Valve sends annual chocolates to Steam devs who earn roughly $800,000, and before Peak the folks at Aggro Crab got pretty sick of looking across the hall to see the Slay the Spire team open Gaben candy every year

Screenshot from Peak's winter update, showing a blue-skinned character smiling at the airport in front of a lit up Christmas tree.

There's a deep, dark, and milky secret about a handful of highly successful developers on Steam: Valve likes to send them chocolates at the end of the year. Rumors about Valve's mysterious "chocolate tier" have become more prominent over the past year or so, and it very much seems that those whispers are true.

Perhaps the most detailed breakdown of chocolate tier out there comes courtesy of games marketing consultant Chris Zukowski, who published a video in December laying out the basics as he understands them from speaking with developers over the years. According to Zukowski, Valve will send out a high-end box of chocolate to developers who meet a threshold of roughly $800,000 in annual revenue.