• Einar@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    How many times has this been posted now? Genuine question: why is this such a big deal?

    • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      Genuine question: why is this such a big deal?

      These are not all video game companies, but for reference:

      AMD: 26,000 employees
      EA: 14,000
      Facebook: 84,000
      Netflix: 11,000
      Spotify: 9,000
      Twitter: 7,500

      • nalinna@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Yep. But it also seems like people are so shocked by the data that maybe they’re missing the moral of this story, too? …sure it’s impressive that Valve has done so much with such a small workforce, but I think the reason they’ve been able to move so quickly is because they have such a small workforce. Companies get slow because they get big…I don’t care how much you tout your SAFe processes; you will always lose efficiency as you grow. It’s the difference between steering a canoe vs a cruise ship…the more you grow, the more you have to fight against momentum. So, my takeaway from this is that they figured out the secret to continued success as a maturing company, and good for them.

        Now, I say all of this with sincere hopes that they don’t work their smaller number of employees to death and ask them to take on inappropriately burdensome workloads. Because if that’s the case, they should fuck right off with the rest of their peers.

        • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          From what I understand, they basically have a very open work structure. People are free to work on what they want, when they want. They actually are against high workloads and do everything they can to prevent employee burnout.

          Source

          I can’t say if that extends beyond the development teams to other departments like server management, but everything I’ve ever seen about them says they’re all just in it to have fun, make cool shit now and then, and of course make tons of money. The fact that their sales platform basically just prints money helps support that culture, obviously.

            • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              That’s a bummer, but also not entirely surprising when you consider Half-Life 3…

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Yeah it’s great to think letting your employees do what they want is good, which it is, but yeah everyone’s going to have their own idea and want to work on it. So who gets funding, etc.

                It’s strange the person said they move fast, that’s not something I’ve ever heard in reference to steam/valve before, and so many upvotes? What’s going on here.

            • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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              4 months ago

              I think it speaks to developing for gaming over developing for infrastructure. What does it say about gaming where, a company that has a healthy attitude about work in general, has staff that prefer to work on addressing Steam bugs over working on a prestige game?

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Do they? They have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now so how is that even remotely true? And I’m sure their employees would rather build something new than to keep fixing old stuff, who wants that? That’s a pretty weird claim to say people prefer.

                It’s like people bury their heads and ignore everything bad about steam/valve.

                Steam/valve/newall seems to have this weird thing on lemmy, every other billionaire is cancer, but all hail GabeN, can’t have a discussion about anything here it seems without it getting derailed by people with rose glasses on.

                And did you read anything posted? What’s “healty” about anything from my screen grab?

                • uis@lemm.ee
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                  4 months ago

                  They have some pretty buggy and downright unplayable games due to griefers for years now so how is that even remotely true?

                  TF2 got bot-free recently. Let’s see how it lasts.

            • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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              4 months ago

              If the alternative is making a half life 3 that people don’t have the passion for then imo it’s working.

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Or there’s not enough people with passion, since their passion is hats, or the higher ups have their preferred people they give funding too, part of the linked articles mention this stuff.

                • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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                  4 months ago

                  I don’t want forced passion. If an artists doesn’t want to create, they shouldn’t be forced.

                  So is game making an art form, I think so.

                  • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    Great, than do that somewhere else and someone else can take their place and do their art under structure.

                    Who said forcing? Some people just want to draw, while others do only want to draw hats. If you only want to draw hats and we need someone who will draw something else, and there’s 30 of them, yeah that’s an issue dude.

                    Valve admitted it didn’t work, it’s weird the length people go to defend it.

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          4 months ago

          This is such a simple idea that people seem incapable of understanding

          Big companies can’t innovate. They’re pulled in too many directions and create bureaucracies that stifle the individuality needed to push beyond known techniques. At best, they can iterate and imitate - and even that is very hit or miss

          There’s this idea companies must grow or die - but in reality, companies grow until they can only perpetuate themselves. They start to only make sense on paper

          Individuals drive progress - they need time and autonomy

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Your point about agility is valid but Valve hasn’t veered and pivoted their way to success. Their core model and service have stayed pretty consistent for many years now. And while a cruise ship can’t steer quickly, it can move a hell of a lot more people much faster than a canoe. They are just getting a lot done with very few people and it’s 100% worth of remark. I’d love to hear more about how they do it.

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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          4 months ago

          Valve has done so much ?

          Steam hasn’t been improved since 2012.

          They’re clearly coasting.

          They’re keeping their keeping the 30% cut and running away with it instead of hire people to fix stuff.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Since 2012:

            • Linux support - I joined around 2013 because of that
            • Proton - massive Linux compatibility upgrade
            • Steam Input - along with big picture mode and whatnot
            • SteamVR
            • hidden games
            • cart improvements
            • mobile app improvements, along with MFA
            • collections

            That’s just what I remember off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more that I just don’t care about.

            • Drasglaf@sh.itjust.works
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              4 months ago

              Remote Play Together is another big one for many, I’ve used it together with Retroarch, so much fun.

            • uis@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              Proton and Steam Input are biggest. And while Proton is built on shoulders of giants(wine), Steam Input is something that didn’t exist.

      • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        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.

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            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.

            • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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              4 months ago

              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

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                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.

                • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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                  4 months ago

                  it’s peak capitalism too.

                  The screenshot sounds more like “peak anarchism” to me.

                  • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    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.

                • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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                  4 months ago

                  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

                • lmaydev@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  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.

                  • Dr. Arun Wadhwa@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    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.

                  • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    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.

            • uis@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I’m not sure what do you mean as moderation of store page.

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                They make the information on the store page, they moderate the forums, guides and workshop.

                What does steam moderate themselves?

                • uis@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  They make the information on the store page

                  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.

                  What does steam moderate themselves?

                  Reviews and refunds.

                  • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    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.

                    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?

        • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          They don’t make games

          DOTA and CS beg to differ. Spotify is a “storefront” that produces nothing but has about 25x more employees.

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            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…?

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                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?

                  • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                    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….?

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                It would seem they pay more employees than contractors, that’s why their employee count is higher.

        • jqubed@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          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.

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            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?

            • uis@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Most of the store front is moderated by the publishers and developers,

              You say this a lot, but can you explain what this means?

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                ?? 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.

        • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          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.

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            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.

            • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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              4 months ago

              It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done,

              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?

        • uis@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Like how many people does it take to run some servers?

          That is exactly the point of post. You don’t need tenns of thousands of people to run some servers.

      • suction@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        None of these companies are comparable other than they’re also tech…

        • imecth@fedia.io
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          4 months ago

          These stats don’t include subcontractors and as such they’re very misleading. For example, who do you think produces the GPUs inside the steam deck? Hint: it’s not Valve.

            • imecth@fedia.io
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              4 months ago

              It annoys me too that Valve is getting most of the credit for Proton while most of the work is actually done in winehq, dxvk… I’m sure Valve pays for some development here and there, and greases some developer wheels, but the main thing they do is being a front end for consumers.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                4 months ago

                I think you’re discounting just how much they’ve invested and continue to invest in Proton/WINE. But they don’t do lion’s share of the development in-house, they mostly just pay devs to work on it, and yes, manage the FE in Steam. They’re still a massive positive force for change in Windows game compatibility on Linux, and we’d be nowhere near where we are today without their investment.

                • imecth@fedia.io
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                  I think you’re discounting just how much they’ve invested and continue to invest in Proton/WINE

                  I’m not really sure I am… Do we have some actual numbers into how much money they’ve sunk in linux?
                  Gaming on linux is a huge community effort, whether it’s wine, dxvk, vkd3d, mesa, linux itself… and plenty of smaller projects like lutris, bottles, UMU… And all this spans literal decades, far before valve ever got involved.

                  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                    4 months ago

                    AFAIK no, and we probably never will. But we do have glimpses into it, such as this article saying Valve directly paid >100 devs to work on Linux compat:

                    Griffais says the company is also directly paying more than 100 open-source developers to work on the Proton compatibility layer, the Mesa graphics driver, and Vulkan, among other tasks like Steam for Linux and Chromebooks.

                    I would imagine they still pay outside, open source devs to work on those initiatives, though maybe not as many since they’ve gotten past the initial push.

    • Xenny@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Been seeing a lot of anti-valve corporate propaganda lately I think they’re upset with the way they run their company because it shows that in comparison their own companies are being greedy and hoarding wealth. It also shows how vastly inefficient in comparison they are.

      • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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        Weird take, in valve more money is saved for Gabe himself (hence his half a dozen yachts….), while on the other hand, the companies with more employees spend more on giving other people money.

        So who’s hoarding using your logic? The company with 10 bil in revenue and 200 employees, or the company with the same revenue and 20000 employees…? Because to me it seems ones doing more for citizens at large than the other lining one persons pocket far More.

        • Xenny@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The company with more wageslaves of course. I’m sure valve employees are paid very well. Yeah Gabe Newell is a billionaire and I’m not defending that, he should definitely be paying more in taxes. As they all should. But the way valve runs things is their business as a private corporation and I’m tired of seeing the being tore down for no apparent reason lately. Lots of better targets. It seems motivated by something larger behind he curtain and I don’t like being manipulated.