Valve is smaller than we thought, a fraction of the size of many AAA studios and publishers

Unlike other prominent players in the gaming space, Valve is the very definition of a private company. The developer behind Half-Life, DOTA 2, and Counter-Strike also runs Steam, the largest PC gaming platform in the world. Yet, little is known about Valve's overall size and how it operates day to day.

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According to a new leak, Valve only has a fraction of the employees of its contemporaries, companies like EA, Epic Games, and Riot Games. Information regarding how many employees work at Valve surfaced recently via redacted documents as part of an antitrust lawsuit against Valve.

Spotted by SteamDB's Pavel Djundik, the information covers Valve's employee headcount and even gross pay across the company's four key divisions - Admin, Games, Steam, and Hardware.

Across the entire company - and we're talking about one of the biggest names in PC gaming - Valve has 336 employees. Out of these 336 employees, only 79 are listed as working on Steam.

The figures are allegedly accurate as of 2021, which is recent enough to represent Valve today. According to the statistics, Valve's "Games" department, which includes all development on new and existing titles, has 181 employees. And with the Steam Deck launching around this time, Valve's "Hardware" team comprises a lean team of just 41 people.

To put this into perspective, EA or Electronic Arts has around 13,700 employees, with Riot Games and Epic Games sitting on around 4,200 employees.

Humble Bundle creator Wolfire Games is the company behind the lawsuit arguing that Valve "devotes a minuscule percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store," which is a direct nod to the company not having enough people. For the rest of us, it's impressive to see how small Valve is in relation to how much influence and control it has over the PC gaming space.