Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs
Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs
Small company, huge influence.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
As spotted by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, some data in the document was viewable despite the black redaction boxes, including Valve’s headcount and gross pay across various parts of the company over 18 years, and even some data about its gross margins that we weren’t able to uncover fully.
The data breaks Valve employees into four different groups: “Admin,” “Games,” “Steam,” and, starting in 2011, “Hardware.”
If you want to sift through the numbers yourself, I’ve included a full table of the data, sorted by year and category, at the end of this story.
In November 2023, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais told The Verge that he thinks “we’re firmly in the camp of being a full fledged hardware company by now.”
The small number of staff across the board seemingly explains why Valve’s product list is so limited despite its immense business as basically the de facto PC gaming platform.
While we haven’t seen any leaked profit numbers from this new headcount and payroll data, the figures give a more detailed picture of how much Valve is spending on its staff — which, given the massive popularity of Steam, is probably still just a fraction of the money the company is pulling in.
The original article contains 620 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Im struggling to convince myself if I should read the article and see if some actual numbers were ever mentioned.
There's an entire table on there.
The total number is even in the first paragraph. Not the best summary I’ve ever seen.
Valve employee data, 2003 - 2021 Year Category [Presumably: Gross pay] [Presumably: Number of employees] 2003 Admin $454,142 5 2004 Admin $548,833 8 2005 Admin $11,644,172 9 2006 Admin $7,905,166 11 2007 Admin $1,997,107 12 2008 Admin $19,519,296 14 2009 Admin $20,300,752 18 2010 Admin $34,754,590 19 2011 Admin $35,216,732 22 2012 Admin $68,925,186 24 2013 Admin $48,462,690 20 2014 Admin $90,406,510 23 2015 Admin $91,496,697 24 2016 Admin $95,444,499 35 2017 Admin $83,146,640 38 2018 Admin $103,479,550 39 2019 Admin $109,720,296 39 2020 Admin $118,435,121 39 2021 Admin $157,999,567 35 2003 Games $3,933,064 57 2004 Games $4,471,342 61 2005 Games $18,122,549 81 2006 Games $17,260,260 97 2007 Games $12,768,984 100 2008 Games $39,677,549 136 2009 Games $44,076,164 148 2010 Games $66,201,302 173 2011 Games $68,173,834 175 2012 Games $135,484,323 186 2013 Games $107,654,658 188 2014 Games $152,351,554 185 2015 Games $181,769,451 160 2016 Games $174,660,830 175 2017 Games $221,488,403 184 2018 Games $216,249,204 192 2019 Games $236,798,782 201 2020 Games $199,306,798 189 2021 Games $192,355,985 181 2003 Steam $1,038,091 16 2004 Steam $1,113,136 16 2005 Steam $2,840,825 23 2006 Steam $3,424,485 29 2007 Steam $3,128,634 34 2008 Steam $5,053,283 40 2009 Steam $7,339,922 51 2010 Steam $17,732,609 60 2011 Steam $16,369,045 101 2012 Steam $42,966,257 127 2013 Steam $44,515,505 128 2014 Steam $52,338,579 119 2015 Steam $72,391,837 142 2016 Steam $56,390,975 125 2017 Steam $64,945,395 102 2018 Steam $70,814,165 82 2019 Steam $66,481,253 80 2020 Steam $71,752,682 82 2021 Steam $76,446,633 79 2011 Hardware $2,252,828 7 2012 Hardware $3,460,641 14 2013 Hardware $5,369,203 20 2014 Hardware $10,180,424 27 2015 Hardware $12,396,140 27 2016 Hardware $11,001,217 36 2017 Hardware $16,724,365 39 2018 Hardware $19,578,951 47 2019 Hardware $15,831,572 47 2020 Hardware $12,008,996 31 2021 Hardware $17,706,376 41
needed some formatting:
Valve employee data, 2003 - 2021
Year Category [Presumably: Gross pay] [Presumably: Number of employees]
2003 Admin $454,142 5
2004 Admin $548,833 8
2005 Admin $11,644,172 9
2006 Admin $7,905,166 11
2007 Admin $1,997,107 12
2008 Admin $19,519,296 14
2009 Admin $20,300,752 18
2010 Admin $34,754,590 19
2011 Admin $35,216,732 22
2012 Admin $68,925,186 24
2013 Admin $48,462,690 20
2014 Admin $90,406,510 23
2015 Admin $91,496,697 24
2016 Admin $95,444,499 35
2017 Admin $83,146,640 38
2018 Admin $103,479,550 39
2019 Admin $109,720,296 39
2020 Admin $118,435,121 39
2021 Admin $157,999,567 35.
2003 Games $3,933,064 57
2004 Games $4,471,342 61
2005 Games $18,122,549 81
2006 Games $17,260,260 97
2007 Games $12,768,984 100
2008 Games $39,677,549 136
2009 Games $44,076,164 148
2010 Games $66,201,302 173
2011 Games $68,173,834 175
2012 Games $135,484,323 186
2013 Games $107,654,658 188
2014 Games $152,351,554 185
2015 Games $181,769,451 160
2016 Games $174,660,830 175
2017 Games $221,488,403 184
2018 Games $216,249,204 192
2019 Games $236,798,782 201
2020 Games $199,306,798 189
2021 Games $192,355,985 181.
2003 Steam $1,038,091 16
2004 Steam $1,113,136 16
2005 Steam $2,840,825 23
2006 Steam $3,424,485 29
2007 Steam $3,128,634 34
2008 Steam $5,053,283 40
2009 Steam $7,339,922 51
2010 Steam $17,732,609 60
2011 Steam $16,369,045 101
2012 Steam $42,966,257 127
2013 Steam $44,515,505 128
2014 Steam $52,338,579 119
2015 Steam $72,391,837 142
2016 Steam $56,390,975 125
2017 Steam $64,945,395 102
2018 Steam $70,814,165 82
2019 Steam $66,481,253 80
2020 Steam $71,752,682 82
2021 Steam $76,446,633 79.
2011 Hardware $2,252,828 7
2012 Hardware $3,460,641 14
2013 Hardware $5,369,203 20
2014 Hardware $10,180,424 27
2015 Hardware $12,396,140 27
2016 Hardware $11,001,217 36
2017 Hardware $16,724,365 39
2018 Hardware $19,578,951 47
2019 Hardware $15,831,572 47
2020 Hardware $12,008,996 31
2021 Hardware $17,706,376 41
There are no actual numbers. There are gross payroll numbers and number of employees per high level department, but no indication of how that's distributed or if it includes things like benefits. Basically useless info in a vacuum
"Hardware,” to my surprise, has been a relatively small part of the company, with just 41 employees paid a gross of more than $17 million in 2021
That's the only one I saw that meant anything that useful. They have ~10x that for game development but no indication of number of people there, and 79 people working on Steam.
Number of employees working on games is in the list at the bottom of the article. 181 as of 2021.