[HN Gopher] Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff a...
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Leaked payroll data show how much Valve pays staff and how few
people it employs
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 67 points
Date : 2024-07-14 21:19 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| metadat wrote:
| 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 of the longstanding VAC
| and other quality issues which have persisted on Steam's platform
| for more than 15 years. However, because of all the necessary
| catch-up, such an enterprise would be tricky to bootstrap and get
| to critical mass. Even then, where is the moat?
| dangrossman wrote:
| At $1.3 million per employee in payroll expenses, it seems like
| much of the profits are being distributed to the employees that
| work there.
| metadat wrote:
| Agreed, that's generous. TFA also states Valve still makes
| $15m/employee
|
| p.s. thanks so much for hnreplies.com, Dan! It dramatically
| increased the utility of HN for me. Your creation is
| fantastic.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| 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 make competing
| games. This is an unknown for most publishers, and Epic pretty
| blatantly pivoted Fortnite to eat PUBG's lunch after working
| with them.
|
| If anything the leading platform for competition as an indie
| store is the Nintendo eShop. Which is probably why the Steam
| Deck exists.
| metadat wrote:
| _> There is epic._
|
| How is Epic a serious competitor or alternative, then?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It is one of the most serious, in that it exists, and
| probably has one of the biggest catalogs next to Steam,
| which is not true of say whatever Ubisoft or EA is doing.
| at the very least there is substantial enough catalog
| overlap that one can price compare.
| Aerroon wrote:
| 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_.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| 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.
| lkramer wrote:
| There are plenty of competing stores, all of which pales in
| comparison. I don't know what their secret sauce is, but for me
| personally what makes a difference and why I keep preferring
| them is their dedication to Linux as a platform and a general
| feeling that they are not just driving me towards rent seeking.
| I know that last bit is slightly absurd, and I can't quite
| explain, but I think the fact that they are private means their
| priorities don't just exists as quarterly goals.
| doix wrote:
| > but for me personally what makes a difference and why I
| keep preferring them is their dedication to Linux as a
| platform and a general feeling that they are not just driving
| me towards rent seeking
|
| For what it's worth, I have the exact same feelings. They
| provide so much value on-top of just being a store, and it
| does feel like they take the money and re-invest it into
| their ecosystem to make it better.
|
| They made gaming on Linux as easy as gaming on windows. They
| improved the controller situation in games. They do the whole
| remote-play stuff so you can play local-coop games online.
| They do the family sharing stuff. They do the steam link
| stuff. And they don't lock any of it down to their first
| party offerings. e.g.
|
| * They could have easily made steamlink only work with their
| set-top box, but they just made it an android app.
|
| * They could have limited the controller bindings and tech to
| only their controller, but they made it work for all
| controllers.
|
| * They could have forced you to use their VR headset with
| steam, but they let you use any headset.
|
| I can't think of any other company off the top of my head
| that has done something similar.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Steam is actually made with their users in mind. So much that
| they managed to beat piracy. It is no easy feat, you can't
| beat piracy on price, and it is hard to beat in convenience
| when all you have to do is download a torrent and run an exe
| file. Piracy is like the final boss of software distribution
| platforms, but they beat it.
|
| To play a game, select it on the store, pay (with all sorts
| of payment options), download (from damn fast servers), and
| press play, that's all. The game sucks or crash, click a
| button and you are refunded, no need to be always online just
| for DRM check (eventually you'll need internet, but you have
| enough leeway so that it is rarely a problem), ads are very
| unobtrusive and maybe even desirable (suggesting games you
| may actually like or announcing sales), they don't usually
| force an update just before you want to play a game (a much
| too common occurrence), dark patterns kept to a minimum (or
| at least subtle enough), generally good software quality (in
| terms of bugs, broken UI/UX, etc...). You bought a game, it
| stays in your account, Steam has 20 years of history of not
| screwing you, and to play it, just install Steam on any PC
| (it it doesn't already have it), log in to your account,
| download and play, it is that easy. You can even share games
| (with some reasonable limitations).
|
| Others just have some annoyance here and there. Some always-
| on DRM, bugs, dubious UI choices, annoying ads, etc... Only
| Valve seems to understand the importance of not getting in
| the way between gamers and their games and do the appropriate
| amount of effort (which is a lot). Not even in the name of
| profit, because they understand that it is not worth it, if
| gamers are satisfied, profits will come. Remember, they have
| piracy as a competitor, and it is hard to compromise against
| such a powerful competitor.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| My guess is that the secret sauce is network effect. People
| have all their games in their steam libraries, so they want
| the next game in their steam library too.
|
| They perceive the Steam launcher as something positive that
| provides them convenience. The network effect also makes it
| hard for game companies not not be on Steam, allowing Valve
| to enforce some customer-friendly policies like refunds,
| further making the platform nice to use.
|
| Epic is trying to break through this by giving away endless
| free games. All other stores are generally forced upon the
| player through exclusives (you buy the game on Steam, but you
| still have to install their shitty launcher-store because the
| parent company owning the game wants some of the store-
| platform cake), breeding resentment and further cementing
| Steam's position.
|
| (GOG being an exception, but they don't have enough
| major/interesting games to get players to use them as their
| primary platform.)
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| GOG is a compelling option for a lot of content. DRM free and a
| huge library available
| djhaskkka wrote:
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| Almost all games can be run without steam.
| JSteph22 wrote:
| Steam is like any network effect based business. It's extremely
| difficult to dethrone when well entrenched.
| infecto wrote:
| I believe this is largely the case and I would add that there
| general pro-gamer attitude would make it quite difficult to
| dethrone.
| lkdfjlkdfjlg wrote:
| > Are the massive profits immediately syphoned out by the execs
| and owners?
|
| Have you actually looked at the numbers or are you just
| parroting memes? In the numbers I'm looking at some divisions
| are $1M per employee.
| bongoman42 wrote:
| The real scandal is that it is 2024 and people still don't
| understand how redaction works.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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.
| djbusby wrote:
| Who owns that Issue? Who allocated budget to address? It's a
| Team with a Leader that misses things, not some first-year
| doing things "wrong".
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If it was just Adobe, blame Adobe.
|
| But can you tell me your favorite open-source PDF reader on
| Linux is immune?
|
| (Edit, because some people miss the point and just want to
| be pedantic: an _editor_.)
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| A _reader_ is immune from letting you think a change you
| 're making is redaction by not letting you make a change.
| LordShredda wrote:
| Let's be honest, it's an Adobe issue
| mejutoco wrote:
| 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.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| calm the farm. people don't even know what a file
| extension is.
| LordShredda wrote:
| 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 hosting user mods
| and creations. Right now they're wasting money on VR just because
| they can
|
| Is it a monopoly when no one else is able to compete even on the
| technical side?
| mrkramer wrote:
| >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.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| 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.
| devit wrote:
| 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.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Some devs do essentially do that in addition to Steam.
| You're missing a million and one features on top of simply
| running the game itself if you restrict yourself to that,
| though.
| popcalc wrote:
| Two words: chargebacks and fraud. Keeping this to a
| manageable level requires scale.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Is there a reason why game developers can't just sell a
| key on the web using Shopify/WooCommerce/etc. and
| distribute the game files publicly via a CDN?
|
| It's not that easy; Steam brings down dramatically
| complexity of self distributing and it offers a plenty of
| Web 2.0 features e.g. reviews, discussions forum,
| connecting with friends, playing with friends, chatting
| with friends etc.
|
| It's like asking why Amazon exists when sellers can have
| their own store page and distribution channel....
|
| Some games that I know that are popular and not on Steam
| are for example Starsector and Escape from Tarkov. Game
| devs choose not to publish their game on Steam either
| because their game is not finished and they do not want to
| get negative reviewed to the ground and/or they think their
| game's brand is so strong that they do not want to pay 30%
| tax to Steam. For example Minecraft most likely wasn't on
| Steam because of aforementioned reasons.
| redox99 wrote:
| Some games do that (Escape From Tarkov), but it's rare
| because it's just not worth it.
| redox99 wrote:
| Epic Games Store is just as atrocious as it was years ago.
| It's not about time.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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 ?)
| poikroequ wrote:
| Microsoft could certainly compete, if they invested more into
| improving the experience on Windows, and released their own
| handheld device.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Microsoft "competed" with Games For Windows Live (Dead).
|
| Though I guess that's now probably what Battle.net is ?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Well, since you mentioned DRM and return policy, let's not
| forget that GoG has no DRM, and unlike GoG's 30 day return
| policy Steam didn't even _have_ one until Australia threatened
| to ban them.
|
| And the Workshop and Steam MP might be very convenient for
| some, but are walled garden features that ought to be
| boycotted.
|
| P.S.: More of a monopsony than a monopoly :
|
| https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/steam-monopoly-monopsony-4...
| Calavar wrote:
| 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.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| One involves delivering software to license holders.
|
| The other has to deal with the possibility of humans using
| their app as an assault or kidnapping mechanism; from either
| end (rider attacking driver; driver kidnapping passenger, etc.)
|
| Very different levels of responsibility. This can be seen, for
| example, by the size of Lyft and Uber's security teams.
| djhaskkka wrote:
| you wish their headcount was for the customer safety team!
|
| their lobbying team is probably larger than this one.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| False, according to OpenSecrets, lobbying is under $2M a
| year.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-
| lobbying/clients/summary...
| specialist wrote:
| This is based on US Senate data. Does it include state
| and local lobbying?
| uyeieiii wrote:
| that doesn't even cover the salary of all the obama admin
| people uber hired. let alone the actual lobbying going
| on. that's just what fall under some specific tax code.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Is it lean when your biggest payroll is "admin"? More like
| fattened up and held up by big margins and little competition.
| db48x wrote:
| Do you think the leadership at Uber _isn't_ making bank?
| dmurray wrote:
| It's sorted alphabetically, not by expenditure.
|
| "Admin" is less than "Games" in every year.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's 35 people, that most certainly does not include
| customer support, which will be outsourced to some low
| bidder as is customary.
| tokai wrote:
| But isn't the whole idea for those companies to burn a lot of
| money to show investors that big things are happening?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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...
| Log_out_ wrote:
| 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
| szundi wrote:
| When every city or even district is forcing you to honor
| arbitrary rules there... your sw becomes complicated
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Steam has to deal with local tax regulations, censorship
| rules, distribution rights, etc...
| arccy wrote:
| you deal with countries and a few big publishers, not a few
| thousand cities each who want to be special
| wiseowise wrote:
| At this point Valve should open source all of their games if
| they're not planning to develop new ones.
| talldayo wrote:
| 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 freed.
| redox99 wrote:
| They are in no way open source. In fact Valve has killed some
| projects.
| lionkor wrote:
| > 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.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Valve tried to avoid the biggest cause of bloat, hierarchys and
| silo chieftains.
| pyb wrote:
| Hardware engineers making half of what software engineers make. A
| reminder of the stark difference between the two job markets.
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