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Valve Beats Google, Apple For Profits Per Employee
AndrewGOO9 writes "It should come with little surprise that Gabe Newell is well on his way to being one of the wealthiest men in gaming. In an age when console gamers would have many believe that the PC was on its way out the door, Newell and Valve's Steam stand as sentinels of the platform, offering a ridiculous amount of content to the 30 million users. With the lion's share of the downloadable market on the PC, it's no wonder that Steam has become the go-to for many and an incredible financial opportunity for Newell and Valve. According to Forbes, 'Newell says that, per employee, Valve is more profitable than Google and Apple. A potential buyer was rumored to have made an acquisition offer a few years back for the Steam piece only, but Newell supposedly refused to split the online storefront from Valve's game-publishing arm.'"
If they're so profitable, then where's my linux client, damnit!?
There's also Stardock's Impulse platform and Gamer's Gate. I think Steam took off because they were riding on the coattails of an already very-popular game. It's all about getting enough marketshare to start with that your platform becomes convenient, rather than annoying.
Plus the "It just works", and the benefits of not having to give a frak about steam copies is awesome
no more where the frak are my disks
the steam community changes are also quite nice
On my Mac (the horror! the horror!) I can log on, purchase and download the games that are released for Mac. I can even play them.
The trick is that once the Steam client has been ported, each individual game developer chooses whether to invest money in porting their awesome creation to OSX.
If Valve ported Steam to Linux, that would open a similar calculation for the developer. It would also mean that indie developers could develop on the Linux stack and sell their games to those who run Linux. Given careful selection of libraries, it's possible to run the same code on Linux, OSX and Windows. It would be sweet. But it depends on whether Valve thinks there would be enough money in the Linux market to pay for the development of a Linux client.
Stop the brainwash
One thing on the profitability per employee thing, at least with Apple the figure most likely includes retail employees as well. With the latest figures I could find and from my back of the envelope calculations Apple made 14 billion with about 50k employees, for a profit of roughly $280k/employee. Meanwhile valve made, according to the article $55 million on 250 employees, for a profit/employee of $220k. Right off the bat, unless Forbes is using different numbers than I am, you see a discrepancy. Furthermore, if we limit the discussion to non-retail employees(of which Apple has about 35k), then the profit/employee jumps to over $400k/employee, much higher than Valves. Still an amazing company, but there are some "interesting" numbers in the article....
Monstar L
Scroll to the end to see what GN does with his money.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=302
And yes, Valve and Steam are stalwarts for PC gaming, . It usually costs nothing to "port" a game to windows and costs nothing to publish on steam (although steam does take its cut). There ARE PC gamers out there, and this (and blizzard) proves that there is still money here to be made.
...but what does this have to do with hats?
It's 2011, just rip your discs to disk and use a relevant utility to mount them. You really ought to be backing up the discs anyways, may as well use the images for installing as well.
Already have been doing this Just more work to be honest
Forgot to mention that publishers who are not bastards also let me take advantage of the weak us and strong au dollar :)
Personally I am less annoyed by the performance and more annoyed with their shitty region-locking...
If you live in the US game X costs 19.99 USD.... ... wait for it.... 19.99 Euro...
If you live in Europe, the game costs
1 Euro = 1.3556 U.S. dollars (today's rate on google)
So, they want me to pay 27.10 USD for the same game due to the region I am in.
I am sorry Valve, but I'll be buying the game for 19.99 in another online store thankyouverymuch.
For years I have spent money on Steam buying my games but I now limit my buying to promotions that are actually cheaper than the competition.
Meh...
Erm... have you even USED Steam on any half-decent PC?
I'm an old DOS guy so anything over 2Mb is blasphemy for me, but Steam is currently sitting (on a machine that's been taken into and out of standby about 50 times since it was last booted about a month ago) at around 9.5Mb RAM usage according to Task Manager. It doesn't touch more than 1% CPU enough to register on any simple task list. Steam's been running ALL that time that the computer has been up, with 250+ games, and gets used every night to play a game (anything from L4D2 to Altitude to the original Counterstrike).
I don't have the overlay enabled. I do have Friends enabled. I don't have it in "large" mode. It has been running perfectly fine and doesn't interfere with *anything * do. It doesn't even allocate enough memory to worry about - my print spooler service occupies more memory.
There are network delays when I run a game as it is (I assume) authenticated, but it's the *game* and network that causes that, not CPU usage or memory allocation from Steam. Steam hardly does anything at all, whereas the initial load of something like L4D2 tries to read in 2Gb of data. Killing Floor is terrible in that respect and can take about 4-5 minutes to clean up after I come out of it. None of that is *Steam*, that's the game.
The actual *Steam* component does nothing to slow that down, but XP happens to be particularly crap at freeing memory when you've used enough to touch swap (it's XP swapping from the release of the game's 2Gb of memory that actually stops me doing anything for a little while with any program, not just Steam).
250 games and, once loaded in the file cache once, they just load barely touching the disk (I don't even notice the load times for the small indie games any more because it's instantaneous and silent because of my long "suspended" Windows session that keeps the file cache intact.
It's slow browsing the store in Steam, I give you that, but that's to be expected, especially when I'm used to Opera throwing pages on the screen faster than I can see them. And this is a laptop. In large mode, it hits 50Mb if I browse, but to be honest Opera or Firefox hit roughly the same when I browse the same websites in them. Even 200Mb is barely worth worrying about these days - I lose a Gig of my RAM just by not choosing to run a 64-bit OS.
You either have a horribly underpowered PC, not enough RAM and so are swapping WAY more than necessary, or you haven't actually LOOKED at the cause of your problem. The most I've ever seen Steam use is about 250Mb and 10% CPU averaged over a minute or so and that was just before they changed to the new integrated web browser.
I call crap on your assertions. Five years ago, yeah, maybe, they were bloating on older PC's that didn't need that kind of bloat. Now? They are smaller than my print spooler on a machine that can cope with just about anything I throw at it.
(P.S. WHOA! Memory usage just went up to 10Mb! And then strangely went back down to 7Mb when I actually brought it out of the taskbar to sit on "small mode" on the desktop).
By not having to pay for a real person to talk to when you have a problem, they save a bundle on paying for tech support. It's email only and it usually takes 24 hours to get a response. There is no number to call or any way to talk to a live person. For a company that was supposed to have made a billion dollars in revenue last year, I have to assume that some of that was profit. They really need to put some of that profit into live tech support.
Die-hard Slackware users will hack the game, libraries and play with symlinks and LD_LIBRARY_PATHs environment to put the game running on the slackware... no need for ubuntu... :)
You see, that is what you gain by knowing how the system works, you can fix/tune it for your needs!
Higuita
Enough with the chit-chat! WHERE'S MY FUCKING EPISODE THREE? You're just trying and distract us with these puny stories, aren't you Gabe?
Screw EP3, I just want to think with Portals at this point. :P
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Prices are dictated by publishers, with some games they differ, yadda yadda yadda.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
I've bought one game under each of them, specifically due to not being available on Steam. Demigod from Impulse (which is kind of like "Steam done poorly", but Demigod = win) and Pathologic from Gamer's Gate (which is more or less a web storefront with download links to what you buy). I've also bought the first Penny Arcade game from Greenhouse (which is similar to Gamer's Gate as far as experience is concerned).
The daily sale popups from Impulse are annoying though -- they make me want to shut it down any time I'm not actually playing Demigod right that second.
This is not exclusive to Valve. It's true for pretty much all tech purchases.... If the dollar is weak, it's 1USD=1EUR... If the dollar is strong, it's 1USD=2EUR. The maths are simple, and we're getting screwed over. Be glad you don't live in Great Britain. They have it worse.
Substract 20% VAT first, then compare.
I agree, but don't blame Valve for that. If HL2 is one price in Britain and another in France, okay then that's Valve's fault. But the prices of all of the non-Valve games are dictated by the publishers as well as the rights-holders of each individual country, not Valve.
I for one agree that region-locking is bullshit as well. Part of the appeal for PCs (to me) is that (in theory) you shouldn't be able to "region-lock" them, and then someone had to go and figure that shit out.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I dont pay VAT for online purchases when I shop anywhere else... so why exactly is this a valid excuse for doing a currency hack?
I would be fine with them charging a little more for european distribution if it was not so incredibly "convenient" that it is 1USD==1EUR in the store and they actually said WHY they do it. Other than "we figured we could make more money this way".
How come other online distribution systems can sell the games for the same regardless of where you by it from then?
If publishers are really trying this shit after the enormous mess over dvd region locking they must be stupid...
To paraphrase one of the best video game characters Valve has ever created (IMHO), "I hate articles about Valve!"
Jason Van Patten
Hey, the alternative is always saying "ah fuck it" and just download the sucker of [insert generic torrent site].
The problem with most games I buy outside steam or other platforms like it is that the DRM goes bonkers on my machine...
Why? Because I have software installed to let me play the games with broken DRM which does not work in win7...
Blacklisting software to avoid piracy is so cute. Do they really expect it to work? :p
Somewhere out there is a featherweight considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Doesn't mean in a straight fight he wouldn't get killed by the best heavyweight.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
If you like Demigod (I did too, until I learned that Impulse wouldn't run on 64bit Windows 7 or Vista -- maybe this has since changed) you should check out League of Legends. It's absolutely free, has a TON more content, a huge player base, and is actually a high-quality game. You can get everything available with in-game currency which is earned through playing -- the only exception is that you must purchase "Riot Points" in order to buy skins for your champions (heroes), but they provide purely asethetic value and no advantage in-game.
www.leagueoflegends.com
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
And they are. If you try a proxy to the USA some time and check the price in dollars, you'd notice that most of the time it's approximately the same, adjusted for currency differences. Sometimes, however, the prices in Europe are inflated somewhat. Here, let me make some screenshots for you (one from a proxied webbrowser, the other from steam's built-in browser):
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/2829/dollarsr.jpg
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/7897/euroqi.jpg
I did a quick count on all the ones that have EUR==USD prices: 4. Four games from four wholly different publishers, that just couldn't be arsed.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
It's true that many downloadable games are overpriced on Steam in certain regions. They're also overpriced compared to retail.
Solution: check prices and then if favourable, buy retail and activate on Steam.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
If you like Demigod (I did too, until I learned that Impulse wouldn't run on 64bit Windows 7 or Vista -- maybe this has since changed)
I currently run Impulse just fine on Win7 64-bit. I never had issues, but I didn't get Win7 right away so they might have fixed it by the time I got on board.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
That's what killed it for me. I bought Demigod around the same time I got VistaX64. Of course I checked for a solution on the Impulse forums, where Stardock stated they "had no plans to support x64 systems in the foreseeable future".
Not sure if it's actually supported now, or you just got lucky (some people did still run it normally even when I was checking it out). Hopefully the former, though the lack of Stardock's insight is still disappointing...I've been running 64-bit systems since 2004 and to see things in 2009 still completely unsupported was crappy.
That being said, I like the level design and flow of Demigod. The hero selection was limited, but diverse nonetheless. I especially liked that you could choose how to spec your hero, as well as which items to purchase to augment them - I think I ended up using Oak most of the time because of his versatility.
What really attracted me to LoL was the metagame -- you as a player are the "Summoner" who levels up over the course of numerous matches; you select your champion to control each game and play in the moba/DotA style. No other moba has a metagame anywhere near League, which is why I've now got 1200+ games under my belt in about a year and a half. The fact that it was free definitely attracted me initially, although I've since spent money on it -- I buy games I like to play. You can buy it retail, or download it for free.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Now compare Steam with other similar services. Games for Windows Live for example. I shouldn't have to outline how inferior it is to Steam to anyone who has used both. Any program whose poor programming requires me to turn off my firewall to play any games tied to it can go screw itself.
This is particularly true of intensive properties compared to extensive properties. The sewing needle creates more pressure than the sheet metal bending machines, the flame temperature of a candle can exceed the temperature of gases hitting the turbine blades in a jet engine, static can build several thousand volts of electricity. And that trade that executed in 10 milliseconds, giving you a profit of 25$, is actually 78.84 billion dollars per year.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Valve is never going to make a game with a 3 in the title, but they might go the Leisure Suit Larry route and just skip a number.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
OnLive sounded like an interesting concept, but from what I've read, there's just enough input latency between your computer and their servers to mess things up... and it can get worse depending on the game.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
all of the hard-corps PC nerds thought that Steam was the key to all evil? "I won't own the discs! I have to be on the internet to play? They can get my credit card information?"
I LOL and LOL and LOL, and play more TF2.
well i didn't mean it to be rude, i meant to point out that if nothing has changed in 10 years, and we keep having the same arguments,
then maybe there is something wrong with the premise of our arguments.
Not sure what the grammatical term is, but "Valve Beats Google, Apple" is perfectly acceptable "news headline" style of writing.
The best thing about Steam (and all Windows apps should pay attention) is that it stays out of my way. I don't even know it's running in the background. It doesn't bog my system down, it doesn't tie up bandwidth when I'm not actively using it, and it's not constantly bugging me for updates/reboots, etc.
Is not hiring people and pocketing the vast profits whilst millions of workers are unemployed something to be admired now?
To some extent gog as well, even though they generally only sell old games.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
1 US Dollar equals over 0.99 AU dollar.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Just apparently not confident enough to do so non-anonymously.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Is a wonderful argument AGAINST it. Why? Because it shows people being massive cheapskates. The average amount people paid for the games was around $2/title. That is peanuts. Developers cannot afford to work for that little, not unless you can guarantee massive sales. It is almost an insultingly low amount. If that is Linux "showing their support" then it is support that isn't wanted.
I remember people almost spraining their arms they were patting themselves on the back so hard over buying the pack for $10 on Linux since it was more than the Windows average. All I could think was "Man you are cheapskates." Personally I had bought World of Goo back when it came out for $20 and I was happy. I didn't spend that amount to prove anything or be a tough guy, it was because I felt $20 was a reasonable price for that product, good entertainment for the dollar. I already owned all the games I wanted from the bundle, purchased at normal price, so I didn't buy it.
So yes, the average for Windows was really low. That is because cheapskates were buying it. The non-cheapskates among us already owned the titles we wanted and had paid asking price. That the average from Linux was higher, but still low, did not speak well at all for Linux gaming viability.
If they wanted to show they were serious about it, the price paid should have been around what you'd normally get a deal bundle for. Take the normal price of all the games, add it up and then discount it 30% or so, maybe as much as 50%. That is what you usually see for bundles. You get a discount since all the games are packed together and that's the point, however it isn't a "You pay next to nothing per title," thing. However that would have meant paying more like $50+ for the pack.
Please remember for Linux to be a viable gaming market it needs to have a good amount of people willing to pay a reasonable bit of money for games. It is a small market, simply because there aren't a lot of Linux desktops. 1-2% of computers or so. If that market is to be viable not only do there need to be a good percentage of that percentage willing to buy games, but they need to be willing to pay a good amount for the games.
I mean suppose a major game ports and they spend $500,000 on the porting, testing, Q&A, and all that. Not an unreasonable sum, given how much the total development is. If 50,000 Linux users buy the game at $50/copy, their roughly 50% cut (the retailer/e-tailer gets the rest for the most part) works out to $2.5million. That's worth it. However if those 50,000 users will only pay $2/copy, well then it is only $100k, which means they lose money.
Major developers aren't going to port to Linux as a charity, you have to show them it is profitable, that they can expect to get a non-trivial amount more money than what it costs to do the port.
Because it appears they think the OpenGL situation on Linux is a fucking disaster. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/01/firefox-4-beta-9-a-huge-pile-of-awesome/comment-page-1/#comment-349829 for more info.
Well that is a real problem for games. Games these days almost all use 3D for their graphics, it is what people want and makes for a nice interactive world. Even if you are doing an isometric game like Civ, still makes sense to do your graphics on the 3D card.
Ok well for that, OpenGL is the only cross platform, one-stop-shop, option. Direct3D is wonderful, but Windows only. Mac and Linux only support OpenGL.
For Windows you are good. Anyone who has an nVidia or ATi card has a top-flight hardware accelerated OpenGL driver installed along with the rest of the driver installs. For nVidia cards it is in ever way as fast as their DirectX driver. For ATi the performance is a bit slower, but still works great and has full feature support for whatever the hardware can handle (OpenGL 4.1 on the latest 5000 and 6000 series cards). Even the integrated Intel chips come with an OpenGL driver, though it does lag a bit behind and they aren't really very good chips for gaming anyhow.
On the Mac, OpenGL is an assumed part of the driver. Apple provides you with the driver for your graphics hardware, and accelerated GL is part of what you get. Their GL stack isn't the best, it is a little pokey, you find performance is better under Windows, but they've improved it some, and will probably continue to do so. Speed issues aside, it works and doesn't crash. It works for games, a number use it, if the only side effect is lower FPS that is ok.
On Linux... The situation is a disaster. Only the binary nVidia driver, you know the one all the OSS heads hate on, has full support for modern OpenGL features, is fast, and is stable. Sorry, but that is not at all going to cut it for games. They need properly functioning drivers, since they need 3D.
So no, doesn't really look like you can just carefully choose libraries and code a game that'll run well on all the platforms.
I used to work for a three-person company that had higher profit per employee than that of Google, Apple or Valve.
To be fair, comparing any other such service to GfW client is like judging art by comparing it to goatse. Even if it's bus graffiti, it still wins. ~
There is a reason Steam owns 85% of the PC downloadable market, it works. It works really well. When Valve first introduced the requirement to log onto Steam in order to play HalfLife games, I hated them. They killed the Used Game market. Once you register your serial number, that's it, you can't sell it. Even with the DVD version of a game, once registered, that's it for life. But Steam was smart about it. They do not keep their prices artificially high like the way Microsoft's Games for Windows Live does. Try buying Age of Empires 3 on GFWL, it is 40 bucks for a game which came out in 2005, nearly 6 years ago.
Steam has regular sales where you can get almost any game for half price, 75% off, or even all the way down to 5 bucks. What's not to like? The download is very fast, the game comes with all patches already applied, you don't need to have a DVD in the drive, and all games stay in your library forever. When you uninstall, the game just stays right there, ready to download again.
Still nerdraging about that damn pay-for-perks TF2 store and the region lock disc scams.
Why steam wins:
1.) No CD's needed
2.) AWESOME prices
3.) I can't lose a game, its always tied to my account
4.) Install across multiple machines
5.) Valve's games aren't crippled with DRM, they just don't let you play multi-player pirated
I love steam. I love your sales. I love your delivery method. I love how updates are automatic and fairly un-noticed. Steam rocks.
How much of the money you earn are you selfishly keeping and not giving to one or more unemployed people? Do you tithe?
Jibe!