Beaver [she/her]Valve runs its massive PC gaming ecosystem with only about 350 employees
EinarHow many times has this been posted now? Genuine question: why is this such a big deal?
cygnusGenuine question: why is this such a big deal?
These are not all video game companies, but for reference:
AMD: 26,000 employees
EA: 14,000
Facebook: 84,000
Netflix: 11,000
Spotify: 9,000
Twitter: 7,500
But it’s basically a store front and they contract almost everything out. Like how many people does it take to run some servers? They don’t make games, the steam deck and the VR are the few things they’ve done. And that could be down a couple dozen engineers and contract everything else.
Like how many employees should they have?
Twitter runs a single web application.
They also do make games.
Isn’t most of steam self moderated by the publishers and developers?
they have mobile games too, and a tech demo for the steam deck, and the known hero shooter in the works
basically the people who think valve doesnt make games didnt buy into any of their expansionary market projects (mobile/vr/steam deck). They make games, just ones you dont want to play/cant play
Nah, their corporate structure legit caused them issues making games, people like to think valve as this perfect company, but it’s hella flawed and it’s peak capitalism too.
Lemmy just seems to dislike anything remotely bad being said about them, it’s odd.
Letting your employees work on what they like doesn’t seem like the worst thing. It might hurt game profits but seems much nicer for the workers.
It is, but when nothing being done, no goals are being met, it would seem like a dead end job. Sure the pay is great, but you are just spinning wheels.
It also builds distrust in your fans, there’s literally memes about valve not counting to 3.
Dr. Arun WadhwaI’d personally take that over being forced to work on something like ‘The Dragonfly Project (Google).’ Most company cultures are so focused around ensuring a high return for the investors that employee happiness and morals seem like an afterthought. It was nice reading about a company letting their employees do what they love rather than micromanaging them.
im not a steam stan for any reason (i rarely even buy shit off the steam store directly) but its disingenuous to say they dont make games. Id argue peak capitalism is when you force a sequel to a game that didnt necessarily need it. there are a LOT of things I can conplain about when pertaining to valve, but not making games isnt one of them. its a poor argument to make when users choose not to play what they dod make.
Its similar to Fallout and Elder Scrolls, its not that there ISNT a new fallout or elder scrolls game, its just they made ones that users mostly didnt want to play (ESO, FO:Shelter, FO:76, ES: Blades, ES: Castles) disregarding the also existing VR versions of each game.
the argument sounds very similar to thise currently complaining on the Nintendo front that Famicom Detective Club got a new game, and not other nintendo IPs like Star Fox (which had Zero, Guard and Starfox 2) in the last decade, and Fzero (which had Fzero 99). its never a matter of they didnt make games, its the matter that they didnt make games they wanted
it’s peak capitalism too.
The screenshot sounds more like “peak anarchism” to me.
Sure, but it’s capitalist because Newall takes advantage of it and reaps the benefits, the employees get burnt out and get no satisfaction since nothing ever gets completed.
Think higher up the chain maybe? I don’t see how this is even arguable, but go off if you think you need to win something here.
Well, ancaps do exist…
uisI’m not sure what do you mean as moderation of store page.
They make the information on the store page, they moderate the forums, guides and workshop.
What does steam moderate themselves?
They make the information on the store page
At least some progress. How information on the store page steam would add without developer? How would steam know title of game, price and other stuff without developer telling it.
What does steam moderate themselves?
Reviews and refunds.
How information on the store page steam would add without developer? How would steam know title of game, price and other stuff without developer telling it.
What?
They log in, provide the Information to the system, the system automatically proceeds it and posts it. You think there’s a person manually doing this task or something?
Reviews of what? And 99% of refunds are automated since people use it as a free game testing service, the 2 hour window.
Most of steam is automated dude, you don’t seriously think they are manually adding all this information with a keyboard from a mailed package or something do you?
They log in, provide the Information to the system, the system automatically processes it and posts it. You think there’s a person manually doing this task or something?
Who they? Robots? Nvidia’s AI?
Reviews of what?
Of games, lol. We are talking about steam, did you forget already?
Of games, lol. We are talking about steam, did you forget already?
Users review the games and they also tag the store as well…? What are you going on about here?
Users review the games and they also tag the store as well…? What are you going on about here?
Answering your own question “What does steam moderate themselves?”, did you forget already?
They don’t make games
DOTA and CS beg to differ. Spotify is a “storefront” that produces nothing but has about 25x more employees.
And valve contracts out or has the developers and publishers self moderate their own pages on Steam.
AlbumHow do you think Spotify works?
It would see the pay more employees than contractors, that’s why their employee count is higher.
Dude, just take the L and move on.
How does a discussion have a loser? I was adding how valve has such a low employee account.
Take offense that they legit have issues publishing any games due to their corporate structure…
But I was only adding to the discussion, why do you need to “win”?
just another devYou sure like posting that screenshot, don’t you?
Well people are claiming valve is making loads of games and don’t have issues with their structure.
Do you guys not like proof to show that you are wrong or something? I get it valve is being bashed and you don’t like it, so why is everyone derailing conversations about the topic…? People can’t discuss stuff that you don’t like or something….?
Hey, you do you. I just want to give you the feedback that when you repeatedly post something as blatant as a full page screenshot, it really stands out, especially on mobile. It might give off some fanatical vibes (in the original sense of the word).
Do with that what you will.
You’re reading far into shit, you think you are adding to the discussion here?
There were three chains that got started from my comment, so those three have that information to support the points I was making and people were counterpointing with no support. These are all upvoted heavily but one.
The other is my original comment, to provide the original context since people were fanboying downvoting my comment since I sinned against lord Gaben.
So again, I was having a normal discussion, now some trolls are for some reason telling me that having a discussion isn’t okay?
Get a life buddy. Why is someone defending their point from trolls somehow at fucking fault? Yeesh.
Seems like you’re handling this like a rational adult, so keep up the good work 👍
jqubedWall Street would probably say 15-30,000+. I think the point of the surprise is that actually it’s possible to be massively profitable and have good products without needing massive teams of people. How many mediocre/bad AAA games have teams larger than Valve’s entire staff? More isn’t always better, sometimes it’s just more.
I haven’t read this article, because yeah, I’ve seen this same basic headline over a dozen times in the past week on Lemmy, but I think it’s a testament to what can happen when a private company doesn’t have a lot of shareholders and is run by people who just want the company to run well and be profitable. They don’t have to chase some unsustainable Wall Street expectation of x% growth every quarter.
Most of the store front is moderated by the publishers and developers, and they contract out a lot of work, maybe what, one valve employee at a server bank with the rest being contract workers?
Most of the store front is moderated by the publishers and developers,
You say this a lot, but can you explain what this means?
?? The developers control the store pages, what needs to explained more?
Like how many people does it take to run some servers?
That is exactly the point of post. You don’t need tends of thousands of people to run some servers.
You do need employees and valve contracts them instead of hiring directly.
This is the detail people are missing or ignoring in their circle jerk of valve here.
Then I will repeat YOUR question:
Like how many people does it take to run some servers?
All that says is that if you give people choice, they might chose not to make games in today’s market, that’s not bad imo. It’s possible that building new games isn’t what the world needs right now.
It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done, games, updates, bug fixing, there wasn’t anyone to say hey, we need 5 guys to get this done. It’s nah I want to add hats to this game, but the griefers ruining this one isn’t important to me.
Its always interesting to see the rose coloured glasses spin on this own admitted failure.
It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done,
I guess that’s where me and you would differ. Though they didn’t put out half life 3, imo valve has contributed more to my gaming experience than any other company and BY FAR.
So if this is things not getting done, I only want more of this.
Yep. But it also seems like people are so shocked by the data that maybe they’re missing the moral of this story, too? …sure it’s impressive that Valve has done so much with such a small workforce, but I think the reason they’ve been able to move so quickly is because they have such a small workforce. Companies get slow because they get big…I don’t care how much you tout your SAFe processes; you will always lose efficiency as you grow. It’s the difference between steering a canoe vs a cruise ship…the more you grow, the more you have to fight against momentum. So, my takeaway from this is that they figured out the secret to continued success as a maturing company, and good for them.
Now, I say all of this with sincere hopes that they don’t work their smaller number of employees to death and ask them to take on inappropriately burdensome workloads. Because if that’s the case, they should fuck right off with the rest of their peers.
Capt. WolfFrom what I understand, they basically have a very open work structure. People are free to work in what they want, when they want. They actually are against high workloads and do everything they can to prevent employee burnout.
I can’t say if that extends beyond the development teams to other departments like server management, but everything I’ve ever seen about them says they’re all just in it to have fun, make cool shit now and then, and of course make tons of money. The fact that their sales platform basically just prints money helps support that culture, obviously.
It didn’t work out
That’s a bummer, but also not entirely surprising when you consider Half-Life 3…
Yeah it’s great to think letting your employees do what they want is good, which it is, but yeah everyone’s going to have their own idea and want to work on it. So who gets funding, etc.
I think it speaks to developing for gaming over developing for infrastructure. What does it say about gaming where, a company that has a healthy attitude about work in general, has staff that prefer to work on addressing Steam bugs over working on a prestige game?
Do they? They have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now.
Its like people but their heads and ignore everything bad about steam/valve.
uisThey have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now so how is that even remotely true?
TF2 got bot-free recently. Let’s see how it lasts.
That is absolutely fascinating, kinda disappointing, and a really good find.
They never fully abandoned it tho
If the alternative is making a half life 3 that people don’t have the passion for then imo it’s working.
Or there’s not enough people with passion, since their passion is hats, or the higher ups have their preferred people they give funding too, part of the linked articles mention this stuff.
I don’t want forced passion. If an artists doesn’t want to create, they shouldn’t be forced.
So is game making an art form, I think so.
Great, than do that somewhere else and someone else can take their place and do their art under structure.
Who said forcing? Some people just want to draw, while others do only want to draw hats. If you only want to draw hats and we need someone who will draw something else, and there’s 30 of them, yeah that’s an issue dude.
Valve admitted it didn’t work, it’s weird the length people go to defend it.
Your point about agility is valid but Valve hasn’t veered and pivoted their way to success. Their core model and service have stayed pretty consistent for many years now. And while a cruise ship can’t steer quickly, it can move a hell of a lot more people much more fuel efficiently. They are just getting a lot done with very few people and it’s 100% worth of remark. I’d love to hear more about how they do it.
foxymulderyour explanation brought to mind the design ideals behind the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) CPU architecture. Less complexity means higher throughput.
Hope its not a shitty simile lol
mojofrododojothey take the whole company to hawaii most years iirc.
Valve has done so much ?
Steam hasn’t been improved since 2012.
They’re clearly coasting.
They’re keeping their keeping the 30% cut and running away with it instead of hire people to fix stuff.
Since 2012:
- Linux support - I joined around 2013 because of that
- Proton - massive Linux compatibility upgrade
- Steam Input - along with big picture mode and whatnot
- SteamVR
- hidden games
- cart improvements
- mobile app improvements, along with MFA
- collections
That’s just what I remember off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more that I just don’t care about.