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Valve makes almost $50 million per employee, raking in more cash per person than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft — gaming giant's 350 employees on track to generate $17 billion this year (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 95 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Did a little digging, apparently in a 2021 lawsuit, documents were released with bad redactions (they blacked out over the data, but the underlying information was still able to be highlighted and copied/pasted. Very common error when redacting PDFs)

I haven’t checked the data myself but according one user this was the breakdown:

“Total staff as of 2021: 336 people

Administration: 35 people making an average of 4.5 million a year

Game Developers: 181 people making an average of 1 million a year

Steam Developers: 79 people making an average of 960k a year

Hardware Developers: 41 people making average of 430k a year”

Normally I would guess that “average” here probably means a few people making a ton of money while others get shafted. But I think “admin” probably accounts for that. We have no official way of knowing the true breakdown since this info is not supposed to be public

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  • [–] 64 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    This actually seems like not a terrible spread. The average for the top earners is a little more than 10x the average for the lowest earners... Obviously outliers could be skewing that data (there could be one hardware developer making 30 million while the others work for poverty wages) but from the data we have, this isn't nearly as wide a gap as I would have expected.

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  • [–] 29 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Valve moved into hardware long after its other ventures, so it's not surprising the hardware devs make less -- they're newer. Still, $430k/yr is an enviable salary...

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago

    This was from 2021, so prior to the Steam Deck... that was really their break-out moment, I think, with regards to hardware. The Steam Link and Steam Controller were neat but didn't really capture their respective markets, and the Index was widely considered one of the best VR headsets on the market but that's a relatively small market, and it priced out all but the enthusiast tier consumers. The Steam Deck on the other hand had mass appeal and basically ushered in a golden age of handheld PC gaming... not to mention the immense hype around their recent hardware announcements. Could be that their hardware team is making more now.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    What does administration mean there? Like accounting, human resources and so? How could they make, in average, way more that developers??

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  • [–] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I'd think it's marketing teams, HR, managers, the C-suite.

    Those who manage people usually make more than those who dos tuff because they take on more responsibilities.

    Yeah I know that's bullshit and that they shift responsibilities all the time, but good managers do shoulder bullshit so workers can work.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago*

    I mean yeah and no. I manage a team, I make 10%-12% more than the team even though technically we do the same tasks. The difference is I need to know their job, but also manage a schedule, and allocate resources, while planning sales for the future stream so they don't run out of work. It's a different skillset on top of the team skill requirement.

    Not justifying a C suite at 20 million over dudes making 60k though

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