• SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    But it’s basically a store front and they contract almost everything out. Like how many people does it take to run some servers? They don’t make games, the steam deck and the VR are the few things they’ve done. And that could be done by a couple dozen engineers and contract everything else.

    Like how many employees should they have?

    Okay I shouldn’t have taken a shot at their game making ability, but it legit fucking sucks and they acknowledge it, people bash them for it sometimes, take it easy guys.

      • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Isn’t most of steam pages like the discussion, store page, forums, guides, workshop etc are self moderated by the publishers and developers?

        And yeah they made Alyx in the last decade? They make hats for old games, that’s it it seems.

        • uis@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I’m not sure what do you mean as moderation of store page.

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            They make the information on the store page, they moderate the forums, guides and workshop.

            What does steam moderate themselves?

            • uis@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              They make the information on the store page

              At least some progress. How information on the store page steam would add without developer? How would steam know title of game, price and other stuff without developer telling it.

              What does steam moderate themselves?

              Reviews and refunds.

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                How information on the store page steam would add without developer? How would steam know title of game, price and other stuff without developer telling it.

                What?

                They log in, provide the Information to the system, the system automatically processes it and posts it. You think there’s a person manually doing this task or something?

                Reviews of what? And 99% of refunds are automated since people use it as a free game testing service, the 2 hour window.

                Most of steam is automated dude, you don’t seriously think they are manually adding all this information with a keyboard from a mailed package or something do you?

                • uis@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  They log in, provide the Information to the system, the system automatically processes it and posts it. You think there’s a person manually doing this task or something?

                  Who they? Robots? Nvidia’s AI?

                  Reviews of what?

                  Of games, lol. We are talking about steam, did you forget already?

                  • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    Of games, lol. We are talking about steam, did you forget already?

                    Users review the games and they also tag the store as well…? What are you going on about here?

    • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      They don’t make games

      DOTA and CS beg to differ. Spotify is a “storefront” that produces nothing but has about 25x more employees.

      • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        And valve contracts out or has the developers and publishers self moderate their own pages on Steam instead. Why is this shocking? Because a company contracts out instead of employing people and has their customers do stuff for free…?

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            It would seem they pay more employees than contractors, that’s why their employee count is higher.

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            How does a discussion have a loser? I was adding how valve has such a low employee account since it apparently wasn’t clear to anyone currently in the discussion.

            Take offense that they legit have issues publishing any games due to their corporate structure…

            But I was only adding to the discussion, why do you need to “win”? They have their customers moderate their store pages and they contract out employees instead. Can you provide polite discourse to this topic without being an ass or no?

    • jqubed@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Wall Street would probably say 15-30,000+. I think the point of the surprise is that actually it’s possible to be massively profitable and have good products without needing massive teams of people. How many mediocre/bad AAA games have teams larger than Valve’s entire staff? More isn’t always better, sometimes it’s just more.

      I haven’t read this article, because yeah, I’ve seen this same basic headline over a dozen times in the past week on Lemmy, but I think it’s a testament to what can happen when a private company doesn’t have a lot of shareholders and is run by people who just want the company to run well and be profitable. They don’t have to chase some unsustainable Wall Street expectation of x% growth every quarter.

      • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Most of the store front is moderated by the publishers and developers, and they contract out a lot of work, maybe what, one valve employee at a server bank with the rest being contract workers?

        • uis@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Most of the store front is moderated by the publishers and developers,

          You say this a lot, but can you explain what this means?

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            ?? The developers control the store pages, what needs to explained more? Go to the store, see what pages are linked there, those are the pages they are responsible to curate and moderate.

            It’s an all automated system, you don’t think there’s a steam employee typing it all in or something do you? This have low staff numbers since it’s hella automated and contracted out.

    • uis@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Like how many people does it take to run some servers?

      That is exactly the point of post. You don’t need tenns of thousands of people to run some servers.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      All that says is that if you give people choice, they might chose not to make games in today’s market, that’s not bad imo. It’s possible that building new games isn’t what the world needs right now.

      • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done, games, updates, bug fixing, there wasn’t anyone to say hey, we need 5 guys to get this done. It’s nah I want to add hats to this game, but the griefers ruining this one isn’t important to me.

        Its always interesting to see the rose coloured glasses spin on this own admitted failure.

        • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          It says that every employee had their own idea of what valve should be working too. Nothing got done,

          I guess that’s where me and you would differ. Though they didn’t put out half life 3, imo valve has contributed more to my gaming experience than any other company and BY FAR.

          So if this is things not getting done, I only want more of this.

          Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes, so you guys disagree that valve has made my life better?