We, the representatives of the computer games industry, perceive Valve as a giant. Its iron-clad dominance in space is unchallenged and unchallenged, and even the most powerful video game publishers come to kiss the ring sooner or later. However, in terms of actual volume, this is not the case: one of the very engaging things we have learned in 2024 is that Valve, relatively speaking, actually quite compact.
Unlike most major gaming players, Valve is privately held, so information about the company – employee numbers, revenues, that sort of thing – is typically not intended for public utilize. However, court documents related to an ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed against Valve by Wolfire Games in 2021 showed that Valve had just 336 employees that year.
That’s more than your typical compact startup, true, but also a very compact fraction of companies like Ubisoft that have reported it 18,666 employees at the end of September 2024, Electronic Arts, which had approx 13,700 people as of March 31, 2024 or Activision Blizzard, which is approximately 13,000 employees in slow 2022, in its last year-end report before its acquisition by Microsoft. In terms of employment, Valve is much smaller than even Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios had 470 employees as of March 2024 (For me, though, it will always be that weird Ghent outfit).
It’s also a bit strange that of those 336 employees, only 79 worked directly at Steam, even though Steam is largely Valve’s biggest source of money. 181 people worked in Valve’s “Games” department whateverwhile 41 were involved in hardware development and 35 were involved in administrative duties.
Wolfire criticized this breakdown in his lawsuit, saying Valve “dedicates a small percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store.” This criticism probably applies not only to the functionality of the Steam store, but also to its moderation policies, which were already in place under fire for years for allowing hate groups and extremist content to flourish.
In another respect, however, Valve is absolutely monstrous. Documents from the same lawsuit also revealed that Valve outperforms the tech industry giants in terms of earnings per employee. A Valve employee who likes numbers and time broke down the company’s internal data and then compared it to companies like Apple, Facebook and Netflix. The email chain has been redacted, so Valve’s revenue per employee is unknown, but runner-up Facebook earned about $780,400 in annual net income per employee, so at least we know it’s more.
These calculations are based on 2018 numbers, so they may be out of date, although Valve hasn’t grown significantly since then, and it’s not like Steam has suddenly stopped raking in money. Valve obviously doesn’t make the same revenues as the other companies on the list, but when you consider sheer performance, it’s huge. And just as Steam’s low staffing levels cast an unflattering lithe on moderation problems, this kind of cash grab might make you wonder whether Valve’s 30% cut of Steam sales (with cuts based on sales volume) is actually long overdue for the times Wolffire Epic gamesAND others insist. On the other hand, nothing brings success like success, and Valve doing so much for so little suggests that it must be doing something right.
2025 could be an engaging year for Valve: after years of slowly moving through the process, the Wolffire antitrust lawsuit against Valve has been dismissed. considered a class action lawsuit in November, meaning it now includes “all persons or entities” who have sold games on Steam since 2017. That same month, U.S. Senator Mark Warner sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell, warning: “more thorough control by the federal government” if it does not crack down on extremist content on the platform.
