3 ms·

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 su

by Strom 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.
- aceazzameen 6mo ago
  Every studio uses a surprisingly large amount of contractors including Epic Games, Riot, etc.

by Strom 6mo ago

glenstein 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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.

aceazzameen 6mo ago
Every studio uses a surprisingly large amount of contractors including Epic Games, Riot, etc.