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Valve runs its massive PC gaming ecosystem with only about 350 employees
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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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.
Twitter runs a single web application.
They also do make games.
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.
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/cant play
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.
Lemmy just seems to dislike anything remotely bad being said about them, it’s odd.
The screenshot sounds more like "peak anarchism" to me.
Well, ancaps do exist...
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.
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
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.
I’d personally take that over being forced to work on something like ‘The Dragonfly Project (Google).’ Most company cultures are so focused around ensuring a high return for the investors that employee happiness and morals seem like an afterthought. It was nice reading about a company letting their employees do what they love rather than micromanaging them.
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.
I'm not sure what do you mean as moderation of store page.
They make the information on the store page, they moderate the forums, guides and workshop.
What does steam moderate themselves?
At least some progress. How information on the store page steam would add without developer? How would steam know title of game, price and other stuff without developer telling it.
Reviews and refunds.
What?
They log in, provide the Information to the system, the system automatically processes it and posts it. You think there’s a person manually doing this task or something?
Reviews of what? And 99% of refunds are automated since people use it as a free game testing service, the 2 hour window.
Most of steam is automated dude, you don’t seriously think they are manually adding all this information with a keyboard from a mailed package or something do you?
Who they? Robots? Nvidia's AI?
Of games, lol. We are talking about steam, did you forget already?
Users review the games and they also tag the store as well…? What are you going on about here?
Answering your own question "What does steam moderate themselves?", did you forget already?
DOTA and CS beg to differ. Spotify is a "storefront" that produces nothing but has about 25x more employees.
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…?
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…
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?
You sure like posting that screenshot, don't you?
Well people are claiming valve is making loads of games and don’t have issues with their structure. So I’m providing evidence to counter these clearly wrong opinions. Isn’t that what you do? Support your claims with evidence instead of screaming and yelling like the other users are doing and provide nothing meaningful to the conversation…?
Do you guys not like proof to show that you are wrong or something? I get it valve is being bashed and you don’t like it, so why is everyone derailing conversations about the topic…? People can’t discuss stuff that you don’t like or something….?
Hey, you do you. I just want to give you the feedback that when you repeatedly post something as blatant as a full page screenshot, it really stands out, especially on mobile. It might give off some fanatical vibes (in the original sense of the word).
Do with that what you will.
How do you think Spotify works?
It would seem they pay more employees than contractors, that’s why their employee count is higher.
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.
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?
You say this a lot, but can you explain what this means?
?? The developers control the store pages, what needs to explained more? Go to the store, see what pages are linked there, those are the pages they are responsible to curate and moderate.
It’s an all automated system, you don’t think there’s a steam employee typing it all in or something do you? This have low staff numbers since it’s hella automated and contracted out.
All that says is that if you give people choice, they might chose not to make games in today’s market, that’s not bad imo. It’s possible that building new games isn’t what the world needs right now.
It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done, games, updates, bug fixing, there wasn’t anyone to say hey, we need 5 guys to get this done. It’s nah I want to add hats to this game, but the griefers ruining this one isn’t important to me.
Its always interesting to see the rose coloured glasses spin on this own admitted failure.
I guess that’s where me and you would differ. Though they didn’t put out half life 3, imo valve has contributed more to my gaming experience than any other company and BY FAR.
So if this is things not getting done, I only want more of this.
Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes, so you guys disagree that valve has made my life better?
That is exactly the point of post. You don't need tenns of thousands of people to run some servers.
You do need employees and valve contracts them instead of hiring directly.
This is the detail people are missing or ignoring in their circle jerk of valve here.
Then I will repeat YOUR question:
??