Why so few people in Valve?

[Ghost Rider]

According to The Verge, which received information from Pavel Dundik, the founder of SteamDB, only 336 people worked at Valve in 2021. Dundik dug up data from court documents that were considered during the antitrust lawsuit against Valve. All the important numbers were covered up there, but some were not good enough.
The division distribution is as follows:
- Steam support - 79 employees
- Game development - 181 people
- Hardware Development and Support Department - 41
- Administration - 35

Do you think it's enough for so big Steam? If it's just 181, Half Life 3 is lost forever... 😏

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/13/24197477/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-payroll-redacted

[ℭycaleo]

I think they could do more...

[GunsForBucks]

It isn't as though they have storefronts.

How many people do you think they should have?

Games, even good ones, can be made by 3 people or less.

[abcd]

that's about the upper limit for a single reasonable company.

going up to 500, the absolute maximum for a sweatshop like Ubi's typical flagship dev team, requires 2 admin and support personnel for every 1 worker you add.

150-300 is the sweet spot in terms of administrative costs.

[GunsForBucks]

Think about it

This industry often lays off people when there isn't much work. Game devs are disposable and frequently bounce around, working on one game for a project then moving on.

Most are like temp workers.

Would you keep a bunch of modelers on the payroll when you don't need any more models?

[みずゆき]

Who cares how big Valve is? Clearly not a problem if they've been doing this for decades now. Making games is secondary.

Also, I don't know if this is a lame joke or what, but please beg for something actually worth caring about and not just some Reddit tier joke game like Half Life 3.

>The Verge

♥♥♥♥ site.

[MrSteel300]

honestly wish they reduce the anti social weirdos they got as steam support and put them to actual use, their weird micro aggression policies really make it hard for steam forums to get a discussion going, no wonder everyone just uses reddit with the type of people they got as staff here

[AdahnGorion]

Its a rather high number tbh.

[90054321564584560]

that is already a lot of money to pay and they need to make profit. no way they will hire more than they need and employees cost outruns the profit making back

[Schamyl006]

Then that number is enough for Steam handle everything I guess.

[abcd]

Originally posted by MrSteel300:

honestly wish they reduce the anti social weirdos they got as steam support and put them to actual use, their weird micro aggression policies really make it hard for steam forums to get a discussion going, no wonder everyone just uses reddit with the type of people they got as staff here

people make reddit's modbots for free though. valve just inherited theirs when britain pushed to have the moderation staff eliminated to support their global brigade network's efficacy on the platform.

or was that a result of russian finance somehow. some network of lords and parliament members that can't control their finances and which nobody has oversight regarding.

[Pierce Dalton]

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

Its a rather high number tbh.

Not for a millionaire company, no. Maybe billionaire.

[AdahnGorion]

Originally posted by Pierce Dalton:

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

Its a rather high number tbh.

Not for a millionaire company, no. Maybe billionaire.

Revenue and net profit does not always have something to do with number of employee´s.

[Pierce Dalton]

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

Originally posted by Pierce Dalton:

Not for a millionaire company, no. Maybe billionaire.

Revenue and net profit does not always have something to do with number of employee´s.

Definitely not when other people are doing all the hard work. People make games, Valve just sells them.

[AdahnGorion]

Originally posted by Pierce Dalton:

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

Revenue and net profit does not always have something to do with number of employee´s.

Definitely not when other people are doing all the hard work. People make games, Valve just sells them.

A company like Moderna have what 185 employee´s..

[Pierce Dalton]

Originally posted by AdahnGorion:

Originally posted by Pierce Dalton:

Definitely not when other people are doing all the hard work. People make games, Valve just sells them.

A company like Moderna have what 185 employee´s..

Bro, their LinkedIn page says they have more than a thousand employees:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/modernatx/