Do valve employees pay for games on steam?

[✪ SyTeX]

What if a CEO or a GM or any valve employee wanted to play games on steam, will they have to pay like normal people :3

[wuddih]

Valve employees earn enough money for the fact that they can work on whatever they want and the people that can add games to an account/testaccount for free is minimal. not a lot of people work on Steam directly enough that would require testing games.

so ...

[_veleron]

Escrito originalmente por Kargor:

when someone leaves the company they loose those accounts and thus can't take the games with them anyway. That way, no publisher should have a reason to complain (and Valve isn't that huge).

They don't lose accounts, they lose the added 'Valve flag' (whatever) that lets them borrow any app free of charge. They used to have everything listed as owned, but it was years ago and at a point it became, I imagine, unmanageable (try opening your library with 50 000 games listed there...), so they changed it to the way it works now. Or worked until recently.

[☆ƧQυiяяєL♫]

Escrito originalmente por Spawn of Totoro:

Free game every month or an increase in pay.

"Thank you sir, may I have another." ad infinitium
https://youtu.be/bIZoVO8ZyyQ

[adz]

it depends, i remember years ago "al" valve dude told me when i was part of the game collectors group he said there is a key that grants all steam games once activated for the valve employees i remember viewing his profile and i did see all the games its literally a guide to see whats available on steam sorta how i started to shop on steam instead of using the store.

but few years back this is hidden know because of developers getting annoyed of leaks when there game comes available to steam i remember hearing alot of complaints so my guess is all you can see now are there paid games maybe before they become a employee or they only show what they played/activated i dont exactly know how it works now.

[☆ƧQυiяяєL♫]

I gave this a quick thought maybe some sort of employee discount, that is IF it's allowed by the game pub, dev, whatever.

[Sazzouu]

Escrito originalmente por eram:

incorrect. Even volunteer mods from 10 years ago can have adjusted steam accounts, ones they made themselves and had badges added to after.

How on gods green earth does this falsify my statement? Thats one order how things can happen to their Steam Account; so what?

[Washell]

If you're one of the ~500 people working at Valve, which takes a fairly hefty and unique skillset to get hired in the first place, your salary will be at such a level that buying games isn't an expense you worry or care about.

[Sazzouu]

Escrito originalmente por Washell:

If you're one of the ~500 people working at Valve, which takes a fairly hefty and unique skillset to get hired in the first place

Says exactly who?
Just an example: https://www.valvesoftware.com/de/jobs?job_id=51

Qualifications

• Programming experience, in C++ or a similar language
  
• 4+ years of professional software development experience
  
• Strong software engineering skills
  
• Demonstrated ability to self-direct, and drive work to completion
  
• Strong communication skills, and the ability to work closely with a team of peers

This is a senior role, requiring prior industry experience. Unfortunately, we do not currently have openings for recent graduates.

I am by far not the biggest fish in the ocean of computer scientists or IT experts but I can proof at least 3 of the 4 criterias they demand. Been working for a long time in a software-egnineering department where I mainly had my targets being set and I had to work mostly on my own (of course together with the rest of the team that was involved). And I can certify at least 4 years of experience in Programming with C/C++ (even more if I include the fact that those are the main languages that were used during my studies)

And where exactly do you get the information that Valve pays insanely high salaries?

[Washell]

This:

Escrito originalmente por Washell:

your salary will be at such a level that buying games isn't an expense you worry or care about.

Does not translate to:

Escrito originalmente por Sazzouu:

Valve pays insanely high salaries?

Given the general desirability of jobs at Valve, the peer to peer nature of performance reviews and salary raises and compensations, I find it safe to assume that the salaries are above (US) industry average. Given that the industry average for the US is already high enough to make games an irrelevant expense (assuming you don't live near the silicon valley), I don't think it takes what you deem "an insanely high" salary. Don't forget, this is a company that take a yearly company trip to Hawaii, all expenses paid.

Have a read: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf

Escrito originalmente por Sazzouu:

I can proof at least 3 of the 4 criterias they demand.

I see six criteria there...
1. Programming experience in C++
2. 4+ years software development
3. Strong software engineering skills
4. Demonstrated ability...
5. Strong communication skills...
And in the bottom, unbulleted but definitely a deal breaker
6. Prior (relevant) industry experience

[crunchyfrog]

Escrito originalmente por ☆ƧQυiяяєL♫:

Escrito originalmente por RoastDinner:

... had access to his entire library, well worth it

:teddy_talk: I had access to his car keys

Gabe drives a Yugo.
I drove it during the winter, it fits like a very snug coat. It too, was well worth it 🧥🎅

Not surprised as the body panels are compressed horse hair :)



Anyways, to the OP. It's going to almost certainly be like wuddih said. If you're at work, then there's going to be "professional" accounts fro testing that will essentially be like fully open accounts with access to everything.

However, unless Valve have an agreement to foot the bill or somesuch, ultimately because Valve stock games from other companies, they're going to need to be paid, whether discounted or full.

Lol, can you imagine some new indie dev creates a work of passion that they bung on the store, and the end of the first day they see 1,000 sales and are excited at their good fortune. Then Valve email them and say "y'know we loved your game so much we got everybody in the company a copy and therefore it's free".

That would be one hell of a pisser.

[☆ƧQυiяяєL♫]

I think it depends on what part of Valve one works in.
The janitor gets nothing.
The game approver person gets free complimentary goodies, like games and swag 👙🩴🧻🥤

[Sazzouu]

Escrito originalmente por Washell:

I see six criteria there...
1. Programming experience in C++
2. 4+ years software development
3. Strong software engineering skills
4. Demonstrated ability...
5. Strong communication skills...
And in the bottom, unbulleted but definitely a deal breaker
6. Prior (relevant) industry experience

Well I grouped them together in a more reasonable way because... you know... we are human beings that are capable of thinking outside of patterns.

So "4+ years software development" and "Strong software engineering skills" basically group together because they are very rarily disjoint. I mean you can't engineer your software propperly if you have no clue about implementations. And you will implement utter garbage if you are uncapable of engineering a product or at least understand the documentation of the engineering process.

"Strong communication skills" and "Demonstrated ability..." are also something that you do not analyze separately. Because communication is a subset of the general term "Abilities".

And for the last bit of "Relevant industry experience" please define this one...
What makes your experience relevant? The size and influence of the company? I've seen people jobbing at Google for the helpdesk to sort out Google-Product-specific issues with people that most likely have issues with turning on their computer. Is this relevant?
The department you've been working on? I've seen people working as "Full-Stack Developers" going by their company-intern declarations while most of their work was put into WordPress and CSS-juggling. Is this relevant?

I can go on and on with sad examples of the term "Relevant" being reduced, falsely applied and inflated at bests. On the other hand I know a lot of people working for a local company probably no one ever heared of or ever will hear of and they but blood and sweat into enromous products that require a very wide skillset in both engineering and development - probably more than most of the Google-Employees will ever encounter - but the products are meant and therefore designed for being applied locally (unlike Steam for example).

[Schrobes]

if they did it would most definitely be a contractual agreement between steam and the other party. - or the obvious Steam paid for it and "gifts" it.

[crunchyfrog]

Escrito originalmente por Schrobes:

if they did it would most definitely be a contractual agreement between steam and the other party. - or the obvious Steam paid for it and "gifts" it.

Speaking as someone who used to work in gaming journalism back in the late 90s to early 2000s, you're right.

It generally does revolve around what job you're doing most likely, and how it's paid for at the back end is likely gratis via an agreement between publisher and employer, or there's some token peppercorn fee that the employer pays for it.

Tupically in our case, we'd get a few things. Obviously this is pre digital gaming.

For work on previews, we'd be sent alphas or works in progress, and these would usually be discarded after the article was written as they're of little use. They would typically contain a bit of gameplay from a token level, utterly unpolished plus a load of art assets and stuff to use for press purposes.

For walkthroughs and reviews, we'd get sent either a beta that's almost exactly like the final game, or the actual promo of the final game about 3 months before release (as that coincided with the time the master went "gold" anyway). This meant about a month for your work on it, and a month for the magazine to be printed, then it's well ready for the newsstands.

These games well, I kept, some didn't (especially if they were games people didn't like paying).

But more than this, even after I ducked out of the journalism thing, I was still on some mailing list that kept sending me sundry promos for games for some reason. These were FULL final releases for games, just marked with promo and intended for review or promotion. I kept all of these for the most part. They have some interestingly diffeent album art and covers usually. Totally free of course.

Why this is generally done - the mailing list that is - is that if you're in the industry you need to keep up on what's going on, so these promos are sent en masse to mailing list providers to dole out for this purpose. A bit like free samples in other shops.

There's one last thing too - the platforms themselves. As soon as I'd got my first assignment, along with th disc and dongle, I recieved a region free console free of charge to keep (not chipped, just to empahsise, but official region free). I still have my PS2 and PS1 versions.

So yeah, you do indeed get freebies according to whatever your job is. I'd expect someone who geenrally just reviews new releases for say a newspapaer may get promos and that's about it.

[Blanchflower]

Escrito originalmente por cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

If you want every game in the Steam store, just break into GabeN's account. The reward for doing so is every game on Steam.

And then, later, you will get a reward for a stint in prison.🤣