Valve had its worker and payroll information leaked by a poorly redacted doc in an antitrust lawsuit in Could, providing a uncommon glimpse into the corporate’s small however impactful workforce over time. As first observed by SteamDB’s Pavel Djundik, Valve’s vital affect in PC gaming transactions has been maintained by just some hundred workers. Kyle Orland reviews by way of Ars Technica: It is putting to contemplate simply how small Valve is in comparison with different main gamers within the recreation {industry}. In 2021, Microsoft estimated Valve’s annual income at $6.5 billion, roughly on the identical scale as EA’s $7.5 billion in 2024 income. However Steam achieved these numbers with round 350 workers, in comparison with nicely over 13,000 individuals employed by EA. The disparity highlights simply how a lot cash Valve brings in with a comparatively small workforce. And a variety of that’s because of the chunk of income Valve takes from each sale on Steam. The dominant PC gaming market has seen an enormous enhance within the variety of annual recreation releases since 2012 or so, because of initiatives like Steam Greenlight and Steam Direct.
But, surprisingly, the scale of the “Steam” division inside Valve has shrunk lately, from a peak of 142 workers in 2015 down to simply 79 in 2021. From the surface, having simply 79 workers retaining observe of greater than 11,000 Steam releases in 2021 is a fairly unbelievable ratio. Some readers may be shocked that Valve’s “Video games” division has represented a majority of the corporate’s headcount since 2003. That has remained true (although to a lesser extent) even in more moderen years, as Valve’s output of recent video games has turn out to be rather more occasional. It appears seemingly numerous these Video games division workers are dedicated to ultra-popular Valve video games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2, which get pleasure from tens of hundreds of thousands of gamers and want vital help work.
The leaked information additionally exhibits the sluggish rise of Valve’s small {Hardware} division, which began with simply three workers in 2011 as the corporate started work on its doomed Steam Machines initiative. Transitioning into the Valve Index period within the late 2010s, the {hardware} division nonetheless represented just some dozen individuals and a paltry 3 to 4 p.c of the corporate’s annual payroll. By the point we hit 2021 and the run-up to the Steam Deck, the {Hardware} division nonetheless makes up simply 12 p.c of Valve’s small whole headcount. Wanting again, it is spectacular that such a small group was capable of create a transportable gaming gadget that rapidly spawned a complete micro-industry of imitators. We are able to solely hope the {Hardware} group obtained slightly extra worker help within the wake of the Steam Deck’s market success.
