When talking about Valve, gamers probably think of a giant corporation that has a huge impact on the gaming industry. Especially online stores like Steam, a huge PC gaming store that has many popular games and often has discounts to the point where gamers are almost destitute. But who would have thought that such a giant camp would only have a few employees?
Typically, big money-making studios like EA or Riot Games have thousands of employees, but Valve has just 336, according to Pavel Djundik, the creator of SteamDB, who revealed the document in the Wolfire-Valve antitrust case with information from both the software team, Steam, and the hardware team, Steam Deck.
The information starts from 2003 to 2021. In 2003, there were only 5 employees and the cost of hiring employees was $454,142 (about 16,429,900 baht) and the information indicates that it was a team in the management department, the game cost was $142,290,300 and the game team was 57 people (in 2003).
The latest information in 2021, in the games section, the game's salary expenses are $192,355,985 (6,959,054,825 baht) and it has a team of 181 people, the Steam team has to pay 76,446,633 coins (2,765,686,280 baht) and the Steam team ends with the hardware team of 41 people and the total salary is 17,706,376 coins (640,581,270 baht)
It is worth noting that although the total Valve team consists of only 336 people, their employees’ salaries are very high. Since the hardware division only has a Steam Deck model for sale, they had to invest more than $17 million, however, according to Wolfire, when comparing the number of people to Valve’s revenue, the profit per employee could be around $15 million per year. Although this may be information that has not been confirmed yet. But there is a note in the Valve employee handbook that states that the company makes more profit per employee than Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, which is evidence that Valve is one of the most unusual gaming companies.
