One data point I found interesting: Valve peaked with its “Games” payroll spending in 2017 at $221 million (the company didn’t release any new games that year, but that spending could have gone toward supporting games like Dota 2 and developing new games like Artifact); by 2021, that was down to $192 million. Another: as of 2021, Valve employed just 79 people for Steam, which is one of the most influential gaming storefronts on the planet.

“Hardware,” to my surprise, has been a relatively small part of the company, with just 41 employees paid a gross of more than $17 million in 2021.

From the verge article

Here’s the topline from 2021: Of those 336 employees, 79 directly worked on Steam, while a whopping 181 remained in the “Games” department⁠—pretty much the reverse of what I expected, given Steam’s importance to company profits and how rarely Valve releases new games. There were just 41 employees working on hardware development at that time

From the PC gamer article right under.

Literally the first two links, at least for me. Are you done being an idiot?