Valve: Salary data published by mistake
An unredacted court document apparently shows how much Valve spends on one employee. However, the figures should not be taken at face value.
A court has inadvertently published unredacted documents relating to Valve.
(Image: Rokas Tenys/Shutterstock.com)
Valve apparently spent 190 million US dollars on its games division in 2021. According to media reports, this at least emerges from an unredacted court document, which has since been deleted. According to the document, Valve only had 336 employees in 2021.
The US tech magazine The Verge has compiled figures from the document in a table that apparently show salary expenditure and the number of employees. They should be treated with caution for several reasons: for example, it is unclear where the data comes from in the first place. The court document originates from the legal dispute between Valve and Wolfire Games, which accused the Steam developer of monopolistic practices. However, it is not known whether the figures are Valve's or Wolfire's estimates – and how well-founded these estimates are.
It is difficult to calculate the salaries of individual people because the individual areas of work could also include senior employees. In the "Administration" area, which is likely to describe the administration here, 186 million US dollars were distributed among 35 employees in 2021 – but the range of individual salaries is likely to vary widely. The figures presented are also likely to show the costs for the company, which are usually significantly higher than the actual salaries.
Most employees play games
The figures, if they are correct at all, are more meaningful for Valve's organizational structure. They are divided into four categories: Admin, Games, Steam and Hardware. According to the most recent data, the games department had the most employees in 2021 with 181 employees.
In contrast, only 79 employees worked in the "Steam" division. The gaming platform is the most important source of income for the US company, which retains up to 30 percent commission for content sold on Steam. According to the document, the hardware department was quite small in 2021 with 41 employees. In particular, the number of hardware employees declined slightly – in 2019 there were still 47 employees. At that time, Valve launched the VR headset Index. The hardware department is also likely to include the development of the Steam Deck.
Read also
Overall, according to the figures, Valve was a surprisingly small company, at least in 2021, with fewer employees than many developer studios. The Belgian Larian Studios has around 470 employees, Epic Games over 4000.
(dahe)