Reliable, low maitenance, with good infastructure. 80 sounds like a solid number when not including game devs and support staff.
80 world-class engineers sounds like more than enough people. It’s not like Valve struggle to acquire talent and are thus forced to have teams and teams of juniors who are masters at building tech debt.
Valve will likely be hiring and retaining the kinds of engineers who love a good refactor and appreciate the time and space to do that rather than some product manager pressuring for the next shiny shit they wanted yesterday.
And Steam is their money printing machine that keeps them free to do whatever they want. It’s no surprise their team have stayed invested in continuing to build out the best gaming platform of all time.
80 talented, passionate, and healthily paid engineers > 800 junior, sleep deprived, and struggling to buy groceries “coders”.
Love to refactor, the more I watch the Mesa graphics drivers and the employees valve hired that work on it the more I believe it
Or they hire contractors without any job security
without any job security
That’s USA. They don’t belive in job security.
What good is job security when we get an automatic pay cut every year? We get raises by switching jobs!
Also explains why Steam is still a 32-bit binary and didn’t get ARM port on any platform.
I think the point is that with this kind of upkeep costs it’s hard to argue that Steam sales cut is fair, especially given near-monopoly in PC gaming space.
At this point, their cut is just about mathematically fair, given how little value customers get from buying games most other places and how much value they get from Steam. Then that money got funneled back into decoupling PC gaming from Microsoft and making probably the only mass produced handheld gaming system that’s open enough to let you opt out of their ecosystem. I’d be really curious as to how many games on Steam even have ARM builds, because I’ll bet it’s a very low number, and that would likely make the juice not worth the squeeze.
Their cut is mathematically fair but the inputs for this formula are mostly pain tolerance levels of consumers and producers. I meant fair for having a monopoly. Either you’re a utility or need to be broken up so that actual competition can take place.
Steam Deck and Proton killed Linux gaming because nobody bothers to do native ports. While I don’t agree with that approach it kinda works but it’s not that Valve does this because they like Linux. They’re scared of losing their monopoly in case Windows changes too much.
There are ARM native games on Mac (Disco Elysium for example) and Steam has no issues with them. Not having ARM client though means that you’re running a dynamically recompiling web browser through a translation layer resulting in terrible performance.
Pain tolerance levels? The biggest pain points I have with Steam are that it’s not universally DRM-free (which is why I shop GOG first) and that their multiplayer servers go down for 15 minutes during maintenance windows once or twice per week. Native Linux ports were not going to become more common prior to Proton; they were on the fast track to becoming less common, especially given how many more games are now released every year, and Proton has the added benefit of adding Linux support to games where it was just never going to feasibly happen otherwise.
While I don’t agree with that approach it kinda works but it’s not that Valve does this because they like Linux. They’re scared of losing their monopoly in case Windows changes too much.
It’s both. That fear of losing their market position is exactly how a functioning market is supposed to work. Competition is supposed to come in and outdo Valve. EA looked like they were interested for a little while back when they launched Origin, but they changed their minds. Epic says they’re interested now, but they only want sellers and not customers. It’s not a monopoly, legally, when they attained their market position by just being better than everyone else.
There are ARM native games on Mac (Disco Elysium for example) and Steam has no issues with them.
And I wonder how many more there are out there. Because if that number is low enough, it may just not be worth it to bother. I’d imagine it’s a nightmare to have to support Apple through all of their standards that they dictate at their business partners. Valve went through the trouble of making a Vulkan->Metal translation layer, since Apple refused to support open standards, and then Apple retired x64 on their machines shortly afterward.
Pain tolerance to prices, how good the support is, how snappy the app is etc. Within the space of game marketplaces they’re average and that’s because every one of them kind of sucks. If Epic was first to monopolize PC game marketplaces people would be defending them like they defend Valve now because they want all of their games in one place.
Linux gaming was stable before Proton. It was never big but mainstream titles were getting released. These days there’s nothing. Titles could be broken at any moment by a developer and nobody will have any responsibility to fix it. I very much doubt that a for profit company does anything because they “like” something like Linux. They’re there to make money, period.
I’m not saying Valve should port their games to ARM or update them, it’s up to them and they don’t seem to be interested in developing games all that much these days. My point wad that plenty of games run via Rosetta2 fine. Steam doesn’t run fine because essentially it’s a web browser and that’s where you can say that 80 developers might not be enough to support this money printing machine.
If Epic was first to monopolize PC game marketplaces people would be defending them like they defend Valve now because they want all of their games in one place.
No, people accept Steam because of the proven track record, values of their leadership, their hardware and the work they do with Linux.
Linux gaming was stable before Proton.
Please.
EGS would have all this in that hypothetical scenario, why wouldn’t it?
Pain tolerance to prices? We’re talking about the platform whose name is frequently coupled with the word “sale”. Given the complete lack of ideas out of Epic in the year 2024, I don’t have much confidence that they’d have risen to be a dominant market leader in the first place.
Linux gaming was stable before Proton. It was never big but mainstream titles were getting released.
Stable, but not many titles. Mainstream titles were getting released because Valve was either greasing the wheels or because those partners thought Steam Machines were going to be a bigger deal. When they weren’t a bigger deal, those mainstream titles dried up fast. The Witcher 3 and Street Fighter V both announced Linux ports and cancelled them when the writing was on the wall for Steam Machines. Both now work in Proton.
I very much doubt that a for profit company does anything because they “like” something like Linux. They’re there to make money, period.
I was told, to my face, by a Valve employee between the launch of Steam Machines and the release of Proton, that a lot of engineers at Valve “are enamored with Linux” before he gave me a look indicating that he couldn’t say more. But also, yes, the pursuit of making money leads to all sorts of wonderful new things, like simultaneously porting more than half of the history of PC gaming to a different operating system.
I’m not saying Valve should port their games to ARM or update them, it’s up to them and they don’t seem to be interested in developing games all that much these days. My point wad that plenty of games run via Rosetta2 fine. Steam doesn’t run fine because essentially it’s a web browser and that’s where you can say that 80 developers might not be enough to support this money printing machine.
But if there aren’t many games ported to ARM, and if the number of games running via Rosetta “fine” isn’t high enough, then the number of customers you’re benefiting by making a native ARM build of Steam is very low, and throwing more developers at the problem only makes that math worse. I think you should have a better Steam on Mac. I also know that Apple is actively hostile to gaming on Mac, so I get it if Valve isn’t super interested.
The only reason you don’t see the price as a pain point is that you refuse to see that about 50% of that goes to companies that make billions in profit while people like you and me can’t afford rent.
Valve is not your landlord. They made a good place to buy video games. And come on, now; it’s 30% at most to Valve (which is less than brick and mortar before it) and then some more to the government.
30% for Valve, another 10 to 20% for the publisher…
Guess where the billionaires work?
If this was true, games would cost 18% less on EGS because they only take 12%. Shockingly enough, they cost the same.
Because the same games sell for more elsewhere (also, funnily enough, we’re seeing tons of info on Valve because they’re getting sued for including a non compete clause in their contract to prevent games from being sold for less elsewhere), that’s an issue for the market as a whole and doesn’t apply to video games only. You’re paying too much for your food, for your gas, for your housing, for your clothes, for every fucking thing!
Profit shares for distributors will need to be regulated and wealth tax will need to be applied.
I disagree with your definition of “killed Linux gaming.” It killed native Linux development perhaps. But using Linux for gaming is more viable than ever thanks to Valve. They single handedly boosted Linux gaming, if anything.
And they also offer more than the competition. For a while there games on EGS were just telling people to get support on steam forums because epic had nothing for supporting games they sold. Steam has forums, screenshot storage, achievements, remote play, friends lists, a shopping cart (🙄) and is adding new features like clips. I’m not using steam because it’s a monopoly, I’m using it because it’s a better platform.
Killed Linux gaming? I hard disagree with that. Yes developers may not do Native ports as often anymore but I would much rather have the ability to play games that are not considered a native Port because the ocean is so much vaster. If anything proton in the steam deck put Linux on the map, prior to the deck AAA titles you would never see running on Linux you barely saw AA titles on it. However with the introduction of the steam deck in proton we now have companies moving closer to at least making sure their game is compatible with the deck which is one step closer to allowing it to be Linux compatible. It allows you to take your windows games and for the most part just be able to play it without having to have the studio spend as much for it as they would with a native port, because that’s the number one thing that holds them back from making a native Port the lack of market share. I would not have switched off of Windows if this was not the case because that was basically the only thing that was holding me on Windows still was the lack of decent gaming support
Let’s take Elden Ring for example, it plays beautifully I haven’t had a single problem playing it. They weren’t going to release a Linux branch but they made sure it was steamdeck compatible, which meant that it was proton compatible which then allows me to play this amazing game on my Debian 12, a game that otherwise would not have worked because none of the other translation layers function with it. I notice zero difference in performance it plays flawlessly, but I would not have been able to play this game otherwise. It might as well be a native Port because I’ve had zero issues with functionality.
The Factorio development blog has a piece on developing Linux-native. Basically there’s ONE GUY who works on the LInux-native version, and it’s a lot more challenging than people think – from managing and linking dependencies, to working around GNOME’s monumentally stupid decision to expect client-side decorations from all apps. It’s simply more worthwhile to ensure that a game works well on WIne/Proton.
it’s hard to argue that Steam sales cut is fair
It’s actually pretty easy to argue it’s fair once you look at everything. Steam offers a shit ton of resources for that 30%, including hosting, distribution, patching, workshop, etc. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the dev can get all of that AND get steam keys that they can distribute themselves (meaning valve doesn’t get a cut of that) that still utilizes the same infra.
I wish I could find it, but I recently saw a video of Thor (@piratesoftware, does his own game dev and used to work for Blizzard) talking about this and going into even more detail than I can remember at the moment.
The cut would be less if competition was possible. I will bet my arm, first child and souls on this.
And you’d lose all of that.
Competition isn’t possible? EGS is an active competitor that only takes 12% and they still can’t get fucking anywhere because their store fucking sucks. GoG exists and also takes 30%, their store/launcher are ok, but they don’t offer nearly as much for that 30%, but they make up for that with drm free games. There are other minor players out there, so competition is definitely possible, but not one of them offers a comparable product.
The only way steam would lower their cut is if someone came along and made a game store that actually offered a significant portion of the services steam offered and was about as good but also had a lower cut of sales. But good luck finding someone who can do all of that and also takes less than 30%.
You don’t seem to understand what a monopoly is. Having some small competition that’s not ever going to threaten you because you can leverage your dominant position is also a case of a monopoly.
Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it. How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on? This is why they need to be broken up or brought to order via regulations. Companies are not your friends.
Success is not illegal. Valve isn’t buying up smaller competing storefronts, or paying off developers for exclusivity, or burying competition in legal fees and prepared 80-page lawsuits. The only thing holding back real competition is the competing platforms being dogshit.
I was excited for the EGS when it was announced. Then it turned out to be a garbage platform with the shady exclusivity deals that turned Steam into an ad platform for games that had been poached by Epic. Valve responded to it with the Steam Deck and Proton.
Leveraging dominant position to keep your monopoly is illegal even in the US.
How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on?
They could offer their games DRM-free, guarantee that their multiplayer games have LAN or provide servers and/or at least provide that information clearly to the consumer, write an open source drop-in replacement for Steam Input and Workshop, guarantee more uptime on their matchmaking/friends servers, retain old versions of games that they distribute, and allow for user-customized or open source clients to fit all sorts of UI preferences, off the top of my head.
Those things are up to developers / publishers, not the marketplace.
Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it.
Yes, Into fortnite, not EGS. The eggs spent all their money on timed exclusives instead of a better product, and that’s why they failed to make a steam competitor.
Those free games weren’t actually free, Epic paid for them, you know.
You dont seem to understand what a monopoly is either since steam isnt one
As an Indie dev, a 30% cut of profit could be the death of my one man studio (if I ever get around to actually starting it)
Ok, so then handle all of that yourself at cost. Which will lead to the death of your studio faster?
Seriously though, a $15 game selling just 100k copies is still $1m to you (before taxes) and has no upkeep. You do all that steam does yourself, you’re going to drown in operations costs and upkeep time.
They make billions in profit, fuck off with it being fair.
Waah it’s not faaaair!
Fair isn’t a thing.
Blame the game not the player, it’s not like they are doing some next level weird shit like all the competition does. This rigged economic system allowed this situation.
After that well-informed take, listen to an actual indie developer talk about why the 30% is worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoAmifo9r0 (it’s a separate but similar lawsuit by a “waaahmbulance-chaser” law firm in the UK)
Damn dude that link fuckin DESTROYS every braindead “b-b-but STEAMS MONOPOLY!!!” arguement I’ve seen uttered by idiots who want to bring late stage capitalism to the PC marketplace just so they can pretend they stood up to a company
Yes, developers are also victims of this monopoly. It’s obviously better (“worth it”) to pay 30% for visibility on the biggest marketplace.
They also maintain file hosting for saves, game versions and a lot of useful apis for games https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features
Yes, it’s a nice cage.
Enjoy accelerating late stage capitalism while pretending you’re against it because you’re incapable of seeing things outside of black and white thinking
I’m accelerating late stage capitalism by being critical of monopolies? What???
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I’ve been reading Ars Technica for over 20 years now but that’s because I like their points, not because I write for them xd
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Yeah, I gathered as much while trying to figure out who that is :)
Who the fuck cares what’s with this constant desire to try and shit on steam
Because they tried competing and it didn’t work because they kept offering an inferior product, so they’re trying to weasel Steam out of the market
As for as storefronts go, which is what’s being talked about here, they are competing and winning. With a fraction of the employees other companies employ for storefront work. Origin (Rest Unpeacefully) and Uplay never stood a chance and epic has had plenty of time to market saturate. The company not being publicly traded doesn’t prevent competition, it prevents investor interests like quashing competition.
They meant the other companies tried competing and failed so they’re pushing these anti-valve lawsuits and articles.
Shit on? This is some baller ass shit – What is the rev per employee a billion dollars!!!
They’ve touted before that they may be the most profitable company per employee on earth. They make a few billion in profit per year with a payroll of a few hundred employees.
Must be – I can’t think of anyone else that could come close unless you count Berkshire Hathaway or something
I don’t know, there’s plenty of anti-Valve rhetoric on Lemmy. Plenty of people try to spin it as Valve having a low employee count because they have a lot of contractors. One guy was making a point that Valve employee count is much lower because they buy in AMD GPUs for the Steam Deck… As if Valve should buy chip manufacturing plants and design and manufacture their own GPUs.
Even here somewhere below (or maybe up later) in this thread someone said
Also, a company can pretend to have 10 employees if it instead hires 1000 contractors to do the actual work.
Which is an argument, if you can prove Valve is buying in 10 times the amount of contractors as they have employees for positions that should go to full-time employees. But I very much doubt such information exists.
I definitely didn’t interpret this as shitting on Steam. In fact, the opposite.
These numbers keep getting smaller with every headline. Tomorrow it says that Steam runs off of Gabens private NAS.
Because other articles cite about 350 (heh, inb4 three-fiddy) for the whole of Valve. This is just Steam.
Gaben isn’t actually one person. Gaben is a conglomerate.
Gaben is a state of mind
It’s the level beyond zen.
Is it like Negan from The Walking Dead? They’re all Gaben.
Failure of larger companies to make a competitive alternative to steam is not anticompetitive behavior on the part of Valve
Seems like a good example of how running a company for the shareholders doesn’t produce a a better product after all.
Precisely what the share holders don’t want people to know. They worship money and what the public to think more money = more good. If people realize these investor backed products are generally not anything better than someone can make in their garage they’ll stop buying overpriced junk. So here we are about to see how the sausage gets made.
shareholders … worship money
Well, that literally is the only reason to become a shareholder, right?
I mean, technically you’re participating in the management of the company and can influence decisions such as environmental benefits, but it feels like that only happens when there’s secondary benefits that also improve profit.
Product becomes the byproduct. Dividends and massive returns are the #1 priority.
B-b-b-bingo
The case seems like such a reach. At worst it’s an effective monopoly for devs, not consumers. Devs have a really hard time selling elsewhere.
That said, I love Steam and think it’s genuinely one of the best companies out there. And whilst it’s not great that they’re so big, they aren’t that big due to anti-competitive behaviour. It’s quite the opposite. You can add non-Steam games to your library and use Steam features. The fucking Steam deck isn’t locked down, and you can install non-Steam games. Just because Uplay wants to log me out every time I reboot doesn’t mean Steam should be sued.
There are so many other companies more deserving of the lawsuit
Nintendo for example
Had me in the first half ngl
80 people who are doing a bang-up job, i might add.
But Infinite growth!! How do you affirm the ability for a new CEO to make tough decisions without going on insane hiring sprees to show growth, and then firing those same people to cut corners and also show growth!? The economy needs blood!
Oh wait, they’re not publically traded? I thought only corner shops were allowed to stay off the market.
Okay, end savage stock market mockery.
There’s also such a thing as a blue chip stock.
That’s just a name we give to “a share of a well-known, profitable, and established company with a history of success”. I.e. “companies that experience constant and consistent growth”. That’s literally what OP is criticizing. They do the same things. Microsoft is a blue chip. You think they don’t have layoffs to appease shareholders? Google? Apple?
More along the lines of a Coca Cola.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
Downvotes don’t make me wrong.
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A lot of companies have been trying to sue them and are trying to tarnish their name in any way possible because their case is already shaky at best. The whole “monopoly” thing despite competition existing and Valve only being on top because they’re the best feature wise stuff.
And a lot of publishers already have their own launchers that dont need steam or use steam. Theyre just dogshit
Exactly. It’s hard to argue that Steam has a monopoly when the other launchers exist and suck. Steam, despite its flaws, is still the best storefront we have. Gabe is the person who taught us that piracy is largely a service problem, not a price problem. People will pay when the paid option is quality.
“Companies have too many employees!” cries the guy who will lose his job if all companies are run like Valve.
Them having few employees doesn’t prevent them from taking a 30% cut on all sales and making billions in profit and having a billionaire at their head, so are people expecting that if other companies were “trimming down some fat” it wouldn’t simply result in them making more profit because prices wouldn’t come down or something?
Also, a company can pretend to have 10 employees if it instead hires 1000 contractors to do the actual work.
Someone’s upset that they’re following their own successful business model.
I get that people don’t like wealthy people regardless, but Gabe is probably one of the few that’s actually not bad.
I don’t know where this contractor bullshit is coming from; if anything that should be aimed at Microsoft.
I don’t know where this contractor bullshit is coming from; if anything that should be aimed at Microsoft.
TBF, Valve does hire contractors to help work on Proton and Steam OS. I have no idea what the terms and compensation are, I’m just pointing out that they do hire contractors
There are no good billionaires, the reason they exist is because people like you and me are paying more for things than they’re truly worth, billionaires exist because of the surplus we pay.
“Companies have too many employees!” cries the guy who will lose his job if all companies are run like Valve.
Less wasting resources, good. Ah, you mean under capitalism.
Pretty amazing that years of effort from massive competitors like Epic and Microsoft haven’t managed to crack this. I wonder what they’re doing wrong?
(Ok I lied. I know exactly what they’re doing wrong and there’s zero chance of them changing.)
The Microsoft Store and how to redeem games is so mind-numbly stupid. GamePass wowed me with their library and the subscription service. But how they do everything, from DRMing their games in a absolute mindfuckery app folder, to locking it into your Microsoft account and ecosystem, was so frustrating. Modding? Eat a Microdick. Hell, save files don’t even transfer between Steam and Microsoft GamePass games because FUCK YOU PLAYERS.
I’m glad Steam was extremely proactive at moving off of Windows.
Well large corporations are at least 50% dead weight by volume, weighted overwhelmingly in management and at the executive level. So naturally it’s the ones doing all the ACTUAL work who get terminated whenever the line isn’t going up hard enough. Capitalism folks, it’s doomed us all and there’s no way we can fix it and those who could never will.
I genuinely can’t fathom why this number should be bigger. What am I supposed to take away from this knowledge? Far as I’m concerned, Valve is still a rare comparative good guy in the dense-packed field of bad guys in industry
Because we have been led to believe that the “titans” of industry are these super above average smart people. In reality it’s a bunch of nepo babies with no unique skills (other than, perhaps, a good education) which only copy each other.
After covid, all big IT companies started hiring like mad men… Then they all started firing people like crazy. They are driven more by speculation on their stock price and FOMO than any actual business strategy
Maybe in the distant pre-cloud past, when sysadmins were still a thing, you’d expect a bigger staff to be needed to manage a bigger datacenter.
But a few devs who know how to spin up a thing with auto-scaling can accomplish a lot
But a few devs who know how to spin up a thing with auto-scaling can accomplish a lot
This is true, but I still find it impressive that Valve has seemingly managed to find 80 all in one spot. My company can barely find one or two
All i read is “Damn, they’re a super capable team.”
Who probably tear ass around the office in camaros.
Bitchin’ Camaros!
That’s an insanely efficient machine.
Why is this getting posted so often?
Because Epic Games is really hoping to turn people against steam any way they can other than actually improving their service or morals.
And how… is this supposed to help that?
By making it seem that Steam is raking in money and uh, money bad?
This is so silly. Do people think hosting thousands of games and having thousands of users is cheap?
Millions* of users, I guarantee it isn’t cheap.
tbf, it’s likely significantly cheaper than the 30% margin. I still think it’s silly though
I honestly think it’s a badge of honor.
I worked in a company where we had 1000+ engineers on a SAAS platform for three years. And it barely has the same relevance or reach as Steam.
These “B-B-BUT STEAMS MONOPOLY CROWD” really do think we have stockholm/boot licker syndrome as if a good 60%+ of steam users didnt know how to Pirate games if we truly didnt like the service
Wasn’t there just a report from a few days ago that it was closer to 300?
The report says that Valve has ~350 employees total, and of those employees only 80 actually work on Steam as a storefront. The rest are working on their games and hardware.
So they have people working on their games? HL-3 confirmed!
They have other games in the works. I’m in the alpha or beta now? Of their overwatch like called deadlock.
That’s total employees at Valve. This is a subset of those that work on Steam.
It’s very impressive. Although it explains why the remote streaming and controller stuff is so GD buggy.
Theres probably like 3 guys total working on them. Maybe not even full-time.
I mean that’s awesome.
Ultimately they’re only responsible for the steam client and the servers.
