Comment on Valve runs its massive PC gaming ecosystem with only about 350 employees
cygnus@lemmy.ca 3 months agoGenuine 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.
I’m not sure what do you mean as moderation of store page.
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.
Wall 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?
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.
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?
None of these companies are comparable other than they’re also tech…
IDK, Spotify also starts with an S.
Hint: none of those companies need all of those employees.
These stats don't include subcontractors and as such they're very misleading. For example, who do you think produces the GPUs inside the steam deck? Hint: it's not Valve.
Why would Valve produce their own GPU’s?
My point being that while valve itself has only 350 employees, it subcontracts far more than that.
A better argument is who works on Proton compatibility? It’s largely not Valve employees, yet that’s a unique stack to Valve.
It annoys me too that Valve is getting most of the credit for Proton while most of the work is actually done in winehq, dxvk... I'm sure Valve pays for some development here and there, and greases some developer wheels, but the main thing does is be a front end for consumers.
EA is not video game company?
Yeah, netflix is though
nalinna@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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_wolf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
From 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.
Source
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.
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It didn’t work out
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capt_wolf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s a bummer, but also not entirely surprising when you consider Half-Life 3…
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 months ago
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?
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
If the alternative is making a half life 3 that people don’t have the passion for then imo it’s working.
Vilian@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
They never fully abandoned it tho
nalinna@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That is absolutely fascinating, kinda disappointing, and a really good find.
foxymulder@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
your 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
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 months ago
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.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
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.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Since 2012:
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.
drasglaf@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Remote Play Together is another big one for many, I’ve used it together with Retroarch, so much fun.
probableprotogen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Hell i use steam for proton and linux. It really makes gaming so much easier than other services
uis@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Proton and Steam Input are biggest. And while Proton is built on shoulders of giants(wine), Steam Input is something that didn’t exist.
Xer0@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
So what. It works fine for me.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 3 months ago
they take the whole company to hawaii most years iirc.