We learned just how small Valve really is this year, but also how good it is at raking in the cash: It's making more money per employee than Apple

Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.

We in the PC gaming-o-sphere tend to view Valve as a behemoth. Its iron-fisted dominance of the space is unquestioned and unchallenged, and even the mightiest of videogame publishers sooner or later come to kiss the ring. But in terms of actual size, it's not really so: One of the very interesting things we learned in 2024 is that Valve is, relatively speaking, actually pretty small.

Unlike most major players in gaming, Valve is privately owned, so information on the company—headcount, revenues, that sort of thing—is generally not for public consumption. But court documents related to the ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed against Valve by Wolfire Games in 2021 showed that Valve had just 336 employees that year.