• ggppjj@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.

    They have infinite money forever.

    Gabe Newell runs a biotech company as well.

    A couple million on a blue-sky product development pipeline is an incidental cost for the most part.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      9 hours ago

      Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.

      You say this as if all the money goes into to pockets of the devs and engineers to fuck off an do whatever they want. I ask again how this explains why Valve would throw money away.

      • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
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        6 hours ago

        … What?

        It… it goes into the company.

        https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/13/24197477/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-payroll-redacted

        They run an absurdly profitable business.

        They make approximately $15 million in profit per each of the roughly 360 employees.

        That’s after wages.

        Nobody knows exactly what an average Valve salary is (they’re a private company, they have no obligation to disclose that), but they almost certainly just continue to accumulate a stupendous amount of money, which they can then throw at any ideas that require all kinds of potential material or licensing or technical costs.

        The employees are not making $15 million dollars a year. Probably more like 1/10 to 1/100 of that.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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          41 minutes ago

          It… it goes into the company.

          …what? How…does fucking around researching and developing products for their team members benefit the company?