Steam Commission Brings Valve Over $3 Billion for the First Time

Steam commission brought Valve over $3 billion for the first time in 2024, according to an analyst specializing in the economics of the video game sector, Joost van Dreunen.

According to Joost van Dreunen’s estimates, over the past 10 years, Valve’s annual income from game sales commissions on Steam has almost tripled and reached $3.2 billion in 2024, while in 2015, the company earned $1.1 billion from game sales commissions on its platform.

As van Dreunen noted, Valve’s revenue from Steam commissions has shown steady growth over the past decade. The only decline occurred in 2019, when earnings fell from $1.6 billion to $1.4 billion. However, by 2020, the company had rebounded strongly, surpassing the $2 billion mark.

On top of that highlighted by The Verge 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, according to van Dreunen’s estimates, 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.

Since Valve is a private company and doesn’t publish financial reports, it is not clear how close the analyst’s estimates are to reality. Notably, Gabe Newell’s company reported earlier this year that revenues from new games on Steam are growing rapidly.