The secret benefit Valve gives to developers

All right. Uh, hey, it's Chris here. I'm gonna tell you something. Um, it's kind of cool. It's kind of weird. It's called chocolate tier. Uh, this whole video is all about chocolate here. Let me show Let me show you what it is. This right here is a $237 euro box of chocolate. Okay, this is a $245 box of chocolate. You can notice the ribbons in these little pouches. I don't know what's in the pouches. They're just something glorious. This is a box of those expensive chocolates being delivered to a developer with a personalized note from Valve. Well, it's not really personalized. It's just kind of like printed out, but it's still still in this video. I'm going to explain something that somebody at GDC a couple years ago pulled me aside and they're like, "Chris, you know about chocolate tier, right?" And I was like, "What? Chocolate tier?" And he was like, "Let me explain chocolate tier to you." And I didn't know it until he told me. And so I'm gonna tell you. I've been kind of tracking this for a couple years, but

it's time. It's time to tell you. It's time to tell the internet. It's time to tell YouTube. Even though YouTube sucks. Let's go. I'm going to explain chocolate tier. Okay. I'm going to explain to you how to get Valve to send you as a developer a $250 box of chocolates. All right. I'm going to have to show some numbers here before I dive into it. Um, these numbers come from VG Insights. Uh VG Insights is cool. I use it. I pay for it. This is not a sponsored ad or something. I just use it because I get pretty good estimates. Um uh the estimates here come from VG Insights. So if you're like Chris, that's game I don't know blame VG insights. I'm just using the tool and I make these charts from VG Insights. Okay. Uh so check them out. But here it is. This right here. Let me show you this graph. Um this is every game that released in 2025. The gross revenue. Now you might notice that there's nothing here. That is because the graph is so out of proportion that you can't even see most games. It's not until you get to the very high-end games that you start to see a spike. These blue bars,

each blue bar is a separate video game that released in 2025. Okay, the higher the bar, the more money they earned. And in fact, there is a bar that goes all the way up to about right around here. I think that is Battlefield. Okay, Battlefield is so big and it's so small, it doesn't even show up on the graph. I couldn't I tried to force it and I couldn't do that. But these are all the gross revenue of every single game that released in 2025. Um, and what happens is I have to switch it over to log scale to be seen. So this is that same graph, 2025 revenue, but in log scale. Again, each little line that you see, vertical line is a different game in their individual gross revenue for the year. As you can see, there's Battlefield, the very final spike right there at the end. Um, and a lot of people see this graph and they go, "Cruz, does not look scale. Look skill doesn't go like that at the end." It does when we're talking about revenue from Steam because Steam is all about giving that 1.00001%

all the money. And that's why it looks like this. But this is, I guarantee you, log scale of gross revenue for every single game that released in 2025. And what I've done is I've highlighted what I have found out. You see, the thing is, you have to make a lot of money before Valve gives you free chocolates every uh December. And there it is. I have done this. I don't have exclusive, you know, deep statistically significant data about what it takes to get into chocolate tier. I just have a bunch of friends who have made big games that have done well and they go, "Chris, I got into chocolate tier." And I write down how much they make. And I kind of graph it. And so my best bet with my limited data, don't don't yell at me for statistical significance. But I think about this red area is what it takes to get into chocolate tier. So all of these devs are not in chocolate tier. It is not until you get into the red bars that you are in chocolate tier. These folks are enjoying their fine chocolates from our gore, our Gabe, Lord, and Savior.

Okay, so let's take a look. What I've done here in this chart is I've taken that same chart and I just enhanced I zoomed in to just chocolate tier. We are just looking at the 2025 games that got into chocolate tier. And my best bet after talking to a lot of deaf friends who have reached chocolate tier. It's about $800,000 minimum earned within that year to get into chocolate tier. And these games are graphed. There are very tiny tiny tiny little bumps. These are all games that have reached $800,000 or more in 2025. Right there, look at this. You can barely see them. Steam is impossibly impossibly large. And the games that do well do impossibly impossibly well. And you can see as we get closer and closer, the games get bigger and bigger. Eventually, we start to see them. There's Battlefield right there. that big spike. I'm pretty sure Battlefield is the number one earning

game of 2025. So, here we go. Now, based on my estimation and talking to lots of friends, there's actually two chocolate tiers that we have to worry about. There is a $150 box of chocolate that you typically get from about $800,000 to almost $2 million per year, you get the $150 box. If you reach over $2 million, you get the ultimate chocolate tier box. And this is the €250 or about €239. And if you do the conversion rate, you will notice that the Europeans actually get $30 more for their box of chocolate. This is the North American variety of chocolate tier chocolate. I assume that all of them get this much. I do not know if there's an ultimate ultimate chocolate tier that is outside any friend that I have that has reached this. If you are EA or somebody like you, just message me. I won't tell them that it's EA. I just wonder if there's a special chocolate. I don't know if Gabe actually comes to your house to feed you. Tell me in the comments below if

you are EA and you do get that service. That is amazing. Now, if we do a count up, I was wondering, well, if I know all the games that have reached 800,000 or more, which is my best estimation of the beginning of chocolate tier, I have found that there's 138 games that have reached chocolate tier lower. That's at $125. And then I estimate about 158 games have reached the upper chocolate tier. And if you do the math, that means that Steam Valve itself has turned out about a $17,000 worth of chocolate for that. $39,000 of chocolate for that. That's a lot of spending on money. I estimate just for 2025 that Valve has spent $56,000 feeding chocolate to developers personally. Okay. Now, you might notice that that is just 2025. I know several developers who

released games years ago, and they still managed to earn about $800,000 per year, even though the games released a long time ago. Those devs are very cool, very nice. They also get chocolate tier. I do not have a way to estimate revenue within a year. I could scrape data and write this stuff, but that takes too long. So that is that number of the uh what was it? $56,000 spent is just on devs who have newly entered chocolate tier. There is an entire other population of people who have released games years ago and still manage to make 800,000 to all the money in the world every year. They also get chocolate. So Valve is spending some serious money on chocolate every year. It is a fun thing that they do. They're like the Willy Wonkas of the video game industry. Now, how much does Valve spend on their number one researcher who loves to study the data and and study every

move Valve has ever made? Zero. I have received zero boxes of chocolate from Valve. But don't worry, I wouldn't accept it anyway because I must stay impartial and I do not take bribes of chocolate. I do not do anything like that. I just I just stick with it. But if I do get a box of chocolate from Valve, I will eat it live on air. Okay? Don't worry about me. I'm totally fine. Now, if this is kind of hurting your feelings to hear about all this, think about it this way. If it takes a minimum of $800,000 to get the smallest box of chocolate or even $250 box of chocolate for $2 million on $2 million, that is a 0125% tip that Valve is giving those developers. It's great, but I'd rather take the $2 million than that box of chocolate. So, don't think that it's that awesome. I'd rather just have the 2 million. But here's the deal, folks. You don't have

to wait for Valve to validate you. Who cares about Valve? I validate you. And you know what I'm telling you? You earned it. If you released a game in 2025, go buy that $250 box of chocolate. You've earned it. Buy it for yourself. Don't wait for Valve to validate you and think that you're good enough because of $800,000. That's a 0125% tip. You earn it. Just get the chocolate yourself. If I'm linking down below all the chocolate boxes that Valve sends out, I've cross referenced, looked up where they are. You can actually buy this box of chocolate for yourself all on your own. You don't have to wait until you get $800,000, okay? Or in this case, $2 million worth of sales. You don't need to do that. You can just buy it for yourself. Buy it for your team. I don't get a commission on it. I'm not getting affiliate links or something like that. I just want every dev to feel proud about what they did. If you released a game in 2025, you're awesome. And you deserve it. Okay, don't wait for Valve. Do it on your own. Speaking of

deserving it, you deserve a free book. How toarketame.comfree is where you find out more stuff. Where I report on chocolate tier every year. Don't subscribe to my YouTube channel. YouTube sucks. You know what's awesome? This This is awesome. Okay. All right. Now, let me show you one thing. Speaking of uh silly gifts that you get, this right here is a hat that YouTube gives you if you get partnered and you do you jump through their stupid hoops that they want you to jump through. I jump through it just to see what it is. But look at this. See this? This is a custom YouTube hoodie. It's not even knitted that way. I think they just paint it in. Look at that. Yeah. Is this is that painted? I don't I know nothing about text styles or anything, but this is what a YouTube gets you if you get partnered, which I did this year is YouTube sucks. Don't subscribe to YouTube. Like this. This is the true mark of greatness. how how toarketame.comfree. Don't subscribe to my YouTube channel. I

don't want this stuff. I don't even know what I'm going to do with this thing. Look at this. Why would I wear somebody's corporate logo on my head? Look at this. It's got a bell about how you should ring that bell. That's so stupid. That's so stupid. This is Come on, YouTube. What? What the heck? What the heck? That doesn't even have a a like and subscribe. What? I don't need this stuff. Why? Why? Why do they do this? Anyway, don't overthrow your corporate overlords. Do what you deserve and do it yourself. You can do this. You owe it to yourself to do this stuff. Um, that's it. Uh, have a great holiday, everybody. Whatever you celebrate. I hope you're doing it with family and friends. Uh, log off of social media. Stop watching so much YouTube. Spend time with friends instead of watching YouTube. With that, I'll see you later, folks.