Court documents reveal Steam profit margins and Valve employee counts

Valve has always had a surprisingly small number of employees, especially if you compare them to other major industry players like Epic Games, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Take-Two and others. The company also has a policy that allows workers to move their desks between departments to join in on whatever projects most interest them. With that in mind, it may come as no surprise to learn that the Steam service is handled by less than 80 people. 

Valve is an oddity in the gaming market. It is a privately owned and operated company, so it doesn't publicly reveal its financials, nor does it take on outside investments. While the company started out as a game developer, shipping games like Half-Life and Counter-Strike, the company quickly became a dominant force in the PC gaming market when it launched Steam alongside Half-Life 2. Now, the Steam Store is the most-used PC games launcher and store, something that Wolfire Games has been taking issue with.

Back in 2021, Wolfire Games filed a lawsuit against Valve claiming the company engages in monopolistic and anti-competitive practices. Now, as part of that on-going case, new documents filed have revealed some interesting details about Valve's internal structure.

the wolfire v. valve case had a document published with request for redaction so it has a bunch of black boxes, but some data still remained under it like valves gross margins and commission for 2009-2021, and their employee counts and how much they pay them

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— Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) July 12, 2024

Despite being the big money maker, it is claimed that less than 80 employees were working on Steam in 2021. The document claims that Valve employed 336 people that year, 79 of which worked on the Steam platform, including positions for technical operations, management, security, networking, sales/purchasing and more.

At that time, the remainder of Valve's employees would have all been working on game projects, like the upcoming game, Deadlock, which appears to be something of a Team Fortress replacement. Prior to that, Valve's last major game release was Half-Life Alyx, which the majority of the company was working on during its final months of production. Aside from game dev and Steam teams, Valve also has its own hardware teams, with some working on future VR projects like the long-rumoured Valve Deckard headset, while others are working on the Steam Deck.

The documents also revealed Steam's profit margins between 2009 and 2021, showing that at its peak, Valve had Steam operating with an 80% gross margin. In 2021, that number had dipped to around 75%, and Valve's operating margins for Steam also tend to hover around the 50% mark. This confirms something we've all known for years – Valve makes a lot of money.

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KitGuru Says: Steam has very robust systems in place, managing to handle large amounts of traffic, fast download speeds and the store rarely ever faces outages even during peak sales periods. With such a solid foundation in place, Valve likely doesn't need hundreds of employees dedicated to it, which is something Epic Games could perhaps learn from as it tries to curb its own store's financial losses. 

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