As one of the most important companies in the world of computer games, Valve is usually quite a mystery when it comes to its inner workings. The creator of Steam, led by co-founder and president Gabe Newell, doesn’t usually reveal much about its size or structure. Yet for all the jokes surrounding Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3, Portal 3, etc., while rumors swirl around the alleged new Deadlock game, court documents show that most of Valve’s staff still is focused on creating games.
This latest information comes from documents included in a 2021 antitrust lawsuit filed by indie developer Wolfire Games against Valve, which alleges that the Steam creator “abuses its market power to ensure that game publishers have no choice , in addition to selling most of their games through the Steam Store.” Of course, despite the huge selection available on the platform, Valve’s own offerings tend to remain among the biggest and best PC games of all time.
The Valve document in question, spotted by SteamDB creator Pavel Jundiik and detailed by The Verge, contains “Employee Number and Gross Pay Data, 2003-2021.” Although some aspects of the document have been redacted, the columns showing these two number of data is still visible, giving us some idea of the number of people working in each area of Valve.
Of these, the 2021 numbers list 181 people assigned to “gaming”, with 35 working in administration, 41 in hardware, and 79 in Steam itself. This combined for a total of just 336 staff members, which is astonishingly small for a company of such considerable scale. By comparison, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios employs about 470 people, while Ubisoft puts their number at 21,000.
However, this shows that more than half of Valve’s staff (at least as of 2021) is still primarily focused on making games. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; the company launched Half-Life: Alyx in March 2020, the remastered Artifact: Foundry in March 2021, Aperture Desk Job in March 2022, Counter-Strike 2 in September 2023, and continues ongoing development on this along with regular Dota 2 updates.
Also, new projects are almost certainly in development, as Valve has long been known as a company that encourages experimentation. Signs are currently pointing to the rumored next Valve game Deadlock, which is supposed to be a 6v6 competitive FPS with Dota-style lines and characters reminiscent of TF2 and Overwatch. Whether this project exists as proposed – and whether it actually gets off the ground – is something we’ll just have to wait to find out.
The report also highlights some other interesting data. The number of Steam-specific staff, which peaked at 142 in 2015, has dropped dramatically to just 79 employees by 2021, almost half of the previous number. Comparatively, while the number of gaming-focused employees fell slightly, from a high of 201 in 2019 to 181 in 2021, this seems more like a case of natural fluctuation.
Ultimately, despite the changes over the years, Valve continues to provide a showcase that, for the most part, does exactly what users by users want in delivering games with relatively unerring consistency. As for what’s next on the gaming side, we’ll be sure to keep you updated when the next game comes out. We’ve reached out to Valve for comment on this story and will include any response when we receive it.
In the meantime, here are the best free Steam games to play in 2024, and you can keep an eye out for when the next Steam sale starts for even more great deals.
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