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original_reader ,

How many times has this been posted now? Genuine question: why is this such a big deal?

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

Genuine 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

SchmidtGenetics , (edited )

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 done by a couple dozen engineers and contract everything else.

Like how many employees should they have?

Okay I shouldn’t have taken a shot at their game making ability, but it legit fucking sucks and they acknowledge it, people bash them for it sometimes, take it easy guys.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c32a0d10-a1c3-47d9-addb-1bf60cfd295d.jpeg

lmaydev ,

Twitter runs a single web application.

They also do make games.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Isn’t most of steam pages like the discussion, store page, forums, guides, workshop etc are self moderated by the publishers and developers?

And yeah they made Alyx in the last decade? They make hats for old games, that’s it it seems.

Dudewitbow ,

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.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Nah, their corporate structure legit caused them issues making games, people like to think valve as this perfect company, but it’s hella flawed and it’s peak capitalism too.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/114610a6-1fce-4848-9e1d-0aa02621fc8c.jpeg

Lemmy just seems to dislike anything remotely bad being said about them, it’s odd.

lmaydev ,

Letting your employees work on what they like doesn’t seem like the worst thing. It might hurt game profits but seems much nicer for the workers.

SchmidtGenetics ,

It is, but when nothing being done, no goals are being met, it would seem like a dead end job. Sure the pay is great, but you are just spinning wheels.

It also builds distrust in your fans, there’s literally memes about valve not counting to 3.

Dudewitbow ,

im not a steam stan for any reason (i rarely even buy shit off the steam store directly) but its disingenuous to say they dont make games. Id argue peak capitalism is when you force a sequel to a game that didnt necessarily need it. there are a LOT of things I can conplain about when pertaining to valve, but not making games isnt one of them. its a poor argument to make when users choose not to play what they dod make.

Its similar to Fallout and Elder Scrolls, its not that there ISNT a new fallout or elder scrolls game, its just they made ones that users mostly didnt want to play (ESO, FO:Shelter, FO:76, ES: Blades, ES: Castles) disregarding the also existing VR versions of each game.

the argument sounds very similar to thise currently complaining on the Nintendo front that Famicom Detective Club got a new game, and not other nintendo IPs like Star Fox (which had Zero, Guard and Starfox 2) in the last decade, and Fzero (which had Fzero 99). its never a matter of they didnt make games, its the matter that they didnt make games they wanted

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

it’s peak capitalism too.

The screenshot sounds more like “peak anarchism” to me.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Sure, but it’s capitalist because Newall takes advantage of it and reaps the benefits, the employees get burnt out and get no satisfaction since nothing ever gets completed.

Think higher up the chain maybe? I don’t see how this is even arguable, but go off if you think you need to win something here.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

They don’t make games

DOTA and CS beg to differ. Spotify is a “storefront” that produces nothing but has about 25x more employees.

SchmidtGenetics ,

And valve contracts out or has the developers and publishers self moderate their own pages on Steam instead. Why is this shocking? Because a company contracts out instead of employing people and has their customers do stuff for free…?

Album ,
@Album@lemmy.ca avatar

How do you think Spotify works?

SchmidtGenetics ,

It would seem they pay more employees than contractors, that’s why their employee count is higher.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

Dude, just take the L and move on.

SchmidtGenetics ,

How does a discussion have a loser? I was adding how valve has such a low employee account since it apparently wasn’t clear to anyone currently in the discussion.

Take offense that they legit have issues publishing any games due to their corporate structure…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/cb692e0c-137a-4bf6-9226-d3f4ee3388a8.png

But I was only adding to the discussion, why do you need to “win”? They have their customers moderate their store pages and they contract out employees instead. Can you provide polite discourse to this topic without being an ass or no?

jqubed ,
@jqubed@lemmy.world avatar

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.

SchmidtGenetics ,

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?

nalinna ,

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 ,
@capt_wolf@lemmy.world avatar

From what I understand, they basically have a very open work structure. People are free to work on 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 ,

It didn’t work out

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2218337b-1569-488d-b27f-622ca9593d6b.jpeg

capt_wolf ,
@capt_wolf@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a bummer, but also not entirely surprising when you consider Half-Life 3…

SchmidtGenetics , (edited )

Yeah it’s great to think letting your employees do what they want is good, which it is, but yeah everyone’s going to have their own idea and want to work on it. So who gets funding, etc.

It’s strange the person said they move fast, that’s not something I’ve ever heard in reference to steam/valve before, and so many upvotes? What’s going on here.

HobbitFoot ,

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?

SchmidtGenetics ,

Do they? They have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now so how is that even remotely true?

It’s like people bury their heads and ignore everything bad about steam/valve.

Steam/valve/new all seems to have this weird thing on lemmy, every other billionaire is cancer, but all hail GabeN, can’t have a discussion about anything here it seems without it getting derailed by people with rose glasses on.

scarabic ,

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 faster than a canoe. 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.

maxinstuff ,
@maxinstuff@lemmy.world avatar

Hint: none of those companies need all of those employees.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Slow Newsweek for gaming, I guess. They have had a public employee directory on their website for as long as I can remember; it’s not really news.

CosmoNova ,

Economists are praising it‘s efficiency but there are massive shortcomings when it comes to costumer support. A couple years ago I was told they have a whopping single person dedicated to matters in the german market for example. Anyone who has any idea about the german bureaucracy hellscape knows this is far from sufficient to deal with any issue whatsoever. And I suspect it‘s not running much smoother elsewhere.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Anyone who has any idea about the german bureaucracy hellscape knows this is far from sufficient to deal with any issue whatsoever.

Maybe that’s contractable.

CosmoNova ,

Does that matter when the bottleneck is this tiny? A single employee would have to contract, stay in contact and approve whatever they outsource. And going by some quirks with the german side of the store their usual response seems to be simply blocking german IPs from accessing whatever may cause extra bureaucratic work for them.

chemicalwonka ,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

the manager:

1000020184

syd ,
@syd@lemy.lol avatar

Is this why they suck with CS2?

Qkall ,
@Qkall@lemmy.ml avatar

laughs, then immediately weeps in tf2

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

Watch the heavy update will drop any second now!

Annnyyyy second now…

Grimy ,

8500 million in revenue and 350 employees.

Gaben owns 6 yatchs and spends 70 to 100 million maintaining them.

There is absolutely nothing that differentiates valve from the other stores front to justify this. The whole store front industry should be tightly regulated. No billionaire should exist and if you find yourself defending one, it just means they have a good marketing team.

This is having a negative impact on the industry and the only ones benefiting are Gaben, Nintendo, Microsoft, Epic, etc. it’s clear collusion.

Can’t wait for all the downvotes and simps coming to defend him because “Gaben isn’t your average billionaire”.

glimse ,

There is absolutely nothing that differentiates valve from the other stores front to justify this.

The “justification” is that Steam is a good storefront and others kind of blows. There’s nothing stopping other companies from making good software…they just haven’t.

it’s clear collusion.

That’s not what collusion is… Steam doesn’t sell Nintendo games and is Epic/Microsoft’s rival.

Can’t wait for all the downvotes and simps coming to defend him

To be clear, I’m not defending billionaires. Your talking points are just kind of baseless.

Beaver OP ,
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

Please cite a source for your claims

phoneymouse ,

That’s why steam looks outdated

TimeSquirrel ,
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Counterpoint: Every other modern "flat" UI is low effort, cheap garbage. Bring back the bezels and shadows.

glimse ,

The fact that Steam acts like website and not an “app” is amazing. I want to be able to right click, copy and paste, and see the address bar of what I’m looking at.

It’s a great example of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” - Steam updates usually make the software better

flamingos ,
@flamingos@feddit.uk avatar

This number doesn’t seem to include support staff who iirc are contract workers so might not count as “employees”.

dan1101 ,

Work smart not hard.

garretble ,
@garretble@lemmy.world avatar

Gabe owns so many yachts.

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