Court documents suggest most Valve employees are still focused on gaming

To be one of the most important companies in the PC gaming world, Valve is usually a real mystery as to its inner workings. The creator of Steamled by co-founder and president Gabe Newell, doesn’t typically reveal much about its size or structure. Yet despite all the jokes about Half-Life 3, Left 4 Dead 3, Portal 3, and more, and rumors swirling about its supposed new game Deadlock, court documents show that a majority of Valve’s staff is still focused on making games.

This latest information comes from documents included in indie developer Wolfire Games’ 2021 antitrust lawsuit against Valve, which claims the Steam creator “abuses its market power to ensure that game publishers have no choice but to sell most of their games through the Steam Store.” Of course, despite the platform’s vast selection, Valve’s own offerings generally remain among the biggest and best in the PC gaming market.

The Valve document in question, spotted by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundiik and detailed by The Verge, contains “data on number of employees and gross salaries, 2003-2021.” While some aspects of the document are redacted, the columns showing these two data counts are still visible, giving us a glimpse into how many people work in each area of ​​Valve.

Of those, the 2021 figures list 181 people assigned to “games,” with 35 working in administration, 41 on hardware, and 79 on Steam itself. That’s a total of just 336 staff members, which is surprisingly low for a company of this size. For comparison, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios employs around 470 people, while Ubisoft has 21,000.

Still, it shows that more than half of Valve’s staff (at least in 2021) are still primarily focused on making games. This should perhaps come as no great surprise; the company launched Half-Life: Alyx in March 2020, the reworked Artifact: Foundry in March 2021, Aperture Desk Job in March 2022, Counter-Strike 2 in September 2023, and is continuing ongoing development of that game as well as regular updates for Dota 2.

It’s also almost certain that new projects are in development, with Valve long known for encouraging experimentation. Currently, signs are pointing to the upcoming Valve game Deadlock, which is rumored to be a 6v6 competitive FPS with Dota-style lanes and hero characters reminiscent of TF2 and Overwatch. Whether this project exists as suggested – and whether it will actually launch – remains to be seen – that’s something we’ll have to wait to find out.

The report also highlights some other interesting data. Steam’s specific headcount, which peaked at 142 in 2015, has dropped dramatically to just 79 employees in 2021, nearly half of its previous headcount. By comparison, while the number of gaming-focused employees has declined slightly, from a peak of 201 in 2019 to 181 in 2021, this looks more like a case of natural fluctuation.

Ultimately, despite the changes over the years, Valve continues to offer a store that, for the most part, does exactly what its users want, delivering games with relatively unerring consistency. As for what’s next on the gaming front, we’ll be sure to keep you updated when its next game drops. We’ve reached out to Valve for comment on this story and will include any response as 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 plenty more great deals to grab.

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