Valve is still dealing with an antitrust lawsuit raised against Steam by Wolfire in 2021, and recently, some documents came to light that were mostly redacted but contained enough information for a few juicy tidbits to be revealed. One thing that was noted was Valve’s employee counts and how they were spread around the company. In a staggering revelation, it was shown that fewer than 80 employees worked on Steam in 2021 – and the number isn’t expected to have changed much.
That Ratio, Though
Steam is maintained by a team of fewer than 80 people, which is pretty insane when you consider the traffic the platform gets. Every year, more than 10,000 games are released on the platform, and every day, millions of people use the popular PC storefront to buy and play games. By market share, it’s the biggest gaming platform on PC, and it’s well known for the regular and immense sales it holds.
In documentation revealed from the Valve vs. Wolfire lawsuit, which was detailed by GamesIndustry.biz, it was revealed that in 2021, Valve employed 336 people, and just 79 of those were working on Steam. It was then noted that in 2021, 10,000 games were released on the platform – which means that the relatively small team must be using some insane operating model to keep on top of it all.
It’s safe to assume that means the 79 employees were (or are) split up between:
- Technical operations
- UI
- Networking
- Sales and purchasing
- Provider management
- Security
- CX
- Onboarding
And whatever else you might expect is required to run Steam. That’s a huge undertaking for such a small team, but Steam is number one, so I guess they’re not complaining.
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So you’re telling me the crux of the argument is that there’s only a few people in control or running skiing and they have many hats. As someone who utilizes team in their platform I’m sure that’s a way to keep costs low which is fine if they’re competing against other platforms. On one hand those employers deserve to be paid handsomely for their work and if they are there should be no issue if they’re not then it’s a free market and they should just leave and go somewhere else nowhere is a stated that an employer is forced to pay you a certain amount it’s whatever the market decides at that amount is. Please invite me if I’m wrong on the Crux issue.