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Epic Games does way more than just purely making games. They also have their own Steam competitor (Epic Games Store) and, more importantly, they develop and su

• daedrdev 7mo ago
  Epic games store is likely a main culprit as they really have not succeeded while spending tons for free games Mihoyo literally prints money with predatory gacha Riot has had several layoffs in recent years Roblox loses tons of money every year
• cubefox 7mo ago
  The game store doesn't need a lot of employees. A few years ago it was reported that Valve only needed about 70 employees to run Steam while it generated billions of dollars in Steam fees (30% per game). It's basically free money for Valve. I bet the situation is similar for the AppStore and Google Play. Though Unreal Engine does indeed need quite a few developers. Additionally, using UE is much cheaper (5% on games exceeding 1 milion USD gross revenue) than using Steam (30% on every game). So they not only need more developers than Valve, they also earn less money.
  • derektank 7mo ago
    Steam doesn’t really attempt to gatekeep submitted content the same way that Apple or Google do so I would expect those companies to have much larger teams supporting, in mostly non-development roles. Steam support has also historically been kind of a joke (not sure if it’s improved in the last 5 years) though I don’t know if Google/Apple provide a better experience
  • mxfh 7mo ago
    You know what contractors are?!
    • cubefox 7mo ago
      Yes. Do you have any evidence they use contractors for Steam?
      • mxfh 7mo ago
        Can you do basic math on the number of support tickets Valve is handling to answer that question for yourself? if not: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=113#:~:text=They%20further%20engage%20with%20external%20support%20partners%20to%20ensure%20users%20get%20the%20best%20experience%20when%20contacting%20support. https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=113#:~:text=The...
        • cubefox 7mo ago
          > Can you do basic math on the number of support tickets Valve is handling to answer that question for yourself? Can you? Do you even know that number?
• Strom 7mo ago
  What about Valve itself? They have ~350 employees. They make Steam, SteamOS, Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, the Source engine, and run four actively successful live service games: CS2, Dota2, TF2, Deadlock.
  • glenstein 7mo ago
    The small size of Valve is simultaneously mind boggling but also not, given its very intentional independence. I would have to imagine that they must contract out or have partners at least for their hardware relationships if not for their massively multiplayer online games. At just 350 people that's enough annual revenue to make everyone there a millionaire several times over. Simultaneously plausible but mind boggling.
    • _345 7mo ago
      They contract out all the time, they've admitted to it in lots of interviews. So I think through the amount of contracting they're able to keep their core hires down.
    • bsimpson 7mo ago
      It's well-known that most of the work on SteamOS is done by vendors on behalf of Valve (both individual kernel authors and agencies like Igalia).
  • Herbstluft 7mo ago
    Yeah but Valve is not publicly traded, so that comparison is of course totally unfair! /s Having skilled and happy employees that aren't constantly changing and do not spend all of their time on ways to fuck over customers and chase trends is simply impossible. Releasing a piece of hardware and leaving it open for customers to do with what they want? Linux? Not hiring people the second line goes up and then immediately firing them when line stagnates? Preposterous.
  • KaiMagnus 7mo ago
    Last I've heard Valve makes use of a lot of contractors however. So the number of people working on their projects is a bit higher than their employee count suggests. Anyone's guess how many though. I know they're sponsoring a bunch of ARM and Linux projects as well.