Valve had its worker and payroll information leaked by means of a poorly redacted doc in an antitrust lawsuit in Could, providing a uncommon glimpse into the corporate’s small however impactful workforce through the years. 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 experiences through Ars Technica: It is hanging to think about simply how small Valve is in comparison with different main gamers within the sport {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 effectively over 13,000 individuals employed by EA. The disparity highlights simply how a lot cash Valve brings in with a comparatively small workforce. And numerous that’s due to the chunk of income Valve takes from each sale on Steam. The dominant PC gaming market has seen an enormous improve within the variety of annual sport releases since 2012 or so, due to 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 skin, having simply 79 workers preserving monitor of greater than 11,000 Steam releases in 2021 is a reasonably unimaginable ratio. Some readers may be stunned 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 latest video games has develop into rather more occasional. It appears probably numerous these Video games division workers are dedicated to ultra-popular Valve video games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2, which take pleasure in tens of hundreds of thousands of gamers and wish vital assist work.
The leaked information additionally reveals 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 complete headcount. Wanting again, it is spectacular that such a small workforce was in a position to create a transportable gaming system that rapidly spawned an entire micro-industry of imitators. We are able to solely hope the {Hardware} workforce received a bit extra worker assist within the wake of the Steam Deck’s market success.