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What's fascinating to me are the Valve comparables here. <500 employees vs 18k at Xbox 17B ARR vs 20B ARR At the end of the day there are two strong differen
by jjcm 3mo ago
What's fascinating to me are the Valve comparables here.
<500 employees vs 18k at Xbox
17B ARR vs 20B ARR
At the end of the day there are two strong differences here. Valve has always been lead by people who were game devs, and have always conveyed a message that the gaming experience matters most. Xbox was led by Phil Spencer, who at least was known as being an avid gamer, but in his tenure pushed for things like xbox game pass to drive continual revenue and windows integrations that affected performance of games. Now it's being led by an industry outsider.
It boils down to trust in the end, and willingness to place profit over brand. If you look at the responses to this in r/xbox or other communities, it's overwhelmingly a stance of zero surprise. Xbox has always placed the business first, and this is the natural end of that mission - you get a bloated org with a platform that people don't end up trusting.
I do think resetting is the correct thing to do; there's no reason for Xbox to have 10k+ employees. Still it's another black mark against the brand. Also look at the framing of this message - it's about how their structure has affected the business. In this entire 47 sentence post, there is a single sentence that talks about the affect on the players:
> That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, and made it harder to deliver for players.
It says a lot when the players are the secondary consideration.
- mvdtnz 3mo agoValve doesn't make games. (within the margin of error).
- jjcm 3mo agoA non-trivial amount of their ARR is still from Valve-made games. Counterstrike still nets a bit over 1b per year from just case unboxings, and Dota is in the hundreds of millions. I wouldn't call 8-10% a margin of error.
- mvdtnz 3mo agoCounter Strike 2 is a 14 year old game. DOTA2 is a 13 year old game. Yes I know Valve makes money selling games. They don't make games.
- petu 3mo agoWhile it can be disregarded just as major update CS2 is formally 2023. Dota is live service game, getting major patches each year. Patch notes for version released 3 months ago: https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Version_7.41 https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Version_7.41 I don't think there's any reason for Dota 3, ever. Any change could be just a patch.
- Strom 3mo agoBoth of those games are live services games. They're not just getting some occasional bug fixes, they get big content updates.
- 3eb7988a1663 3mo agoThose are maintenance + loot box on existing games. Sure, it still takes art and craft, but not the same kind of development work.
- Rohansi 3mo agoValve is still working on new things. See this section, specifically the bottom. https://box2d.org/posts/2026/06/announcing-box3d/#valve-to-the-rescue https://box2d.org/posts/2026/06/announcing-box3d/#valve-to-t...
- mvdtnz 3mo agoSo not games.
- Rohansi 3mo agoTry reading between the lines. Why would Valve be developing a new game physics engine internally?
- mvdtnz 3mo agoValve switched existing games to Rubikon to avoid paying licensing fees for their former physics engine.
- Rohansi 3mo agoYes but it's not just Rubikon anymore. They are working on a new physics engine called Ragnarok. I highly doubt they're making a whole new physics engine just for their existing games because Rubikon is working fine there.
- qiine 3mo ago"Valve rarely releases games" would be more accurate
- mvdtnz 3mo agoIs it your theory that they are making games and not releasing them? Because I have doubts about that. A company that isn't releasing games isn't making games.