not a fucking chance.

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  • [+] -15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

    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

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  • [+] 14 points 11 months ago* (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 27 points 11 months ago*

    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?

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    • [–] 29 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Not hard, if you don't have 20k employees.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I can't wait for your company to do the same. You know, because it's not hard. Heck, I invite you to do the same with 10 employees, since it's so not hard.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I said it's not hard to reach that high of a revenue per head measure if you don't have 20k employees.
    Google, MS and so much other mega corps have a similar revenue (dunno exact numbers), so they obviously have lower numbers.

    So calm down.

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    • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Levels.fyi data from 1 October 2025 reveals senior engineers at £206,000 ($375,000) total, but Valve's equity-heavy model amplifies this, drawing top talent without micromanagement.

    This article was here the other day and made it sound like employees are treated very well.

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    • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Does anyone know how Valve rate on privacy? Do they aggressively data mine and sell it in the surveillance economy?

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    [–] 12 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    To be fair, Valve only has around 350 employees. The other companies have thousands more.

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