Analyst: In 2024, the Steam commission brought Valve over $3 billion for the first time
Over the past 10 years, Valve's annual income from game sales commissions on Steam has almost tripled, calculated analyst Aldora Joost van Dreunen. If in 2015 the company earned $1.1 billion from this, last year it was already $3.2 billion.
Team Fortress 2
As van Dreunen observed, this revenue stream for Valve has been growing almost continuously. The only dip in the past 10 years was in 2019, when earnings from Steam commissions dropped from $1.6 billion to $1.4 billion. However, by 2020, the company managed to surpass $2 billion.
Valve's earnings from Steam game sales commissions in 2015–2024, according to Aldora estimates
All this makes Steam an extremely efficient and profitable platform. Documents released during the trial between Valve and Wolfire Games revealed that as of 2021, there were only 79 employees on the Steam team. If their number hasn't significantly changed by 2024, writes van Dreunen, the average revenue per employee from commissions should amount to about $42 million by the end of the year. Expanding the scope to include the entire company (336 employees), the figure would be $9.5 million.
For comparison, van Dreunen indicated the average commission revenue per employee for other platform holders last year:
- PlayStation — $2.4 million;
- Nintendo — $1.5 million;
- Xbox — $1.1 million.
Since Valve is a private company and does not publish financial reports, it is unknown how close the analyst's estimates are to reality. But the company previously reported that at least the revenues from new games on Steam are growing rapidly. In 2024, the total gross revenue of new releases in their debut month on Steam was 10 times greater than in 2014. This means Valve's earnings from commissions on their sales are also expected to have increased.