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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

#31

Post by djhaskkka »

upon_drumhead wrote: post #10
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…

GOG is a compelling option for a lot of content. DRM free and a huge library available

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.

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

#32

Post by db48x »

stefan_ wrote: post #20
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.

Do you think the leadership at Uber _isn’t_ making bank?

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

#33

Post by szundi »

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.

When every city or even district is forcing you to honor arbitrary rules there… your sw becomes complicated

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

#34

Post by Aerroon »

bobthepanda wrote: post #5
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…

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 is a lack of features (for players, devs have a point), but rather the Epic Games Store isn't cool enough.

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

#35

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

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.

While Steam did have a rocky launch, the competitor stores since launched are laughably bad. Seemingly no attention to detail in making a product people would want to use. Epic has a huge war chest from its successes, but the application is still not at feature parity with Steam.

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

#36

Post by lionkor »

> 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 to keep people around who have been there a long time, and the people themselves knowing they're not going to be let go, could result in massive companies and hundreds of people per product.

Yes steam is big, but it's not a product so complex you'd need over 100 people to maintain it. I assume other companies need so many people because tasks don't get done, and the logical step is to add people, not remove people.

Staying lean means staying agile (in some definition of the word), and that can speed you up.

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

#37

Post by devit »

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.

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 publishing on Steam but not that much. Seems worth it for large budget games or games that are very popular in a specific niche discoverable outside Steam.

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

#38

Post by mejutoco »

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.

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.

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

#39

Post by gjsman-1000 »

mejutoco wrote: post #38
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.

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.

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

#40

Post by poikroequ »

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…

Microsoft could certainly compete, if they invested more into improving the experience on Windows, and released their own handheld device.
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