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: 7,500Yep. 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?
Do they? They have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now so how is that even remotely true? And I’m sure their employees would rather build something new than to keep fixing old stuff, who wants that? That’s a pretty weird claim to say people prefer.
It’s like people bury their heads and ignore everything bad about steam/valve.
Steam/valve/newall seems to have this weird thing on lemmy, every other billionaire is cancer, but all hail GabeN, can’t have a discussion about anything here it seems without it getting derailed by people with rose glasses on.
And did you read anything posted? What’s “healty” about anything from my screen grab?
They have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now so how is that even remotely true?
TF2 got bot-free recently. Let’s see how it lasts.
If the alternative is making a half life 3 that people don’t have the passion for then imo it’s working.
Or there’s not enough people with passion, since their passion is hats, or the higher ups have their preferred people they give funding too, part of the linked articles mention this stuff.
I don’t want forced passion. If an artists doesn’t want to create, they shouldn’t be forced.
So is game making an art form, I think so.
They never fully abandoned it tho
That is absolutely fascinating, kinda disappointing, and a really good find.
your explanation brought to mind the design ideals behind the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) CPU architecture. Less complexity means higher throughput.
Hope its not a shitty simile lol
Your point about agility is valid but Valve hasn’t veered and pivoted their way to success. Their core model and service have stayed pretty consistent for many years now. And while a cruise ship can’t steer quickly, it can move a hell of a lot more people much faster than a canoe. They are just getting a lot done with very few people and it’s 100% worth of remark. I’d love to hear more about how they do it.
This is such a simple idea that people seem incapable of understanding
Big companies can’t innovate. They’re pulled in too many directions and create bureaucracies that stifle the individuality needed to push beyond known techniques. At best, they can iterate and imitate - and even that is very hit or miss
There’s this idea companies must grow or die - but in reality, companies grow until they can only perpetuate themselves. They start to only make sense on paper
Individuals drive progress - they need time and autonomy
Valve has done so much ?
Steam hasn’t been improved since 2012.
They’re clearly coasting.
They’re keeping their keeping the 30% cut and running away with it instead of hire people to fix stuff.
Since 2012:
- Linux support - I joined around 2013 because of that
- Proton - massive Linux compatibility upgrade
- Steam Input - along with big picture mode and whatnot
- SteamVR
- hidden games
- cart improvements
- mobile app improvements, along with MFA
- collections
That’s just what I remember off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more that I just don’t care about.
Remote Play Together is another big one for many, I’ve used it together with Retroarch, so much fun.
Oh yeah, and I didn’t mention Steam Family sharing or whatever it’s called now. And Steam Link.
Proton and Steam Input are biggest. And while Proton is built on shoulders of giants(wine), Steam Input is something that didn’t exist.
Hell i use steam for proton and linux. It really makes gaming so much easier than other services
So what. It works fine for me.
they take the whole company to hawaii most years iirc.
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.
Twitter runs a single web application.
They also do make games.
Isn’t most of steam pages like the discussion, store page, forums, guides, workshop etc are self moderated by the publishers and developers?
And yeah they made Alyx in the last decade? They make hats for old games, that’s it it seems.
they have mobile games too, and a tech demo for the steam deck, and the known hero shooter in the works
basically the people who think valve doesnt make games didnt buy into any of their expansionary market projects (mobile/vr/steam deck). They make games, just ones you dont want to play/cant play
Nah, their corporate structure legit caused them issues making games, people like to think valve as this perfect company, but it’s hella flawed and it’s peak capitalism too.
Lemmy just seems to dislike anything remotely bad being said about them, it’s odd.
it’s peak capitalism too.
The screenshot sounds more like “peak anarchism” to me.
im not a steam stan for any reason (i rarely even buy shit off the steam store directly) but its disingenuous to say they dont make games. Id argue peak capitalism is when you force a sequel to a game that didnt necessarily need it. there are a LOT of things I can conplain about when pertaining to valve, but not making games isnt one of them. its a poor argument to make when users choose not to play what they dod make.
Its similar to Fallout and Elder Scrolls, its not that there ISNT a new fallout or elder scrolls game, its just they made ones that users mostly didnt want to play (ESO, FO:Shelter, FO:76, ES: Blades, ES: Castles) disregarding the also existing VR versions of each game.
the argument sounds very similar to thise currently complaining on the Nintendo front that Famicom Detective Club got a new game, and not other nintendo IPs like Star Fox (which had Zero, Guard and Starfox 2) in the last decade, and Fzero (which had Fzero 99). its never a matter of they didnt make games, its the matter that they didnt make games they wanted
Letting your employees work on what they like doesn’t seem like the worst thing. It might hurt game profits but seems much nicer for the workers.
I’m not sure what do you mean as moderation of store page.
They make the information on the store page, they moderate the forums, guides and workshop.
What does steam moderate themselves?
They make the information on the store page
At least some progress. How information on the store page steam would add without developer? How would steam know title of game, price and other stuff without developer telling it.
What does steam moderate themselves?
Reviews and refunds.
They don’t make games
DOTA and CS beg to differ. Spotify is a “storefront” that produces nothing but has about 25x more employees.
And valve contracts out or has the developers and publishers self moderate their own pages on Steam instead. Why is this shocking? Because a company contracts out instead of employing people and has their customers do stuff for free…?
How do you think Spotify works?
It would seem they pay more employees than contractors, that’s why their employee count is higher.
Wall Street would probably say 15-30,000+. I think the point of the surprise is that actually it’s possible to be massively profitable and have good products without needing massive teams of people. How many mediocre/bad AAA games have teams larger than Valve’s entire staff? More isn’t always better, sometimes it’s just more.
I haven’t read this article, because yeah, I’ve seen this same basic headline over a dozen times in the past week on Lemmy, but I think it’s a testament to what can happen when a private company doesn’t have a lot of shareholders and is run by people who just want the company to run well and be profitable. They don’t have to chase some unsustainable Wall Street expectation of x% growth every quarter.
Most of the store front is moderated by the publishers and developers, and they contract out a lot of work, maybe what, one valve employee at a server bank with the rest being contract workers?
Most of the store front is moderated by the publishers and developers,
You say this a lot, but can you explain what this means?
?? The developers control the store pages, what needs to explained more? Go to the store, see what pages are linked there, those are the pages they are responsible to curate and moderate.
It’s an all automated system, you don’t think there’s a steam employee typing it all in or something do you? This have low staff numbers since it’s hella automated and contracted out.
All that says is that if you give people choice, they might chose not to make games in today’s market, that’s not bad imo. It’s possible that building new games isn’t what the world needs right now.
It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done, games, updates, bug fixing, there wasn’t anyone to say hey, we need 5 guys to get this done. It’s nah I want to add hats to this game, but the griefers ruining this one isn’t important to me.
Its always interesting to see the rose coloured glasses spin on this own admitted failure.
It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done,
I guess that’s where me and you would differ. Though they didn’t put out half life 3, imo valve has contributed more to my gaming experience than any other company and BY FAR.
So if this is things not getting done, I only want more of this.
Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes, so you guys disagree that valve has made my life better?
Like how many people does it take to run some servers?
That is exactly the point of post. You don’t need tenns of thousands of people to run some servers.
You do need employees and valve contracts them instead of hiring directly.
This is the detail people are missing or ignoring in their circle jerk of valve here.
Then I will repeat YOUR question:
Like how many people does it take to run some servers?
??
None of these companies are comparable other than they’re also tech…
IDK, Spotify is somewhat comparable… they both distribute digital media.
Hint: none of those companies need all of those employees.
These stats don’t include subcontractors and as such they’re very misleading. For example, who do you think produces the GPUs inside the steam deck? Hint: it’s not Valve.
Why would Valve produce their own GPU’s?
My point being that while valve itself has only 350 employees, it subcontracts far more than that.
Do we include the plumber that unclogs the toilets too?
Yes.
that’s really silly to argument. only a few manufactures in the world even have the capabilities to produce GPUs and CPUs. even China doesn’t have the fabrication capabilities with current generation. So of course, Valve is going to purchase GPUs from a 3rd party unless you expect them to spend tens of billions of dollars to start their own silicon fabrication…but oh wait, now they have to purchase silicon, so they’ll start their own silicon mine… but now they need trucks…so they start their own truck manufacture…
Do you expect them to become Samsung?
A better argument is who works on Proton compatibility? It’s largely not Valve employees, yet that’s a unique stack to Valve.
It annoys me too that Valve is getting most of the credit for Proton while most of the work is actually done in winehq, dxvk… I’m sure Valve pays for some development here and there, and greases some developer wheels, but the main thing they do is being a front end for consumers.
I think you’re discounting just how much they’ve invested and continue to invest in Proton/WINE. But they don’t do lion’s share of the development in-house, they mostly just pay devs to work on it, and yes, manage the FE in Steam. They’re still a massive positive force for change in Windows game compatibility on Linux, and we’d be nowhere near where we are today without their investment.
I think you’re discounting just how much they’ve invested and continue to invest in Proton/WINE
I’m not really sure I am… Do we have some actual numbers into how much money they’ve sunk in linux?
Gaming on linux is a huge community effort, whether it’s wine, dxvk, vkd3d, mesa, linux itself… and plenty of smaller projects like lutris, bottles, UMU… And all this spans literal decades, far before valve ever got involved.
EA is not video game company?
Yeah, netflix is though
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.
Been seeing a lot of anti-valve corporate propaganda lately I think they’re upset with the way they run their company because it shows that in comparison their own companies are being greedy and hoarding wealth. It also shows how vastly inefficient in comparison they are.
Weird take, in valve more money is saved for Gabe himself (hence his half a dozen yachts….), while on the other hand, the companies with more employees spend more on giving other people money.
So who’s hoarding using your logic? The company with 10 bil in revenue and 200 employees, or the company with the same revenue and 20000 employees…? Because to me it seems ones doing more for citizens at large than the other lining one persons pocket far More.
The company with more wageslaves of course. I’m sure valve employees are paid very well. Yeah Gabe Newell is a billionaire and I’m not defending that, he should definitely be paying more in taxes. As they all should. But the way valve runs things is their business as a private corporation and I’m tired of seeing the being tore down for no apparent reason lately. Lots of better targets. It seems motivated by something larger behind he curtain and I don’t like being manipulated.
It’s being tore down because they do nothing with their wealth but buy newall yachts….
Valve is an excellent example of a sustainable tech company. It’s not on the growth at any cost, boom and bust cycle
I recall in a decades old Texas Univ interview, Gabe said you had to be aggressive in your firing processes.
Is the same video I recall they made him put on a horse head and try to hold up three fingers.
They just provide a service good enough for the more toxic gamers so they won’t get harassed, nothing more beyond that. They have almost nonexistent moderation, and no longer are developing games.
They are developing a game at the moment, Deadlock. Lots of footage and a dev build leaked a few months ago.
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.
There are plenty of private companies that are shitty too. It definitely helps being private (and maybe is a requirement?), but you also have to have the right owners for private companies to be good.
For sure… Just one more reason to adopt co-determination laws like those in Germany.
Public or private, if the board of the company actually contained literal workers, it could make things so much better.
Wait what’s going on in the courts between valve and EA?
What are EA doing with Valve? The lawsuit this came from is between Wolfire Games and Valve; far as I can tell, Valve and EA work together on some stuff.
Steam could use better search. Ideally I’d like to be able to just use SQL, but I understand why not.
There’s been a few times where I wanted to find something in Steam, but spent most of the emotion on clicks and fucks before launching something, concluding that yeah, I wanted this, and stopping it because I don’t want this anymore.
Steam DB has a pretty decent search. It’s not SQL but the filters are a bit better.
I know how you feel tho - so few consumer orgs give us an advanced search worth it’s salt. I want to have (x AND y) OR z, or maybe x AND (y OR z)… Not whichever specific combination was preordained for me.
I know it’s not as horrible as some.
If only this were still a thing in search engines.
I still can’t figure out how their search filters work.
It always blocks games with violence whether I have all filters checked or unchecked
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 agree with you, but justifying anything by saying they’re successful in a free market is really iffy. There are plenty of large evil companies that are incredibly successful. That said I agree with everything else you’ve said.
I personally think 30% cut is too much for any app/software store. But if anyone deserves it Steam does
My reference to free market is only a means of saying customers choose steam because of its offerings not that they have too.
I agree it would be nice if they charged less. However do we know their full PNL/balance sheet? People just keep taking revenue/employees as if employees are the only overhead.
They provide the servers, and do have an rde cost for development for services we discussed like cloud saves, control support etc. if people have this much energy over it attack pharmaceutical for there insane mark ups that would drive way more positive social change. But the people driving are mostly trying to make more money by cutting there publishing expenses through steam. I’m sure psn and Xbox also take 25 to 30percent cuts.
They also championed low publishing costs of only 100 dollars to list a game. I don’t know enough to speak to their update charges though. Hell psn been known to charge 25k for visibility in top of their 30% cut and there are no other market options Reference
Everyone focuses here cause developers and publishers want more of this cut and to me seem to try to push steam into regulator cross hairs as a way to force the changes they have failed to negotiate.
I would also point out brick and mortar sellers also take 15 to 20% cut and then also charge for storage, disposal, fulfillment, return on and on. Amazon does the same. It’s the nature of a market place. Reference
Overall it doesn’t make sense to me as a community that we attack our best example of what a game market place should be.
No harm meant. I do think Steam is the golden example of a big business done right. All I’m saying is that there’s room for improvement.
However do we know their full PNL/balance sheet?
We can make an educated guess. Amazon’s S3 charges roughly $0.025 per GB, so an 100GB game would cost $2.50 for Steam to upload to a user. For a $30 game, that’s around ~8.5% or just over 3 downloads before it’s unprofitable.
Obviously Valve isn’t paying consumer level S3 prices, and obviously users can download multiple times. But I would be extremely surprised if they didn’t make a rather large margin on each sale
Total fair always room for improvement, no ones perfect.
Appreciate the good discussion!
Assuming there will never be any updates, 3 downloads is what regular gamer can do. First computer, second(friend’s) computer and reinstallation on first computer.
$0.025 per GB is the most expensive option on S3 I could find rounded up. It would be absolutely insane if Steam were paying those prices when they have their own servers. I also used 100GB game size as a large number, and $30 as a small price tag (for an 100GB game).
I was trying to be charitable with the numbers and it still came out pretty positive
$0.025 per GB is the most expensive option on S3 I could find rounded up.
What is cheapest and at what speed?
I also used 100GB game size as a large number, and $30 as a small price tag (for an 100GB game).
I get it, but then there are all those heavy f2p games like War Thunder, from which Steam doesn’t get anything.
You can look it up yourself, I was just giving a worst case scenario
Amazon’s S3 charges roughly $0.025 per GB
For storage or for download?
Download. It’s also rounded up. Storage is negligible compared to bandwidth, especially considering Steam’s business model
And their cost is going down over time while their revenues are increasing since they take a % off every sales and sales are increasing and so is the average price of games.
They make enough profit for the boss to be a billionaire, enough said.
justifying anything by saying they’re successful in a free market is really iffy
The important part is why they’re successful; unlike many companies which try to lock customers in and take advantage of them as much as possible, Steam/Valve try to build a good product at a reasonable price, and trust that it’ll bring them customers.
And look at that, it does.
In human societies culture matters. People who become managers often have intrigue and taking advantage of people as their main useful skills. So they just go on doing what they know. No reason to scold them even, this is life. After all, something should serve as the backdrop for companies doing it right.
Valve started differently.
But you surely already know all that, Revan. How’s Bastila doin?
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.
That’s kind of why they are successful though, right? They were the ones that figured out how to supply games digitally for a profit, which required a way to prevent people from sharing the product for free. This was previously done with CD keys, but the advent of the internet rendered that mostly ineffective.
I think publishers value the fact that steam is essentially a form of DRM, so we got fairly lucky all things considered. Imagine if steam didn’t exist and we had to deal with software like Uplay and Origin.
Imagine if securom was everywhere again.
You can play: Half-Life 1: Source Half-Life 2 Half-Life 2: Episode One Half-Life 2: Episode Two All with steam closed. Original half life expansions aside, your take is senile. I suppose alyx could’ve done without it.
Okay, but what about all the games that have come out since steam has launched and ONLY have online-only drm options?
Not talking about MMOs because those are their own beast. I’m talking about a huge amount of games though excluding mmos.
I don’t mind
digital distributionDRM platforms, I just want a choice. I want licenses to be portable and I want to be able to re-sell licenses for games I do not wish to own any longer. I don’t want to be bound to just console games either.I don’t think resellable licenses are a great idea. It works with physical media because it will have flaws that affect quality and price, but I don’t see how that would work for digital without screwing over devs. I can completely get behind transfers or trades with friends or between platforms, but not really for resale.
I can get the transfers between friends part, but why between platforms? That makes zero sense from a business standpoint.
The only way that would work is to have game companies manufacture and distribute an external storage medium themselves, because platforms sure as hell won’t say “Oh you bought a license on another store? Sure, you can use our CDN for free!”. And now we’ve almost reinvented game CDs.
I would gladly pay a couple bucks a month to use a digital distribution platform of my choice.
I agree in that it’ll be hard to transfer between platforms, but doubt it’s impossible. The idea is that you don’t want Valve to nuke your licenses in one go, but Valve also doesn’t want you on their platform.
Okay, but what about pre-steam DRM? But what about services that have existed for less time and actually done the slippery slope shit you’re cowering in your boots about (Uplay)? You’re so busy listing possible problems and making problems up that you are not comparing and contrasting your available options. It strikes me that you are complaining to complain and don’t have realistic solutions in mind, you’re asking for either a rental system where you put up collateral to play a game or you’re suggesting that the developer only be able to sell a game once. Are you one of those crazy “first sale doctrine” sovcit types?
The way I see it, Steam having DRM is Valve’s way of giving publishers and devs that choice, and said choice just makes Steam more likely to stick around for the future, which makes the biggest drawback of DRM (losing all your games) less likely.
And the fact that they can just decide to take your games away from you by deleting your account?
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.
Well, no… I think it’s more akin to the concept of “loss-leaders”. Get people in the door and while they’re there, they’ll buy a game or two. Which is where their real profits come from.
In the end, it’s still just a business strategy intended to result in profits for Valve.
However, that being said, the fact that they don’t have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits and keep that stock price up at (literally) all costs, allows them to operate the way they do.
But don’t get it twisted, they are a for-profit corporation, and their ultimate goal is making money. They’re just not as shitty about it.
The bar is REALLY fucking low these days.
Oh for sure they are there for a profit. But as the best example in the industry let’s not unnecessarily attack them. Imagine how much more money they make if they did go public and how awful it would be for all of us.
Totally. I wasn’t trying to rag on Valve… More just a comment about capitalism in general and how shitty it is.
They kind of have to be about making money. No company survives by putting the needs of the customer above all else, unfortunately.
Steam was apparently already cool when I was a kid. Though the reason I knew about it was that I had 2 games with Steam support bought in stores (one of them I gifted without installing\registering, another one I installed without registering).
Others are still at that point - you buy a game and you get something like GameSpy and such as an optional thing nobody thinks about. They are trying to make those services the entry point, and I guess for AAA players they have already succeeded.
It’s not an ISP…
Valve has AS number, so it is an ISP
Having an AS does not make you an ISP. It just means you have a public AS, which you can use to peer with providers on the Internet, if you have an agreement to peer.
Correct. In fact many, many companies have ASNs. Little companies all the way up to large ones. The key difference for an ISP is they allow you to route traffic through them. Almost every company that has an ASN blocks traffic from being routed through them, assuming they know how to configure that and that they have different peering points. Valve most certainly does not allow you to route through their network, they already have enough traffic just doing their own CDN stuff.
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!
What’s Mckinsey, a type of cheese? PWC? Is that a firearms company?
Ok… let’s walk through that together! This is my comment if your guesses were correct:
“Who each will need a couple of consultants from a type of cheese, a firearms company, you name it, to do their jobs!”
See how that a) doesn’t make any sense b) is not funny and c) is grammatically dubious at least?
You could probably do better punch-up if you tried, right?
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.
Most of the support staff is their customers and users actually.
It’s not users that process refund request, recover your account if e.g. you’ve lost your 2FA method, or any of the other innumerable things you might need to contact Steam support for. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to include the staff that do this as part of their workforce.
Work smart not hard.
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.
Anyone who has any idea about the german bureaucracy hellscape knows this is far from sufficient to deal with any issue whatsoever.
Maybe that’s contractable.
Does that matter when the bottleneck is this tiny? A single employee would have to contract, stay in contact and approve whatever they outsource. And going by some quirks with the german side of the store their usual response seems to be simply blocking german IPs from accessing whatever may cause extra bureaucratic work for them.
The single full time employee is the lead or manager. They have some number of contractors to work with but aren’t headcount.
Specifically that person probably contracts a law firm to handle the bureaucratic aspect, on an ongoing basis and a support team to handle low level issues.
It’s interesting because I’ve never had to wait for too long for a reply. So I assume they have a lot of automatic tools helping them out in some way.
It has been years since I’ve contacted Steam customer support so maybe things have changed, or maybe my experience was not representative, but I found them to be pretty helpful and not-shit when I contacted customer support for something in the past.
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”.
There is absolutely nothing that differentiates valve from the other stores front to justify this.
The “justification” is that Steam is a good storefront and others kind of blows. There’s nothing stopping other companies from making good software…they just haven’t.
it’s clear collusion.
That’s not what collusion is… Steam doesn’t sell Nintendo games and is Epic/Microsoft’s rival.
Can’t wait for all the downvotes and simps coming to defend him
To be clear, I’m not defending billionaires. Your talking points are just kind of baseless.
I mean they have tried, but than they get in shit for doing something different to get their foot in the door(epics free games). Valves marketing and fan base is top notch and defends them voraciously with their rose coloured glasses.
They have buggy games, they don’t update them, they are currently over run with griefers making some unplayable to any fun degree.
What’s with the passes they keep getting? As you said they get “justification” lmfao, what a fucking joke. Its capitalists defending despite you claiming you aren’t what a joke. Does musk get a pass for his space ventures? No, so why does gaben? Please explain in detail, I would love a legit answer to this.
Because people dont want free games, they want a useful service with features. EGS is a piece of shit that leaks users data often.
You seem to think they can just create a copycat store of steam at release. That’s pretty foolish, they are constantly updating their store with new features, it takes time to develop stuff.
And I’ve not heard of a data leak, let alone multiple, sources please, because not even Google is bringing up any meaningful results. Maybe you’re thinking of developers and not them themselves…?
L O L “doing something different”
Epic tried to pull an Amazon.
Get VC money and chinese money and subsidize and undercut competition using anticompetitive practices to gain market share before the rug pull where they jack up their margins to the industry standard. (Everyone uses 30%, even brick and mortars except humble which is 25)
The difference is Amazon actually made a good software experience in the beginning few years and Epic spent literal years with very few feature updates and whining and burning money suing about “unfair market practices” when they were the only ones actually engaging in anti-consumer practices like paying off developers to be Epic-exclusive and buying developers and removing their games from steam. The other “different” thing that they did I guess is their CEO is an outspoken objective asshole.
They never got to the rug pull part because their actual software sucked balls and they refused to improve it so much so that someone else actually made a better launcher than them for their own products…
Humble’s is 12% and all the others charge 30% because that’s what steam set as an arbitrary standard.
They can all operate with lower, but go off on this conspiracy theory.
See blindly defended, can’t even have a discussion without it being derailed by conspiracy theories. Who’s voting up this bullshit? They tried something different, they get shit on, of course you can find an angle with anything a company does, that shouldn’t stop people from having a discussion. They asked what others tore fronts are doing, b the eh are trying, than people like you come and shit all over them because it’s not immediately identical or better than steam.
We get it, nothing can be better, that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try and we should shit all over their attempt. Yeah that’ll make them try harder. You’re the reason why they stop trying, because it’s not worth the effort since they know it’ll never meet peoples quite frankly impossible standards.
So can we please have an actual discussion on this topic for a change? Or are fanboys just always going derail actual conversations with their stupid bullshit?
Nowhere did I say Gaben gets a pass, I’m saying Steam is a great service.
But is it? It’s maintained by its users and customers.
Gabe reaps all the benefits and who else gains your justification is what?
Nobody shit on epic for giving away free games. You can’t just make a completely false statement like that.
People don’t like epic because they bought games and made them exclusive to their store.
Nobody shit on epic for giving away free games
Uhh go check the internet maybe? Epics gets bashed for everything, including the free games dude lol.
Provide one example if it’s so ubiquitous. I have been following the EGS discourse for years and never seen anyone complain about the free games.
Maybe complaints about how the games aren’t worth it because you have to use EGS, sure. I’ve made that joke myself. That’s a different complaint though.
Ah so you’re just a troll. You understand the hate, participate, but claim it isn’t. Thats what racists and other type of people justify their hate.
Blocked.
Well, that sure took a turn I wasn’t expecting.
The product stays the same if we bring down their revenue to 1 billion, they aren’t close to bankruptcy. If they took 0.5 %, Gaben would still be able to afford a yatch or two, just not 6.
Having a competitors product on your platform doesn’t have anything to do with collusion. They are rivals but they don’t actually compete or strive to give their customers any kind of competitive prices.
And yes, you are defending a billionaire.
The product stays the same if we bring down their revenue to 1 billion, they aren’t close to bankruptcy. If they took 0.5 %
So? I don’t care if they’re forced to lower his salary. You said nothing differentiates Steam enough and I’m saying it does so by being good.
They are rivals but they don’t actually compete or strive to give their customers any kind of competitive prices.
The majority of customers on all storefronts are fine with the pricing as-is. Steam’s competitive advantage comes from being the best storefront with an amazing library and . That’s why it’s the top dog
And yes, you are defending a billionaire.
I’m clearly not. I’m defending the service itself
The majority of customers on all storefronts are fine with the pricing as-is. Steam’s competitive advantage comes from being the best storefront with an amazing library and . That’s why it’s the top dog
Pricing has nothing to do with Steam dude…. that’s publisher/developer controlled. And they have a quite a lot of stink to say about the cut they take for nothing. They need to curate and moderate all their own store page, Steam does what and takes 30%?
It’s no wonder some take epics deals, the cut they take is 12%, that’s significant. And if epic can operate by taking that much with their employee count, clearly valve could be doing a far better job of what they do, but they do what again…? Line Gabe’s pocket and what else?
If they took 0.5 %,
Took from what? Is this about the revenue share again? Stop listening to that idiot Timmy.
We know that many others take the same %% so I could say even if they took 50% they wouldn’t deliver a product as good as Steam.
With a 30% cut they make enough surplus that the owner is a billionaire that can afford 6 yacht, there’s no reason why you or anyone should defend Valve’s decision to be so profitable instead of making games cheaper and that applies to any company where the owner is rich.
Yachts. This can’t be more silly. And what would you say if he didn’t own those yachts? “Look at the bank account of that guy who owns almost a whole gaming platform because others are not qualified enough to compete with his company”?
That’s exactly what people should say, billionaires shouldn’t exist, it’s that simple. 80% of US citizens live paycheck to paycheck, people have a hard time affording to pay for basic needs, meanwhile you’ve got companies that take a big enough cut on everything they sell that their owner can afford to spend in a day more than the average person will make in their whole life without having to even think about the impact that will have on their ability to pay their bills.
The wealth they accumulate comes directly from our pockets, stop defending them, they exist because we pay more for things than they’re truly worth.
I don’t get what you want. Propose a reality where it’ll be impossible to become a billionaire? Would it be like communism or something?
If steam took a smaller cut game prices wouldn’t budge a single goddamn cent and you know it
It’s not just about Steam taking a smaller cut, the whole distribution chain makes it so the people developing the product are the poorest ones in the development to consumer process.
If publishers and distributors took a smaller cut and prices stayed the same instead of going down, it would mean that developers would get more money for their work, developers are people like you and me.
To be clear, I’m not listening to anyone. I think the government should step in and force a maximum of 5% on all stores, or something similar.
The fact that they all take the same percentage is exactly the reason why I’m saying there’s collusion going on.
I’m sure you came up with that 5% number after careful research and didn’t just pull some low round number out of your ass.
/s
I did say something similar, it’s clearly just to give an idea.
I’m basing it on the fact that it would still be insanely profitable with such a percentage, personally I would rather see it much lower.
An utterly meaningless challenge just to defend daddy Gaben. Why don’t you talk about my actual points instead of spitting out useless dribble. Stop defending billionaires.
Government of which country or countries? You wouldn’t think they would stay in the US if what you said will happen, would you?
Their propaganda machine works so well, you’re proving it by bringing up all the usual talking points.
“They offer a good product so they deserve it.”
“They would leave if they were forced to reduce their profits.”
You know what countries can do? Get together and impose the same kind of rules to all companies no matter where they’re established. They can also decide to force companies to pay taxes based on where the revenue came from under the threat that they won’t be able to do business in their territory anymore.
It’s funny how in a previous conversation you were saying that people should be able to make donations to devs and you never thought “Hey, maybe it’s not normal that only 50% of what I pay ends up in the pockets of the people doing the actual work…” and you even suggest that art should be encouraged via tax redistribution. Well guess what, that wouldn’t be necessary if multimillionaires and billionaires didn’t exist in the first place.
People all around you are struggling and you’re defending the 1%, wake the fuck up.
Those are not my points, you made them up. My point is, there are no rules that prevent it from happening. No competition to make it seem fair at least for some other companies who are not Valve.
I have complains about Steam but financial part is hardly one of them. It’s not that they deserve the money, it’s that most others are being hugely ineffective, which creates this disparity.
It’s funny how you suggest that adding any part of those 30% to the pocket of actual devs would solve any problems.
My other points in other threads remain valid. I think you just misunderstood them.
I’m not defending anyone. It’s you who’s attacking people, for questionable reasons.
We know that many others take the same %% so I could say even if they took 50% they wouldn’t deliver a product as good as Steam.
Epics 12% and they operate with how many more employees?
So what is valve doing with all this extra money than on Gabe?
Epics are posers at this point, or one could say a fake platform. Remove Fortnite from them and it will shut down immediately, especially at 12%.
Epic tried to pull an Amazon.
Get VC money and subsidize and undercut competition using anticompetitive practices to gain market share before the rug pull where they jack up their margins to the industry standard.
The difference is Amazon actually made a good software experience in the beginning few years and Epic spent literal years with very few feature updates and whining about “unfair market practices” when they were the only ones actually engaging in anti-consumer passes like paying off developers to be Epic-exclusive and buying developers and removing their games from steam.
You realize the others only charge that much since steam set the standard… yeah? All of them can charge less so what’s your point here? You clearly lied in your original comment, and are now making up points to defend it.
You realize the others only charge that much since steam set the standard… yeah?
I’ll wait for you to prove this.
Others barely tried to compete. GOG has its niche in DRM-free, while Epic engages in REAL monipolistic behaviour(Epic exclusives) and upset gamers with it.
Please cite a source for your claims
Did you read your own article?
In 2021, Microsoft estimated Valve’s annual revenue at $6.5 billion, roughly on the same scale as EA’s $7.5 billion in 2024 revenue. But Steam achieved those numbers with around 350 employees, compared to well over 13,000 people employed by EA.
The disparity highlights just how much money Valve brings in with a relatively small workforce. And a lot of that is thanks to the chunk of revenue Valve takes from every sale on Steam.
That’s the indie industry getting fucked right there, but sure, drink Gabbens sweat.
The actual revenue is difficult because it’s all estimation, they clearly don’t want us to know and hide it. One website says 13 billion lol, and they brought it an estimated 1 billion just from Counter-strike crates. I got 8.5 from the article that was posted two days ago. Whatever it is, it’s too fucking high, stop defending multi billionaires.
Go ask any indie developer if they think the 30% cut valve takes from sales through steam means they’re “getting fucked”. I can assure you, the vast majority do not.
Serving files, absorbing the costs of credit card payments and charge backs, and maintaining community forums is worth the 30% alone. Hell, just being able to list your product on the most popular store is worth it for some people.
In my industry, physical stores won’t even consider stocking your product for less than 40pts of margin and the big guys expect you to absorb the freight costs as well.
30% on storefront sales and you can sell your own keys for 100% profit on your own site is more than fair.
The indie industry is seriously struggling. I’m pretty sure they would rather survive than donate to Gabens coke and prostitute fund.
There’s also a huge difference between a physical store and a digital soft monopoly.
Stop defending billionaires.
I can’t read the link but if we just gauge the health of the indie game portion of the industry by how many games are released, I think the only conclusion you can make is that it’s quite healthy. In no small part due to steam which provides discoverability for smaller titles and handles a lot of the technical stuff (downloads, multi-player, even drm) so indie devs don’t have to.
You just seem to have a chip on your shoulder in this department and it’s not clear why other than “billionaires are bad”.
I’m gauging the health of the industry by the amount of studios that are struggling and closing their doors. The amount of games is meaningless since a lot of those games are that studios last one as well as the amount including all the shovel ware garbage. Anyone can make a game these days with AI, the amount is not a good metric.
Someone being a billionaire is a valid reason for saying they shouldn’t be a billionaire. Yes, all billionaires are bad and leeching off society. Though I do have a chip on my shoulder and that’s because of seeing people actually defend Gaben as if he was any different than all the other ones. Stop defending billionaires, they actively hate you and probably giggle seeing what they consider peasants coming to their defense.
You can go in incognito mode to avoid the paywall. In any case, here’s a gpt summary:
The article discusses the significant challenges faced by indie video game developers amidst widespread industry layoffs and financial troubles. Indie studios, often small and dependent on project-to-project funding, are increasingly forced to shut down due to a lack of financial support. This trend is emphasized by the closure of multiple indie developers and the ominous “survive till ’25” outlook, which captures the desperation and dwindling hope within the indie game development community.
As these smaller studios struggle to secure funding and continue operations, the impact on the gaming landscape is profound. Indie developers are known for their creativity and innovation, often exploring unique, experimental game ideas that larger companies might avoid. The decline of such studios not only reduces the variety and innovation in games available to players but also signifies a potential loss of talent and originality in the industry. This not only diminishes the richness of the gaming world but also impacts the professional growth and development of game creators who lose opportunities to experiment and hone their craft. The broader consequence is a gaming industry less vibrant and diverse, potentially stifling the evolution of video games as a form of artistic and interactive media.
Thing is, even if Steam charged them 0%, they would be struggling all the same. They’re struggling because they don’t have enough sales.
I mean about the yachts.
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
Here you go. Sorry if I’m being a dick, my hate for billionaires spills out whenever I approach the subject.
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.
No ones forcing me to use them. No issues here.
Yeah same. I don’t play a ton, mostly on the deck,. And I also avoid interaction with other people on their platform. But I’ve never had an issue.
Not sure what valve can do about abandoned early Access games other than remove them if they’re not updated in a certain amount of time. Although that causes problems too.
Not really clear how having more people would fix these issues
They could create a new flag for Abandoned Early Access games. If an Early Access game hasn’t been updated in a long time, that could trigger an automatic email to the publisher saying “Hey your game hasn’t been updated in a long time and could be changed from Early Access to Abandoned Early Access. Consider updating the game or store page to keep Early Access status. If you would like to switch to Abandoned Early Access, you can ignore this message and it will automatically update in two weeks or you can manually change the status on your game’s Steam page.” Wouldn’t really need more employees to handle this unless the current employees are all too busy to implement something like it.
They could easily prevent devs that abandoned an early access title from launching another one. They could check if the devs have a reasonable business plan and are able to fulfill their promises. They could vet them and check if they did manage to release some games. And so on. It is not impossible and would help us gamers, because nobody wants abandoned games.
This take will probably be unpopular, but FWIW I agree with you. I rarely use the community feature and I don’t care about the trading so personally I would like it if they just stuck with what they do well.
I assume Valve, like the vast majority of tech companies, outsources moderation. It’s normally outsourced to incredibly underpaid and overworked people in the global south not given proper training for these things.
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…
Just took a look at the future and im sorry to say the heavy update wont happen tho we got half life 2 episode 3
the manager:
That’s less than the number of employees who worked on Left4Dead 2.
I’m reading, Steam takes 30% cut, offer practically nothing but a download system, store front and crappy forum instances per game. Largely unchanged since 2012 Basically, they’re just taking the money and running, almost pure rent.
Feel free to start a competitive game store. There’s a reason why gog, origin or epic hardly make a dent on Valves bottom line.
Gog has its niche. Others didn’t even try. “Look at exclusives” from Epic doesn’t even look like trying
Even within its niche gog Galaxy still lacks a lot of features steam has, like communities, mod support, Linux support, and a few others.
Honestly, I’d be home with that if they had Linux support. They don’t, so I mostly buy from Steam. Apparently Heroic now gets a kickback (probably small) from GOG for sales, but that’s a pretty lazy “Linux support” if you ask me.
I literally didn’t make a Steam account until they had a Linux client, and now I’ve spend a ton of money there. It’s not hard to get my money, you just need to not be outright hostile to me. That’s why I have never and probably will never buy from Epic.
I tried heroic on my steam deck and it’s okay but I wouldn’t use it over Steam’s UI which says a lot.
Yup, I install through Heroic but launch through Steam on my Steam Deck, for controller support alone, it’s not worth going through Heroic directly. On desktop, I’ll play directly through Heroic though.
The cost of freedom is still far more valuable than that to some, and that’s its niche.
Yeah, the solution is obvious, break the Valve monopoly into 40 smaller companies and put Gaben in prison.
“And here is my hard drive dedicated to game launchers and storefronts.”
We could run just the game and nothing else.
Valve created a fantastic entertainment product that people voluntarily choose to use. Why would you want to turn something people already love into something completely different? Counterproductive - especially when direct distribution is essentially free and universally accessible.
At this point steam is plain rent, coasting on their monopolistic platform power not any particular technical merit. It would be fine if valve spent this money on their userbase, but they don’t. All their other products are run for profit as well.
Stream created and maintains a platform that gamers and developers want to use but more importantly, they’ve built up a reputation that people believe in and trust.
Gamers and developers are so eager to use steam because in all the years they’ve been operating, they still support and expand upon family sharing, have a fantastic refund policy (for consumers), don’t employ aggressive exclusivity deals, don’t limit download speeds behind paywalls, and provide a great review and recommendation system.
They’ve become successful due to this reputation, why should we punish them for that?
They’re an http download website that takes a 30% cut on the hard work of artists.
That is already reprehensible, but not illegal.
They also dominate their market and their competition is laughable.
Now that is a properly punishable crime.
Developers can and almost always do close to offer their games on multiple platforms and can even choose self hosted direct distribution of they do choose. Customers can choose to purchase their games on steam, itch, epic, Microsoft, or any of the many places they’re often hosted simultaneously. Steam is more often than not the choice people choose to use of their own free will because they perceive it as being the superior service.
Why do you believe excellence should be punished?
Thor from Pirate Software has a great video breaking down how Steam works and the lawsuit that claims they are ripping off consumers. It’s very educational.
Of course, there is no requirement to use Steam. Game makes can publish their game themselves without a platform at all, which very few do. If you say they actually need a platform, there is the value they are getting for that 30%. If they weren’t getting anything of value, then they could do it themselves and benefit instead, which most do not.
Wanted to link this video, but you did it first.
Also, as mentioned in video, gamers prefer steam because developers there can’t disable or remove comments or not refund on basis of “sucks to be you” like EA and Ubisoft do.
Thor simping for a company like he thinks they’ll pay him, absolute cringe.
Thor
You certainly did call him out exactly as he is. An obvious industry shill “we can’t make non-live service games anymore because licensing boohoo”
They also offer the Steam multiplayer backend, workshop, and Steam’s social system which is becoming enticing again given Discord’s latest behaviour.
GOG’s gimmick is no DRM, Itch.io has the cheapest self-publishing costs, and Epic has… well I’m not sure really, but the other two have their place, but it’s no coincidence Steam is the biggest.
Epic does sales where they release free games periodically. It’s great for people who like cloud gaming like Geforce Now.
I claim the free games and occasionally play a few through Heroic, but I have never and probably will never spend a dime there because everything there is a net negative:
- no Linux support, even for games with Linux builds
- same prices as pretty much everywhere else
- no unique features, and lacks many features compared to Steam
Pretty much the only reasons imo to use it are Fortnite and free games, and I don’t need an account to claim and play free games. So since I don’t play Fortnite and have forbidden my kids to play it, EGS has nothing to offer for me.
