Valve, the proprietor of the Steam platform and maker of the Steam Deck, is likely one of the best firms on the planet. Research agency Alinea Analytics’ head of market evaluation posted on X that the Steam platform alone has already made $16.2 billion in income, with some suggesting that the corporate as an entire will hit $17 billion in 2025. The firm worker rely between 2012 and 2021 averaged round 350 folks, in accordance with some estimates. This signifies that the gaming firm is making virtually $50 million per worker.
Wolfire, an independent game studio that sued Valve in 2021, said that the company had around 360 employees, as noted by The Verge. For comparability, in the identical yr, Microsoft mentioned that the sport firm had an estimated income of $6.5 billion, which means it is roughly bringing in $18 million+ per head.
Those figures would nonetheless be double the quantity that the staff of different main firms are making. According to Visual Capitalist, a healthcare firm referred to as McKesson is the Revenue per Employee chief, however we see it ‘solely’ raked in $8.2 million per worker. Tech firm staff are even much less impactful on income, with Apple making $2.4 million per worker and Meta (Facebook’s father or mother firm) bringing in solely $1.9 million per worker.
Valve itself is conscious of this. It’s publicly obtainable Handbook for New Employees [PDF], first printed in 2012, states, “Our profitability per employee is higher than that of Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and we believe strongly that the right thing to do in that case is to put a maximum amount of money back into each employee’s pocket.” The firm claims it has top-of-the-line compensation packages within the trade, and we are able to see this within the leaked knowledge shared by The Verge, which exhibits that Valve spent practically $450 million on worker salaries, with a weighted common of greater than $1.3 million per worker.
The firm doubtless achieved this as a result of it’s a very privately owned company, beholden to neither stockholders nor personal fairness. So, its house owners, comparable to Gabe Newell himself, plus another companions, can concentrate on the long-term viability of the corporate as a substitute of pushing it to maximise returns on the expense of avid gamers and publishers. It additionally has a novel, flat firm construction, the place everybody works as group members and there aren’t any managers or C-suite executives.
Although no firm is ideal (Valve was one of many first to popularise loot bins in PC gaming), it has arguably finished rather a lot for the gaming group and the trade as an entire. Aside from its iconic titles, like Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and Left 4 Dead, it additionally revolutionized how we purchase video games by way of Steam and opened the world to many smaller builders. The firm additionally revived the hand held gaming trade when it dropped the Steam Deck in 2022, and we’re trying ahead to the upcoming Steam Machine, anticipated to reach in 2026.
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