Valve, the private company behind Steam and the Steam Deck, is on track to generate an estimated $17 billion in revenue this year with a staff of roughly 350 people. That works out to about $48.6 million in revenue per employee, based on market analysis from Alinea Analytics and court documents that shed light on Valveโs headcount.
By comparison, the most efficient large public tech companies usually generate a few million dollars per worker. Apple brings in around $2.4 million per employee, Meta about $2.2 million, and Alphabet (Google) about $1.9 million, according to their latest annual reports and analysis of revenue-per-employee metrics.
Those numbers make Valve look like an outlier. On paper, each Valve employee is responsible for more than twenty times the revenue of a typical engineer at Microsoft and more than one hundred times the revenue per worker at Amazon, which still runs a labor-intensive logistics network.
For readers who care about the data, it is worth digging into the actual headcounts and revenue figures behind these comparisons. The table below uses the most recent full-year filings available for Big Tech and the latest public estimates for Valve.
The Big Tech figures come from each companyโs latest annual filings and earnings materials. Apple reported $391.0 billion in net sales and 164,000 employees in its 2024 Form 10-K. Alphabet posted $350.0 billion in revenue and 183,323 employees in its 2024 annual report.
Microsoft delivered just over $245 billion in revenue for fiscal 2024 and lists about 228,000 employees. Meta reported $164.5 billion in 2024 revenue and 74,067 employees, while Amazonโs 2024 Form 10-K shows about $638 billion in net sales and 1.56 million employees.
Valve is different. It does not publish annual reports, so analysts rely on a patchwork of estimates from research firms and court filings. Alinea Analytics, cited by Game World Observer, estimates that games on Steam generated $16.2 billion in revenue from January to mid-November 2025, a record for the platform.
Tomโs Hardware then combines that with historic estimates that Valveโs total revenue could reach about $17 billion this year and that its workforce sits around 350 people, a figure that aligns with employee counts disclosed in the Wolfire antitrust lawsuit a few years ago.
Valve itself leans into this story. In its handbook, the company tells staff that its profitability per person is higher than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, and argues that the right response is to put โa maximum amount of money back into each employeeโs pocket.โ Recent reporting on leaked payroll data suggests Valve paid roughly $450 million in total salaries, with a weighted average above $1.3 million per employee, which matches the idea of an ultra-lean, ultra-well-paid team.
| Company | Estimated headcount | Annual revenue (USD billions) | Revenue per employee (USD millions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valve (est.) | โ350 | $17B | $48.6M |
| Apple | 164,000 | $391B | $2.4M |
| Alphabet (Google) | 183,323 | $350B | $1.9M |
| Microsoft | 228,000 | $245B | $1.1M |
| Meta | 74,067 | $164B | $2.2M |
| Amazon | 1,556,000 | $638B | $0.4M |
If you live in spreadsheets, the comparison highlights how revenue-per-employee is shaped by business models as much as raw efficiency. Valve runs a digital distribution platform with very high margins and relatively little physical infrastructure. It does not operate a massive retail network like Amazon or a global manufacturing chain like Apple, and it does not carry the same customer service or fulfillment headcount that traditional hardware companies do.
For those of us who want to build our own revenue scoreboards, it’s straightforward to recreate this table in Google Sheets or Excel. You can use public company filings, then monitor trends over time with tools like the GOOGLEFINANCE function in Google Sheets or one of the Excel dashboard tutorials. To dig deeper into gaming specifically, a Game Sales spreadsheet template for measuring PC revenue is a natural companion for tracking how platforms like Steam perform over a full release cycle.
Once you have the raw data, you can lay it out in an income statement style template or plug it into a Google Sheets dashboard to visualize how each companyโs revenue-per-employee changes after layoffs, acquisitions, or new product launches. That kind of view makes it easier to see whether a companyโs โefficiencyโ comes from automation and software leverage, or simply from cutting staff while revenue stays flat.
The Valve story is also a reminder to treat revenue-per-employee as a directional signal, not a moral scorecard. Amazonโs $0.4 million per worker reflects a workforce that includes warehouse associates, drivers, and hourly staff rather than only software engineers.
Metaโs jump to more than $2 million per employee followed a “Year of Efficiency” that cut tens of thousands of jobs, something that hardly felt like a win to those who lost them.
Still, the comparison is revealing. One company in Bellevue appears to be generating as much revenue with a few hundred people as some public giants do with hundreds of thousands. The combination of private ownership, a flat structure, and a platform that throws off high-margin cash has made Valve an extreme case study in software leverage.
Whether other firms can replicate that without Valveโs unique history and market position is an open question, but the spreadsheet already tells you how far they have to go.