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

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

#61

Post by redox99 »

talldayo wrote: post #42
wiseowise wrote: post #30

At this point Valve should open source all of their games if they’re not planning to develop new ones.

They basically have. Half Life has been Open Source for a while, Portal and Half Life 2 were both more-or-less open along with the Source SDK. Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO aren't technically open, but their source does exist in the wild and can even be built on modern machines. That still leaves DOTA, Artifact and Half Life: Alyx without any proper source code, but the stuff people actually care about has mostly been fr…

They are in no way open source. In fact Valve has killed some projects.

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

#62

Post by bobthepanda »

Aerroon wrote: post #34
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's also Nutaku that's supposedly as big as Steam (they are focused on NSFW games). Imo Epic is the only competitor to Steam that tries to offer a similar service to Steam. It's just popular to hate on it among pc gamers. Many people cite a lack of features on Epic's store as the reason, eg no forum feature, but then turn around and decry Steam forums as the worst place on the internet. I don't think the problem…

I think that a lot of features on Steam don’t need to be copied, but I think Steam does have a giant moat in terms of actually useful features.

Steam for example, allows user submitted ratings with explainer text. This is huge for online shopping decisions.

Steam Workshop is easy to integrate mod distribution for games. Etc.

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

#63

Post by redox99 »

mrkramer wrote: post #19
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.

Epic Games Store is just as atrocious as it was years ago. It's not about time.

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

#64

Post by Log_out_ »

lionkor wrote: post #36

> Valve employed just 79 people for Steam, which is one of the most influential gaming storefronts on the planet. It might just be me, but that actually seems pretty reasonable. What I've seen a lot is companies, during growth, accepting less-than-ideal candidates, maybe without a good onboarding, which then end up as deadweight in the worst case, and underperformers in the best case. This, combined with a tendency t…

Valve tried to avoid the biggest cause of bloat, hierarchys and silo chieftains.

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

#65

Post by BlueTemplar »

mrkramer wrote: post #19
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.

Stardock's (then Gamestop's) Impulse, Paradox' GamersGate, IGN's Direct2Drive are all competitors that are about as old as Steam.

(Or at least were, these days I don't think they are much more than Steam keys resellers ?)

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

#66

Post by stefan_ »

lolinder wrote: post #60
stefan_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If they're breaking things down as is usual then "Admin" includes, among other jobs, the entire customer support team, which I can vouch for as exceptionally good by the standards of internet platforms.

It's 35 people, that most certainly does not include customer support, which will be outsourced to some low bidder as is customary.

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

#67

Post by jimjimjim »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #39
mejutoco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can empathize with the feeling but this is the case in many many contexts. Reading the intent of a user without a clear mental model of software is difficult, sometimes impossible. I know no os that changes the format of an image when a user changes the file extension, for example, which is a pretty similar situation.

Another inexcusable sharp edge of computing that nobody cares about. I propose we recognize it for what it is - a sharp edge, and don’t act like people are stupid for doing what seems intuitive and logical.

calm the farm. people don't even know what a file extension is.

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

#68

Post by redox99 »

devit wrote: post #37
mrkramer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Is there a reason why game developers can't just sell a key on their website using Shopify/WooCommerce/etc. and distribute the game files publicly via a CDN? Assuming they can get their game discovered via some sort of non-store channel (e.g. Reddit, social media, YouTube, Twitch, ads, etc.), the user can simply search the web for the game, find the website, click "buy" and proceed. Probably a bit more work than publ…

Some games do that (Escape From Tarkov), but it's rare because it's just not worth it.

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

#69

Post by Log_out_ »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #57
tokai wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't the whole idea for those companies to burn a lot of money to show investors that big things are happening?

The whole idea is to attract market share to show investors that big things are happening. I don't think being pointlessly unprofitable is attractive to investors...

Gentlemen,let me give you the tour of our campus,here we develop shiny thing, our department for buzzword and of cause the lab for X

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

#70

Post by BlueTemplar »

tokai wrote: post #45
djhaskkka wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never even considered buying games again until gog. pay. download. run in dosbox or something. done. steam is just a crap I refuse to put up with. and that's the store. imagine the drm.

Almost all games can be run without steam.

This varies wildly depending on their level of DRM :

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_to_run_steam_games_off...

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