Not 10 times the employees. 10 times the nunber of stores as Valve has employees.
Let’s look at the cost of just floor-level associates. If Gamestop employees made an average of $14 an hour and they have 2 employees working and were open 11 hours a day an average (standard is 10am to 9pm - they actually work shorter hours on Sunday, but there’s also time spent opening and closing the store and extra hours on holidays other than Christmas, so 11 is low). That comes out to over 100 grand per store just in nominal hourly wages for floor associates.
Valve would have to pay 7 figures on average per employee to have the same staffing cost as Gamestop’s lowest-paid employees.
Each Valve employee also makes about what 10 GameStop employees do, salaries at Valve are often mid to high 6 digits.
Which is not to say that GameStop is cheap to run, but hey, neither is Steam.
Not 10 times the employees. 10 times the nunber of stores as Valve has employees.
Let’s look at the cost of just floor-level associates. If Gamestop employees made an average of $14 an hour and they have 2 employees working and were open 11 hours a day an average (standard is 10am to 9pm - they actually work shorter hours on Sunday, but there’s also time spent opening and closing the store and extra hours on holidays other than Christmas, so 11 is low). That comes out to over 100 grand per store just in nominal hourly wages for floor associates.
Valve would have to pay 7 figures on average per employee to have the same staffing cost as Gamestop’s lowest-paid employees.