this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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This actually seems like not a terrible spread. The average for the top earners is a little more than 10x the average for the lowest earners... Obviously outliers could be skewing that data (there could be one hardware developer making 30 million while the others work for poverty wages) but from the data we have, this isn't nearly as wide a gap as I would have expected.
Wouldn't surprise that much, as far as I've heard from as far as I remember Valve is a great place to work and by all accounts treat their employees well.
Valve moved into hardware long after its other ventures, so it's not surprising the hardware devs make less -- they're newer. Still, $430k/yr is an enviable salary...
This was from 2021, so prior to the Steam Deck... that was really their break-out moment, I think, with regards to hardware. The Steam Link and Steam Controller were neat but didn't really capture their respective markets, and the Index was widely considered one of the best VR headsets on the market but that's a relatively small market, and it priced out all but the enthusiast tier consumers. The Steam Deck on the other hand had mass appeal and basically ushered in a golden age of handheld PC gaming... not to mention the immense hype around their recent hardware announcements. Could be that their hardware team is making more now.