Valve Beats Google, Apple For Profits Per Employee

AndrewGOO9 writes "It should come with little surprise that Gabe Newell is well on his way to being one of the wealthiest men in gaming. In an age when console gamers would have many believe that the PC was on its way out the door, Newell and Valve's Steam stand as sentinels of the platform, offering a ridiculous amount of content to the 30 million users. With the lion's share of the downloadable market on the PC, it's no wonder that Steam has become the go-to for many and an incredible financial opportunity for Newell and Valve. According to Forbes, 'Newell says that, per employee, Valve is more profitable than Google and Apple. A potential buyer was rumored to have made an acquisition offer a few years back for the Steam piece only, but Newell supposedly refused to split the online storefront from Valve's game-publishing arm.'"

Re:If they're so profitable

[SudoGhost]

No point in having a Linux client when most people use Windows, and even a large section of Linux users dual-boot into Windows for gaming anyways. In the gaming market, Linux isn't profitable.

Re:If they're so profitable

[tylersoze]

Yeah, but that's exactly why they *are* profitable. ;)

Re:If they're so profitable

[L4t3r4lu5]

A Linux client sounds amazing! You'll be able to buy all of those Windows Only games, see your disk space drop slowly while they download, then realise that the "Platinum" rating they get for WINE is actually rubbish and you spent £25 on something you can't use.

Don't take this the wrong way; I gamed on Linux for over a year, fiddling with WINE config and game ini files to get the damn things to load, and it was Good. I learned a lot. However, much like you *can* run a diesel car on cooking oil, it's far more convenient to fill it up at a petrol station than to buy carton after carton of catering fat. Right now, it's more convenient to PC game on Windows than Linux, and Gabe knows this.

Re:That's all well and good

[omglolbah]

Personally I am less annoyed by the performance and more annoyed with their shitty region-locking...

If you live in the US game X costs 19.99 USD....
If you live in Europe, the game costs ... wait for it.... 19.99 Euro...

1 Euro = 1.3556 U.S. dollars (today's rate on google)
So, they want me to pay 27.10 USD for the same game due to the region I am in.

I am sorry Valve, but I'll be buying the game for 19.99 in another online store thankyouverymuch.
For years I have spent money on Steam buying my games but I now limit my buying to promotions that are actually cheaper than the competition.

Meh...

Re:If they're so profitable

[TheRaven64]

The difference with the Mac, was that most Mac owners did not also run Windows for gaming. If you sold someone the Mac version, that was a new sale. According to the original poster's own argument, a sale of the Linux version is not a new sale - if there's no Linux version, he'll buy the Windows version instead. Even if the Linux version is just one hour of someone's time to do the recompile and a quick test, it's not worthwhile, because the company gets no more sales: they just trade a sale of the Windows version for a sale of the Linux version.

As long as Linux gamers are willing to buy the Windows version, there is no financial incentive to do a Linux port.