Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs

Valve is simply a famously secretive institution with an tremendous power connected the gaming industry, peculiarly due to the fact that it runs the monolithic PC gaming storefront Steam. But contempt that influence, Valve isn’t a ample enactment connected par with EA oregon Riot Games’ thousands of employees: according to leaked information we’ve seen, arsenic of 2021, Valve employed conscionable 336 staffers.

The information was included arsenic portion of an different heavy redacted papers from Wolfire’s antitrust suit against Valve. As spotted by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, immoderate information successful the papers was viewable contempt the achromatic redaction boxes, including Valve’s headcount and gross wage crossed assorted parts of the institution implicit 18 years, and adjacent immoderate information astir its gross margins that we weren’t capable to uncover fully.

The worker information starts with 2003, which is simply a fewer years aft Valve’s 1996 founding and the aforesaid twelvemonth Valve launched Steam, and goes each the mode up until 2021. The information breaks Valve employees into 4 antithetic groups: “Admin,” “Games,” “Steam,” and, starting successful 2011, “Hardware.”

If you privation to sift done the numbers yourself, I’ve included a afloat array of the data, sorted by twelvemonth and category, astatine the extremity of this story.

One information constituent I recovered interesting: Valve peaked with its “Games” payroll spending successful 2017 astatine $221 cardinal (the institution didn’t merchandise immoderate caller games that year, but that spending could person gone toward supporting games similar Dota 2 and processing caller games similar Artifact); by 2021, that was down to $192 million. Another: arsenic of 2021, Valve employed conscionable 79 radical for Steam, which is 1 of the astir influential gaming storefronts connected the planet.

“Hardware,” to my surprise, has been a comparatively tiny portion of the company, with conscionable 41 employees paid a gross of much than $17 cardinal successful 2021. But I’m guessing Valve present employs much hardware-focused staffers pursuing the runaway occurrence of the Steam Deck. In November 2023, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais told The Verge that helium thinks “we’re firmly successful the campy of being a afloat fledged hardware institution by now.”

The tiny fig of unit crossed the committee seemingly explains wherefore Valve’s merchandise database is truthful constricted contempt its immense business arsenic fundamentally the de facto PC gaming platform. It’s had to get assistance connected hardware and software and has worked with different companies to person them physique Steam boxes and controllers. (The company’s flat structure whitethorn person thing to bash with it, too.)

Valve’s tiny unit is besides thing that’s been a sticking constituent for Wolfire. When it filed its suit successful 2021, Wolfire alleged that Valve “...devotes a miniscule percent of its gross to maintaining and improving the Steam Store.” Valve, arsenic a backstage company, doesn’t person to stock its headcount oregon financials, but Wolfire estimated that Valve had astir 360 employees (a fig apt sourced from Valve itself successful 2016) and that per-employee nett was astir $15 cardinal per year.

Even if that $15 cardinal fig isn’t precisely right, Valve, successful its public worker handbook, says that “our profitability per worker is higher than that of Google oregon Amazon oregon Microsoft.” A papers from the Wolfire suit revealed Valve employees discussing conscionable however overmuch higher — though the circumstantial fig for Valve employees is redacted.

While we haven’t seen immoderate leaked nett numbers from this caller headcount and payroll data, the figures springiness a much elaborate representation of however overmuch Valve is spending connected its unit — which, fixed the monolithic popularity of Steam, is astir apt inactive conscionable a fraction of the wealth the institution is pulling in.

Valve didn’t instantly reply to a petition for comment. After we reached out, the tribunal pulled the papers from the docket.

Sean Hollister contributed reporting.