Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 98 posts

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#11

Post by LordShredda »

Steam might have a very disproportionate market share, but no one complains a lot because the competition is downright laughable. Internet companies are very low maintenance

It has a very low barrier to entry for devs and a permissive DRM compared to other stores. A powerful review system and a return policy better than anyone else I've seen so far. Very community friendly and has an entire feature dedicated to hosting user mods and creations. Right now they're wasting money on VR just because they can

Is it a monopoly when no one else is able to compete even on the technical side?

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#12

Post by djbusby »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #8
bongoman42 wrote: post #7

The real scandal is that it is 2024 and people still don't understand how redaction works.

The real scandal is that PDF Software is still stupid enough to not notice that a user is trying to do a redaction and offer to do it correctly. This is the programmer’s fault, not the user’s. It’s not a huge bar either. If the user has set a background color to solid black, and is filling black text with it, the intent is pretty obvious.

Who owns that Issue? Who allocated budget to address? It's a Team with a Leader that misses things, not some first-year doing things "wrong".

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#13

Post by JSteph22 »

metadat wrote: post #2

Where does all the money go if it isn't being reinvested into the business? Are the massive profits immediately syphoned out by the execs and owners? It's interesting there isn't a well-known real competitor to Steam (the Blizzard and Ubisoft stores, etc, don't count, because so few external parties publish there). My gut says the lack of reinvestment could be someone else's opportunity, especially considering many o…

Steam is like any network effect based business. It's extremely difficult to dethrone when well entrenched.

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#14

Post by gjsman-1000 »

djbusby wrote: post #12
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real scandal is that PDF Software is still stupid enough to not notice that a user is trying to do a redaction and offer to do it correctly. This is the programmer’s fault, not the user’s. It’s not a huge bar either. If the user has set a background color to solid black, and is filling black text with it, the intent is pretty obvious.

Who owns that Issue? Who allocated budget to address? It's a Team with a Leader that misses things, not some first-year doing things "wrong".

If it was just Adobe, blame Adobe.

But can you tell me your favorite open-source PDF reader on Linux is immune?

(Edit, because some people miss the point and just want to be pedantic: an editor.)

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#15

Post by LordShredda »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #8
bongoman42 wrote: post #7

The real scandal is that it is 2024 and people still don't understand how redaction works.

The real scandal is that PDF Software is still stupid enough to not notice that a user is trying to do a redaction and offer to do it correctly. This is the programmer’s fault, not the user’s. It’s not a huge bar either. If the user has set a background color to solid black, and is filling black text with it, the intent is pretty obvious.

Let's be honest, it's an Adobe issue

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#16

Post by Calavar »

Ride share and delivery app companies could take some notes on how to stay lean and profitable while operating an online marketplace. I know ride share apps are more complicated, but I don't think we're talking two orders of magnitudes more complicated (300 employees vs. 30,000 at Uber). The bloat at Uber/Lyft/Doordash is insane.

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#17

Post by bobthepanda »

metadat wrote: post #6
bobthepanda wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Epic and Itch. The problem is that Steam for all its faults is DRM, anti-cheat, and a well functioning store rolled all in one. Most of the alternate stores are bad in one way or another; Epic launched without a cart, and it still doesn’t have user text reviews. Itch had to redo its whole UI after that one bundle they did that had thousands of games in it. Notably Valve doesn’t really use its position to mak…

> There is epic. How is Epic a serious competitor or alternative, then?

It is one of the most serious, in that it exists, and probably has one of the biggest catalogs next to Steam, which is not true of say whatever Ubisoft or EA is doing. at the very least there is substantial enough catalog overlap that one can price compare.

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#18

Post by gjsman-1000 »

Calavar wrote: post #16

Ride share and delivery app companies could take some notes on how to stay lean and profitable while operating an online marketplace. I know ride share apps are more complicated, but I don't think we're talking two orders of magnitudes more complicated (300 employees vs. 30,000 at Uber). The bloat at Uber/Lyft/Doordash is insane.

One involves delivering software to license holders.

The other has to deal with the possibility of humans using their app as an assault or kidnapping mechanism; from either end (rider attacking driver; driver kidnapping passenger, etc.)

Very different levels of responsibility. This can be seen, for example, by the size of Lyft and Uber’s security teams.

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#19

Post by mrkramer »

LordShredda wrote: post #11

Steam might have a very disproportionate market share, but no one complains a lot because the competition is downright laughable. Internet companies are very low maintenance It has a very low barrier to entry for devs and a permissive DRM compared to other stores. A powerful review system and a return policy better than anyone else I've seen so far. Very community friendly and has an entire feature dedicated to hosti…

>Is it a monopoly when no one else is able to compete even on the technical side?

Steam is 20 years in the making, so it is very hard to catch up with them. If you want to compete, you need to offer something different.

Re: Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few people it employs

#20

Post by stefan_ »

Calavar wrote: post #16

Ride share and delivery app companies could take some notes on how to stay lean and profitable while operating an online marketplace. I know ride share apps are more complicated, but I don't think we're talking two orders of magnitudes more complicated (300 employees vs. 30,000 at Uber). The bloat at Uber/Lyft/Doordash is insane.

Is it lean when your biggest payroll is "admin"? More like fattened up and held up by big margins and little competition.
Post reply on HN