2d ago

Valve's reported profit-per-head from Steam commissions is out there, and at $3.5 million per employee it makes Apple and Facebook look like a lemonade stand

www.pcgamer.com Valve's reported profit-per-head from Steam commissions is out there, and at $3.5 million per employee it makes Apple and Facebook look like a lemonade stand

No wonder Gabe Newell can afford all those boats.

Apple @lemmy.zip

www.pcgamer.com /gaming-industry/valves-reported-profit-per-head-from-steam-commissions-is-out-there-and-at-usd3-5-million-per-employee-it-makes-apple-and-facebook-look-like-a-lemonade-stand/

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Steam @programming.dev

Valve's reported profit-per-head from Steam commissions is out there, and at $3.5 million per employee it makes Apple and Facebook look like a lemonade stand

www.pcgamer.com /gaming-industry/valves-reported-profit-per-head-from-steam-commissions-is-out-there-and-at-usd3-5-million-per-employee-it-makes-apple-and-facebook-look-like-a-lemonade-stand/

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Valve is simply the last major company in this industry that I still like. Imagine that! A company makes bank off of treating customers and employees right! What a novel concept!

I really hope that the workers are well compensated.

They brag about overworking their employees so they can hire less. No one thinks they’re a good company, just the only option for most games
- Where did they brag about overworking thier employees so they could hire less?
  
  I will retract my statement because all I’m finding are articles about valve installations

They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
They've been nothing but fair to me as a customer but the cynic in me thinks they've got an excessive amount of good will to squander since they dominate the PC gaming scene.
Please don't become shitty. And please release new non competitive games.
- Unfortunately a lot of their money comes from profiting off of CSGO loot box skins from children. A billion dollar industry. So in a way, they are shitty already, in a sense.
- When Gabe dies, steam falls
  
  Not necessarily. That man has proven he cares about his legacy. I'd severely doubt he hasn't come up with provisions to try to prevent that from happening.
  
  That ia what I am afraid of :(
- That's what you can do if you're not publicly traded. The supposedly "wise" market whenever anything goes wrong always seems to insist on burning down decades of good-will to extract a few bucks.
  
  If they were publicly traded they could have started to do the smart things that investors like to see, like spending billions to integrate AI in steam. Why is there no AI in steam yet ? Clearly a failure, Gabe should be replaced by a CEO that would not lose time and money in frivolous things like Linux (what is Linux BTW ?) and start improving the company values by adding AI and firing employees.
  
  the average person really needs to realize that most businesses are just hilariously incompetent, the only reason things stay together is because of shittily paid workers doing their jobs despite management's best efforts.
- They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
  Provide a decent service then sit back and watch your would-be competition develop increasingly effective footguns?
  
  Yep that the one
- Gaben said it best when he said "piracy is a service issue, not a price issue." There is no other company that even comes close to matching Steam's services, both to consumers and developers. The industry could become a different place when he dies. I don't see any other CEO continuing to spend money to innovate and expand services rather than offer less and charge more to extract record profits.
  
  I mean this is obvious af
  When Netflix had 90% of the shows that you wanted to watch and they weren’t annoying little fucks with account sharing and geo location, everyone was happy to support them
  But once paying users feel like they are being taken advantage of, instead of catered to, they leave.
  There’s so many cases where pirating is not only cheaper (duh) it’s actually a better product/experience. And when you charge to provide a worse product/experience than what people can get for free, then you can’t be surprised at the outcome
  
  This is absolutely mad cope, but I want to believe that, as forward thinking as Gabe is, he either will find a worthy successor, or already has one lined up to ensure the company isn't saced for all it's worth when he's gone.
  
  Developers really trying to kill that by having buggy /launchers that run off steam launcher on top
  
  I feel the same, I know that things will likely go downhill if he goes. That's why I also buy GoG games, I want to be able to download them if things go sour with Steam.
  
  Price has become a big issue lately too.
  
  I can only hope he has made some form of training program to have someone like him in place to follow behind him. I do worry about it as well, though. It's been such a fun ride along the way.
- I also use Steam, but they were one of the OGs at taking a 30% cut from digital software sales. Apple always gets shit for this, but not Valve.
  
  Because they got monopoly for controlling the OS too. No one will give a crap about the 30% if the app store and iOS are made by different entities.
  
  Before steam, digital sales of games wasn't really a thing outside of a few niche examples. The 30% cut was the same percentage that retail stores were taking.
  
  Steam offers a lot more to developers than a storefront to sell your games. The App Store is an extremely minimal offering to developers for the amount of money they demand in exchange.
  
  30% was undercutting the market when Steam did it. Y'all always forget that too

Figuring out how to easily port Windows games to Linux was definitely a recipe for profit.
- And it was a shitload of work that took a decade plus, even being built on top of pieces that were even older, with absolutely zero guarantee of any kind of a payout.
  Very few companies make these kinds of risks anymore.
  
  It's not a coincidence that they are not a publicly traded company...
  
  It's not only goodwill, it's a survival tactic for valve. The worst case scenario for them, is see microsoft expand their monopoly to have all apps and software available only through their Microsoft app store, competing directly with valve, with the unfair advantage of microsoft controlling both windows and the app store. They could (and probably have) tried to get to where apple is with its app store on macos/ios. Though of course this would be an anticompetitive move, but the intentions could still exist making valves life difficult.
  The moment they can untie gaming from windows, they have a path forward to keeping themselves not only alive but relevant and probably safe.

I've been on Steam since 2005, and the only thing that sucks about Valve is that their steam sales are shit now. Other than that I've had no issues with them. They seem like a decent company.
- Flash sales were great but refunding is better.
- While they are worse now, part of the problem is that long time users already have many of the games that get big discounts in the newer sales.
- There's also the gambling, and the 30% cut that allows them to make $3.5 million per head.
  Steam is pushing the industry forward on Linux support though, so they have my support.
- Other thing that is questionable is gambling, apparently lot of people get into online casino through CS.
  I think the culture surrounding DoTa to a lesser extend is not good too
  
  genre defining design, literal decades ahead of the rest of the industry
  Half-Life? What's that? I'm talking about Team Fortress 2 hats
- I've been steaming for that long as well!!!
  
  I remember installing Half-Life 2 (requiring 5 CDs lol) and thinking "wtf is this Steam shit, I just want to play the game"

Valve is the living proof that you can have great service and still be profitable. Will capitalists learn? No
- Why have great service and be profitable when you can have terrible service and be 1.6% more profitable?
  
  Correction: Be just as profitable but cash out on that profit slightly sooner.

Wonder how much of this comes from the gambling business. They don’t own the secondary market where you can sell skins, but they are the gateway into that world.
- I suspect a fair chunk. Steam for gamers and devs is great and all but its underbelly of opening up the world of gambling to kids is real gross. Its insane how valve has been getting away with it for so long.
- They do own a big part of the secondary market. For steam marketplace, they get a cut of those sales too.
  
  Like it or hate it, the Steam Marketplace was a pretty fucking brilliant move on their part. Literally just a free money glitch lol

Weird how if you pay the people activly invested in a product things work rather than having to awnser to why line no go up

Showing the importance of sustainable business models over the throw your entire budget at everything then end up firing hundreds and thousands of employees while giving bonuses to executives because the quarterly earnings weren't as high approach that lot of publicly traded companies have moved towards.

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