Its entirely possible that Valve would be of a similar value to Sony if it were listed on the open market (or, at least, would be worth over half of it, bearing in mind that Sony is worth roughly 120 billion dollars on the market today.) Valve has, as far as I can tell, very few actual employees and yet controls pretty much the only viable way to sell PC games in the modern day. Its other products are so small in the face of steam itself that nobody mentions them but even then, if taken on their own, CS:GO and Source, Steamdeck and TF2 would all be valuable products on their own. Or to put it another way, Hogwarts Legacy, a non-Valve game, sold 24 million copies. Assuming that 5 million units were sold on Steam at a reduced 20 percent cut (and bear in mind, the standard is 30), thats the equivalent of one of Valve's own games selling one million units, without Valve having had to pay anything for development or marketing. Its "free money" and while HL is the biggest game of the year its not like it makes up the lion's share of game sales, and the vast majority game purchases on PC go through Steam with Valve taking a similar, or bigger, cut.
We really don't know what Valve is valued at but I bet its more than most people think.
