The iPhone 16 Pro Max (256 GB, Desert Titanium) is available at a 6% discount on Amazon, with a price tag of Rs 1,35,900. Like the Pro model, it offers 5G, advanced camera controls and improved battery life.
With Amazon Pay ICICI Bank credit card offer, users can get up to Rs 4,000 off on the purchase. The exchange offer is also applicable on this model with up to Rs 73,200 discount.
The key differences between the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max are display size and battery performance. The Pro Max features a larger screen measuring 6.9 inches, while the Pro version is 6.3 inches in size.
While iPhone 16 Pro comes in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB storage sizes, the Pro Max version is not available in 128GB capacity.
Syntho has been quietly building a name for itself in electronic-music production circles with its service providing courses in mixing, mastering, sound design and arrangement.
Now the UK-based startup, founded by musician Josh Baker, is taking some of those courses to an even bigger platform: Spotify. The ‘bite-sized’ lessons are part of the streaming service’s ‘Courses’ hub in the UK, which launched in March 2024.
Syntho is the second dedicated music-edtech provider for the hub, following PlayVirtuoso (since rebranded as Whatclass), although another of the partners – BBC Maestro – has some music courses alongside other topics.
A curated selection of Syntho courses – described by CEO Hazel Savage as “a highlight reel” of its full archive – can be accessed by Spotify Premium listeners as part of their subscription, for no extra cost.
“Spotify already have 15 million UK subscribers. Literally, a better go-to-market plan could not have landed in my lap!” Savage told Music Ally ahead of the launch. “Being able to put our content in front of that volume of people is incredible.”
Savage joined Syntho as CEO in February this year, but has a long history in music-tech that includes roles at Shazam, Pandora and BandLab before founding AI-metadata startup Musiio in 2018, then selling it to SoundCloud four years later.
She spent nearly three years as SoundCloud’s VP of music intelligence while also angel investing in startups including AudioShake, un:hurd Music, Masterchannel, Flossy and AI|Coustics, before taking the Syntho job.
“This is a company that did $700k in revenue last year, yet a lot of people haven’t heard of them. Anything that puts us more in the public spotlight is exciting,” said Savage.
“We will be able to bring people back from Spotify into the Syntho ecosystem as well. They’re very non-restrictive: the Syntho brand and the clickback to our website will be there. They’re not trying to gatekeep the content, so it works well for us.”
While the terms of the agreement are confidential, Savage said that the Spotify deal does generate revenue for Syntho – it’s not pure promotion – nor does it rely on the startup charging Spotify users to watch the courses.
“We already have 700 videos of paywalled content on Syntho, so I didn’t feel the need to paywall it on another platform. For me it’s a shop window,” she said.
On its site, Syntho charges £69.99 a month for an all-you-can-eat subscription, although the price falls to £43 a month and $33.33 a month for people who pay quarterly or annually respectively.
The courses are presented by working artists and producers, with Baker joined by Liquid Earth, Sweely, Alisha and a growing number of other musicians on its roster.
“The majority of Syntho users on our platform are on web. We must be the only music-tech company who are not mobile-first!” said Savage.
“If you’re sitting down to do Ableton or music production, you’re going to be at a desktop or a laptop, and probably multi-screening with two monitors. We do have iOS and Android apps, but we massively skew towards web. Spotify massively skews towards mobile, so it’s a complementary platform for that reason too.”
Savage thinks Syntho is part of a tech trend that isn’t being talked about much in public yet: of investors starting to move away from investments in AI startups in favour of “things that cannot be replicated by AI, which they see as a safer bet in retaining value”.
This may sound counterintuitive at a time of fears in all sorts of industries that AI is coming for people’s jobs. But as Savage points out, AI is also commoditising itself to some degree. When she started Musiio, building proprietary AI models was hard work. Now, with open-source and off-the-shelf models “there is not so much core IP around AI that’s investable”.
“Investors are putting a thesis around ‘how do we shore up our investments so that they’re profitable in the long run?’ I see this in other music verticals too. What are the hyper-specific, hyper-personalised, cannot-be-replicated [by AI] elements of our industry?” she explained.
“You can fake some things with a chatbot, but the minute people figure it out or it falls over, it’s worth less than nothing. You could type into ChatGPT ‘How do I use Ableton?’ and it will churn out a lot of text. But is it accurate? Will it really help you?”
“Or you can learn from someone like Josh Baker who’s doing a million streams a month on Spotify. That experienced, authoritative voice is what’s valuable… VCs are starting to spend their money in stuff that’s very specifically not AI, and not replicable. And investors are always two years ahead of where everyone else is…”
That’s not to say that Syntho is a not-AI company. Savage said that it’s looking for sensible ways to use AI technologies in its business: for example dubbing its courses into other languages. And as AI finds its way into more electronic musicians’ workflows, Syntho may well provide some courses about that.
Savage has followed the recent news of GenAI music firm Suno’s acquisition of browser-based DAW WavTool with interest – “So they made creation as easy as possible, and now they’re going to make it harder again?” – but thinks there’s a question that isn’t being asked loudly enough about Suno, Udio and their peers.
“The court cases are so huge, the raises of 100-mil plus are so big, we’ve never actually addressed the real question with Suno and Udio: is there any actual traction? Who is using those platforms,” she said. “Would anyone pay for this, and if so, are they actually going to use it?”
However, Savage’s priority is building more traction for Syntho, and plotting a careful course for its expansion both geographically and in terms of the content it offers.
“As CEO I’m looking at what does this ecosystem look like in 12-24 months. Is it a white-labelled Syntho? What does it look like if we want to roll out D’n’B (drum’n’bass) and techno? I’m looking at all of this,” she said. Over-expansion will be avoided: for example rushing to move beyond electronic music at too breakneck a pace.
“I’ve seen a lot of other music-tech platforms. If you try to do too much too quickly, what you are and what you do becomes confusing. You can throw in 20 features and suddenly people are like: ‘I don’t know what any of this is’,” she said.
“You see so many platforms do this and that. Now they’re a distributor. Now they do mastering. Now they’re also a label. Jesus, what IS the product?!” continued Savage.
“As much as I’d love to grow Syntho at lightning speed and become the biggest platform and branch out into all the genres, I want to do it in a way where we never lose the core of who we are, and who our community is. How do I grow this without losing what was good about it in the first place?”
Syntho is not actively raising funding right now, although Savage is “always open to conversations”. Her experience with Musiio, which raised $2m over its lifetime, taught her that there is a value in only raising money when you need it – and not raising more than you need to.
“There are some companies out there who’ve raised so much money, an exit is almost impossible. Recorded music is a $29.6bn market globally. It’s small compared to pharma or finance, and in an industry this size your chances of a billion-dollar exit are slim,” she said.
“Companies who’ve raised $10m or $20m need an exit of $100m to make anything they do worthwhile, and. the number of exits out there at that scale is very small. You either do it the Musiio way, and raise a little bit and sell at a good price, or you go full Kobalt and you’re a $1.2bn exit. There’s very little happening in that space in between.”
“Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big believer in this industry. I’ve personally invested in nine companies, all in music-tech. But you can really screw yourself over if you raise too heavily. You price yourself out of the market.”
The Mini Crossword at Times of India offers a quick yet engaging puzzle challenge that refreshes daily. It’s perfect for players who enjoy solving puzzles but have limited time. Whether you’re new to crossword puzzles or a seasoned pro, our mini version offers the perfect mix of challenge and fun. Start your day with a brain-teasing puzzle that will sharpen your vocabulary and improve your problem-solving skills. With new puzzles updated daily, this crossword is ideal for players looking to relax or take a short break during a busy schedule.The Mini Crossword follows the classic crossword puzzle format but in a condensed form, allowing you to solve it quickly while still enjoying the thrill of figuring out the clues. Simply read the hints, enter the correct answers, and fill in the grid. The simple interface ensures a smooth and enjoyable experience for all ages. If you’re looking for more games, TOI has a wide range of other puzzles and brain teasers to explore. Stay sharp with Sudoku, Word Search, and many more options available at your fingertips!
How to play Mini Crossword
Get goingTake a moment to familiarise yourself with the crossword grid and the clues provided.Crack the cluesBegin by selecting a clue from the list. Categories are Across and Down. Read the clue carefully, then think of the corresponding word or phrase that fits the grid.Input answersClick on the first box of the word you want to enter. Start typing the letters of your answer. Keep going until you’ve completed the word or phrase.Utilize functionsNeed a hint? “Reveal Character” uncovers one letter. But be wary, using it incurs time penalties which increases with every usage. It’s best to use this sparingly to maintain a good completion time.Watch the clockKeep an eye on the timer displayed. Faster completions with minimum penalties fetch higher ranks.Regular practiceThe more you play, the better you’ll become. Experiment with different solving strategies to find what works best for you.
Welcome, puzzle enthusiasts!Today we’re exploring winter transportation, entertainment mediums, transactional arrangements, and security states.Ready to decode these intriguing clues?1. Vehicle on runners for traveling over snowWhen winter meets mobility…Snow transportation?→ Winter glider→ Snow runner→ Final hint: What children ride down snowy hills[Think about it…]2. Movie or thin covering layerWhen entertainment meets coating…Dual-purpose medium?→ Cinema creation→ Protective coating→ Final hint: What Hollywood produces and cameras use[Consider the possibilities…]3. Distribute cards or business arrangementWhen games meet commerce…Transactional action?→ Card distribution→ Business agreement→ Final hint: What poker players want and executives make[Almost there…]4. Protected from danger or harmWhen security meets peace of mind…Protected state?→ Danger-free condition→ Secure environment→ Final hint: What parents want their children to be[One last effort…]
Ready to Complete Today’s Puzzle?
From winter transportation to security states, From entertainment mediums to transactional arrangements, We’ve explored quite a range today!Remember, crossing letters can help illuminate your path to the solution.Keep solving!
Mini Crossword related FAQs
What is the Mini Crossword?The Mini Crossword is a smaller, quicker version of a traditional crossword puzzle. Typically featuring a 5×5 grid, it is designed to be completed in just a few minutes, offering a bite-sized puzzle experience that’s perfect for busy players or those new to crosswords.How do I play the Mini Crossword?Playing the Mini Crossword is simple. Just read the clues and fill in the corresponding boxes with the correct answers. Horizontal clues fill the “across” spaces, while vertical clues correspond to “down” spaces.How is the Mini Crossword different from a regular crossword?The Mini Crossword is shorter and simpler than a regular crossword, usually containing fewer and shorter words. It can typically be completed within a few minutes, making it an excellent option for casual puzzle solvers or those looking for a quick brain teaser.Can I play the Mini Crossword on mobile devices?The Mini Crossword is shorter and simpler than a regular crossword, usually containing fewer and shorter words. It can typically be completed within a few minutes, making it an excellent option for casual puzzle solvers or those looking for a quick brain teaser.How often are new Mini Crossword puzzles released?The Mini Crossword is shorter and simpler than a regular crossword, usually containing fewer and shorter words. It can typically be completed within a few minutes, making it an excellent option for casual puzzle solvers or those looking for a quick brain teaser.Are the puzzles free to play?The Mini Crossword is shorter and simpler than a regular crossword, usually containing fewer and shorter words. It can typically be completed within a few minutes, making it an excellent option for casual puzzle solvers or those looking for a quick brain teaser.What if I get stuck on a clue?If you’re stuck on a clue, don’t worry! You can skip to other clues and return later, or use the “hint” function to reveal a letter or word, helping you solve the puzzle more easily.How do I improve my Mini Crossword solving skills?To improve, try solving puzzles regularly. As you practice, you’ll start to recognize common word patterns and develop strategies to solve puzzles more quickly and accurately. You can also review past puzzles for additional practice.Already played today’s game? Practice more from the archiveshttps://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/games/mini-crossword/practice
A total of 147 medical oncologists completed the survey, corresponding to approximately 11% of the estimated 1340 medical oncologists practicing in Türkiye [4]. The median age of participants was 39 years (IQR: 35–46), and 63.3% were male. Respondents had a median of 14 years (IQR: 10–22) of medical experience and a median of 5 years (IQR: 2–14) specifically in oncology. Nearly half (47.6%) practiced in university hospitals, followed by 31.3% in training and research hospitals, and the remainder in private or state settings (Table 1). In terms of academic rank, residents/fellows constituted 38.1%, specialists 22.4%, professors 21.1%, associate professors 16.3%, and assistant professors 2.0%. Respondents were distributed across various urban centers, including major cities such as Istanbul and Ankara, as well as smaller provinces, reflecting a broad regional representation of Türkiye’s oncology workforce.
Table 1 Demographics, AI usage, and education status of participants
Most of the participants completed the survey from Central Anatolia Region of Türkiye (34.0%, n = 50), followed by Marmara Region (27.2%, n = 40), Eagean Region (17.0%, n = 25) and Mediterranian Region (10.2%, n = 15). The distrubution of the participants with regional map of Türkiye is presented in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1
Geographical Distribution of Participants by Regions of Türkiye
AI usage and education
A majority (77.5%, n = 114) of oncologists reported prior use of at least one AI tool. Among these, ChatGPT and other GPT-based models were the most frequently used (77.5%, n = 114), indicating that LLM interfaces had already penetrated clinical professionals’ workflow to some extent. Other tools such as Google Gemini (17.0%, n = 25) and Microsoft Bing (10.9%, n = 16) showed more limited utilization, and just a small fraction had tried less common platforms like Anthropic Claude, Meta Llama-3, or Hugging Face. Despite this relatively high usage rate of general AI tools, formal AI education was scarce: only 9.5% (n = 14) of respondents had received some level of formal AI training, and this was primarily basic-level. Nearly all (94.6%, n = 139) expressed a desire for more education, suggesting that their forays into AI usage had been largely self-directed and that there was a perceived need for structured, professionally guided learning.
Regarding sources of AI knowledge, 38.8% (n = 57) reported not using any resource, underscoring a gap in continuing education. Among those who did seek information, the most common channels were colleagues (26.5%, n = 39) and academic publications (23.1%), followed by online courses/websites (21.8%, n = 32), popular science publications (19.7%, n = 29), and professional conferences/workshops (18.4%, n = 27). This pattern suggests that while some clinicians attempt to inform themselves about AI through peer discussions or scientific literature, many remain unconnected to formalized educational pathways or comprehensive training programs.
Self-assessed AI knowledge
Participants generally rated themselves as having limited knowledge across key AI domains (Fig. 2A). More than half reported having “no knowledge” or only “some knowledge” in areas such as machine learning (86.4%, n = 127, combined) and deep learning (89.1%, n = 131, combined). Even fundamental concepts like LLM sand generative AI were unfamiliar to a substantial portion of respondents. For instance, nearly half (47.6%, n = 70) had no knowledge of LLMs, and two-thirds (66.0%, n = 97) had no knowledge of generative AI. Similar trends were observed for natural language processing and advanced statistical analyses, reflecting a widespread lack of confidence and familiarity with the technical underpinnings of AI beyond superficial usage.
Fig. 2
Overview of Oncologists’ AI Familiarity, Attitudes, and Perceived Impact. (A) Distribution of participants’ self-assessed AI knowledge, (B) attitudes toward AI in various medical practice areas, and (C) insights into AI’s broader impact on medical practice
Attitudes toward AI integration in oncology
When asked to evaluate AI’s role in various clinical tasks (Fig. 2B), respondents generally displayed cautious optimism. Prognosis estimation stood out as one of the areas where AI received the strongest endorsement, with a clear majority rating it as “positive” or “very positive.” A similar pattern emerged for medical research, where nearly three-quarters of respondents recognized AI’s potential in academic field. In contrast, opinions on treatment planning and patient follow-up were more mixed, with a considerable proportion adopting a neutral stance. Diagnosis and clinical decision support still garnered predominantly positive views, though some participants expressed reservations, possibly reflecting concerns about reliability, validation, and the interpretability of AI-driven recommendations.
Broadening the perspective, Fig. 2C illustrates how participants viewed AI’s impact on aspects like patient-physician relationships, social perception, and health policy. While most believed AI could improve overall medical practices and potentially reduce workload, many worried it might affect the quality of personal interactions with patients or shape public trust in uncertain ways. Approximately half recognized potential benefits for healthcare access, but some remained neutral or skeptical, perhaps concerned that technology might not equally benefit all patient populations or could inadvertently exacerbate existing disparities.
Ethical and regulatory concerns
Tables 2 and 3, along with Figs. 3A–C, summarize participants’ ethical and legal considerations. Patient management (57.8%, n = 85), article or presentation writing (51.0%, n = 75), and study design (25.2%, n = 37) emerged as key activities where the integration of AI was viewed as ethically questionable. Respondents feared that relying on AI for sensitive clinical decisions or academic tasks could compromise patient safety, authenticity, or scientific integrity. A subset of respondents reported utilizing AI in certain domains, including 13.6% (n = 20) for article and presentation writing, and 11.6% (n = 17) for patient management, despite acknowledging potential ethical issues in the preceding question. However, only about half of the respondents who admitted using AI for patient management identified this as an ethical concern. This discrepancy suggests that while oncologists harbor concerns, convenience or lack of guidance may still drive them to experiment with AI applications.
Table 2 Ethical concerns regarding AI usage in medical practice
Table 3 Views on ethical development and regulations for AI
Fig. 3
Ethical Considerations, Implementation Barriers, and Strategic Solutions for AI Integration. (A) Frequency distribution of major ethical concerns, (B) heatmap of implementation challenges across technical, educational, clinical, and regulatory categories, and (C) priority matrix of proposed integration solutions including training and regulatory frameworks. The implementation time and time-line is extracted from the open-ended questions. Timeline: The estimated time needed for implementation; Implementation time: The urgency of implementation. The timelime and implementation time is fully correlated (R.2 = 1.0)
Moreover, nearly 82% of participants supported using AI in medical practice, yet 79.6% (n = 117) did not find current legal regulations satisfactory. Over two-thirds advocated for stricter legal frameworks and ethical audits. Patient consent was highlighted by 61.9% (n = 91) as a critical step, implying that clinicians want transparent processes that safeguard patient rights and maintain trust. Liability in the event of AI-driven errors also remained contentious: 68.0% (n = 100) held software developers partially responsible, and 61.2% (n = 90) also implicated physicians. This suggests a shared accountability model might be needed, involving multiple stakeholders across the healthcare and technology sectors.
To address these gaps, respondents proposed various solutions. Establishing national and international standards (82.3%, n = 121) and enacting new laws (59.2%, n = 87) were seen as pivotal. More than half favored creating dedicated institutions for AI oversight (53.7%, n = 79) and integrating informed consent clauses related to AI use (53.1%, n = 78) into patient forms. These collective views point to a strong desire among oncologists for a structured, legally sound environment in which AI tools are developed, tested, and implemented responsibly.
Ordinal regression analysis of factors associated with AI knowledge, attitudes, and concerns
For knowledge levels, the ordinal regression model identified formal AI education as the sole significant predictor (ß = 30.534, SE = 0.6404, p < 0.001). In contrast, other predictors such as age (ß = −0.1835, p = 0.159), years as physician (ß = 0.0936, p = 0.425), years in oncology (ß = 0.0270, p = 0.719), and academic rank showed no significant associations with knowledge levels in the ordinal model.
The ordinal regression for concern levels revealed no significant predictors among demographic factors, professional experience, academic status, AI education, nor current knowledge levels (p > 0.05) were associated with the ordinal progression of ethical and practical concerns.
For attitudes toward AI integration, the ordinal regression identified two significant predictors. Those willing to receive AI education showed progression toward more positive attitudes (ß = 13.143, SE = 0.6688, p = 0.049), and actual receipt of AI education also predicted progression toward more positive attitudes (ß = 12.928, SE = 0.6565, p = 0.049). Additionally, higher knowledge levels showed a trend toward more positive attitudes in the ordinal model although not significant (ß = 0.3899, SE = 0.2009, p = 0.052).
Table 4 presents the ordinal regression analyses examining predictors of AI knowledge levels, concerns, and attitudes among Turkish medical oncologists.
Table 4 Ordinal regression results for assessing the factors affecting knowledge levels, attitudes and concerns
Qualitative insights
The open-ended responses, analyzed qualitatively, revealed several recurring themes reinforcing the quantitative findings. Participants frequently stressed the importance of human oversight, emphasizing that AI should complement rather than replace clinical expertise, judgment, and empathy. Data security and privacy emerged as central concerns, with some respondents worrying that insufficient safeguards could lead to breaches of patient confidentiality. Others highlighted the challenge of ensuring that AI tools maintain cultural and social sensitivity in diverse patient populations. Calls for incremental, well-regulated implementation of AI were common, as was the suggestion that education and ongoing professional development would be essential to ensuring clinicians use AI effectively and ethically.
In essence, while there is broad acknowledgment that AI holds promise for enhancing oncology practice, respondents also recognize the need for clear ethical standards, solid regulatory frameworks, comprehensive training, and thoughtful integration strategies. oncology care.
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Apple is said to be working on a foldable iPad which the company was rumoured to launch this year. However, a new online report suggests that Apple has halted the development of its foldable iPad due to high production cost, limited consumer demand and some unsolved technical and design issues.According to a report by DigiTimes, the Cupertino-based tech giant has presently shifted its focus from foldable iPad to foldable iPhone. The foldable iPhone is going through early prototyping stages and is tipped to launch next year. The foldable iPad, once envisioned as a premium hybrid between a tablet and a MacBook, is now delayed indefinitely, with no clear timeline for revival.“Sources familiar with the matter say Apple had also been exploring a foldable iPad alongside the iPhone. However, the company has decided to pause progress on the larger foldable device for the time being. Industry experts attribute this decision to manufacturing difficulties, increased production expenses—particularly related to flexible display technology—and a relatively modest consumer demand for larger foldable devices,” said the report.The report also suggests that sources close to the matter reveal the foldable iPad’s price tag could exceed even its most expensive iPads, making it a tough sell in a market where tablets already occupy a niche segment. Additionally, Apple’s insistence on a crease-free display—a problem that still plagues many foldables—has proven difficult to solve without driving up cost.While the project isn’t canceled outright, analysts now expect a potential launch closer to 2028, if at all.
Multiple reports suggest that Google will announce the Pixel 10 lineup in mid-August. Until now, rumors have focused solely on the upcoming phones, but a new leak hints that a new pair of budget earbuds could debut alongside them. Plus, Google will seemingly even make a surprising color addition to its flagship Pixel Buds.
Related
New leak reveals exciting Google Pixel 10 and 10 Pro color options
Only names for now
In a post on X, leaker @MysteryLupin claims Google will launch the Pixel Buds 2a in Hazel, Strawberry, Iris, and Fog Light. This is the first time a leak has explicitly talked or even pointed to Buds 2a’s existence. Sadly, the X post does not provide more details about the upcoming earbuds.
Given that the Pixel Buds A-Series debuted in June 2021, Google’s budget earbuds are long overdue for a refresh. And considering MysteryLupin’s solid track record with last-minute product leaks, there’s little reason to doubt his latest claims.
We praised the Pixel Buds A-Series in our initial review, as it brought major improvements over Google’s previous earbuds despite its affordable price tag. But the market has changed since then, with several affordable earbuds now available at a similar $100 price point with features like Advanced Noise Cancellation (ANC) and multipoint connectivity.
Hopefully, the Pixel Buds 2a will address these shortcomings of the current model while also improving the battery life.
Pixel Buds Pro 2 could get a new color option
In another X post, the leaker claims Google will refresh the Pixel Buds Pro 2 with a new Sterling color option. In simpler language, that’s a light gray shade. The company’s premium earbuds originally debuted in August 2024 alongside the Pixel 9 lineup in four colors: Charcoal, Porcelain, Aloe, and Hot Pink. To mark their first anniversary, it appears Google will introduce this new color variant.
The original Pixel Buds Pro came in six colors, so even with this upcoming new addition, the Buds Pro 2 will still be available in one fewer color than its predecessor.
If Google intends to unveil the Pixel Buds 2a alongside the Pixel 10 on August 20, we should see more leaks of the earbuds pop up on the internet before that.
As reported by IGN, citing two anonymous individuals within BARB, on July 2, Benzies finally addressed staff nearly a month after MindsEye’s disastrous release in a brief video call, blaming “internal and external saboteurs” for the mess Build A Rocket Boy and MindsEye have found themselves in – remarks that closely mirrored co-CEO Mark Gerhar’s bizarre claims that all the negative feedback MindsEye received before launch came from paid bots.
Allegedly, the CEO assured staff that BARB would bounce back and relaunch MindsEye, and while there’s hope among the studio’s developers for a No Man’s Sky-style redemption arc, they themselves are unsure BARB would be able to deliver, especially as the studio has confirmed plans to lay off at least 100 developers from its 300-strong UK office.
Speaking about the job cuts, IGN further claimed that Build A Rocket Boy has sent emails to all UK employees and to staff at PlayFusion – acquired by BARB in 2024 – informing them they’re at risk of being fired. With the PlayFusion team and all 300 of BARB’s UK workers potentially facing the same fate – metaphorically speaking – as King Leonidas’s army at Thermopylae in the coming weeks or months, the future of MindsEye and PlayFusion’s FPS project Ascendant appears, at best, uncertain.
Here at FT Alphaville we love exploring “black hole” companies: those ultra-private businesses that must largely be observed by the influence they exert on others.
But even within that category, there aren’t many places quite like Valve Corporation, with its bizarre corporate structure, revenue-per-head figures that would make Silicon Valley or Wall Street giants hot and bothered, a product that seems to basically print money, and a seldom-seen leader deified in some corners of the internet — all without ever taking outside investment.
Few companies can claim a bigger role in video game history than Valve. Founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington — both former Windows developers at Microsoft — the company’s first title, Half-Life, launched in 1998, is widely credited with transforming the first-person shooter genre. Harrington left the company in 2006, leaving Newell (known to some online obsessives as “Gaben”) as its de facto head.
Valve games have been few in number, but their influence is huge: Half-Life and its sequels for their storytelling; Portal for its creativity and humour; the Counter-Strike series for its role in the emergence of esports; Left 4 Dead for its use of artificial intelligence to create dynamic co-operative gameplay. However, its most influential title is arguably Team Fortress 2, the game whose cosmetics system brought microtransactions — where players pay small amounts to unlock in-game content — into the mainstream.
In doing so, it created a business model that has, for better and for worse, powered the mobile games revolution of the past two decades — and laid the groundworks for one of the zanier presentation slides we’ve seen outside of SoftBank:
Valve has even managed to find some success in the notoriously tricky hardware market. Its handheld console — which looks roughly like a military-grade Nintendo Switch — has sold “multiple millions”, the company claimed in late 2023, with market research firm IDC estimating it hit 6mn sales by early this year.
But its financial engine, powering almost all its other achievements, is Steam. For a generation of gamers, Steam needs no introduction — such is its dominance. But for those blissfully unaware, Steam is a storefront, distribution service and social media network for PC gamers that launched in 2003.
And it basically prints money.
Personal computers havebeen a tricky proposal for game developers. In the early ’00s, pirating PC games was pretty straightforward. Most titles sold as a physical disc with a unique serial code, but these could easily be faked.
For developers, this was obviously anathema. Digital rights management — controlling who could use game software — became an increasingly urgent topic.
In came Valve. After unsuccessfully pitching to companies including Microsoft, it developed Steam, which combined game-updating technology, anti-piracy and anti-cheating measures on one platform. It would sell users games and verify that they owned the game — virtually eliminating the need for discs and serial codes.
Steam landed in the right place at the right time, quickly becoming the default platform for PC gamers to download and manage their games. Safer and more convenient than piracy, it also introduced a social overlay that allowed players to communicate more easily while playing different games.
“The real value proposition for something like Steam is to have everything in one place,” says Clay Griffin, an analyst at MoffettNathanson. “It’s a one-stop shop.”
As a result, Steam has established a dominant position in the PC games industry, with analysts assuming it accounts for perhaps 70 per cent of all sales of such games. That equates to a significant chunk of what market research firm Newzoo reckons is a $40bn sector (including hardware). The platform has more than 100,000 titles available for download, dwarfing its competitors, and levies a typical 30 per cent commission on sales of games and their (often extensive) add-ons.
And it’s good to be the king. Amid a sustained period of stagnation for consoles, spending on PC games has seen healthy increases. In a presentation shared earlier this year, Matthew Ball, at investment adviser Epyllion, identified PC as a “big bright spot” amid a difficult patch for traditional gaming vectors (high res):
Steam’s concurrent player figures hit a record high earlier this year following double-digit annual growth, prompting Goodbody analyst Patrick O’Donnell to tell clients that Steam “now owns the PC distribution channel” — if it didn’t already — with “significant advantages” in engagement against its rivals. Based on Steam users’ language choices, much of the growth comes from China.
Advisory firm Ampere Analysis estimates that Steam had 170mn global active monthly users in May, up from 153mn the year before. Remarkably, average concurrent users are about three times the number who are actually playing games.
Piers Harding-Rolls, Ampere’s games research director, said this “highlights that many users automatically sign into the platform and also that Steam represents more than a PC game storefront — it’s a gaming community platform in its own right with millions visiting the app to engage with other users”.
If generative AI does — as some optimists hope — remove development barriers to create a supply-side revolution in gaming content production, Valve may find itself selling shovels in a gold rush.
Working out how much money Valve already makes from its dominance of PC gaming is tricky. Newell is presumed to be its biggest shareholder, and the company is intensely private. It makes almost no financial disclosures, and its employees seldom give interviews to the press.
Still, there are some clues.
In 2021, developer Wolfire Games sued Valve, alleging it was distorting the PC games market by imposing “platform most-favoured nation” clauses on sellers — forcing them to offer their best price on Steam.
Other individual customers launched a lawsuit against Valve over pricing last summer, and a judge ruled last year that their case could be brought together with Wolfire’s in a class-action suit — opening the door to other developers joining in. Their allegations are broad, but focus on the notion that without Steam’s dominance, average commission rates across the sector would be lower: improving developers’ margins and/or lowering consumer prices.
Improperly redacted documents from the initial Wolfire case — later hidden — indicated that Valve had only 336 staff in 2021, with just 79 of them working on Steam. We’ve remade it using data reported contemporaneously:
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The public docket also briefly contained another chart, which purported to show Steam’s commission revenues and, uh, healthy margins (high res here):
We’re all mature, grown-up blog writers/readers here, so let’s have a discussion about sources and numbers.
This is a screenshot of a document we can no longer access. Pavel Djundik, creator of SteamDB, a Steam data platform, is cited by contemporaneous reports as having spotted the data underpinning the staff headcount chart above. Djundik subsequently tweeted this:
Said Reddit thread (in r/fuckepic, “The premiere source for all Epic Games criticism”) can be viewed here.
Does that make the chart credible? Naturally, we reached out to Djundik and the Redditor who posted the charts to see if they still had the original documents. Their responses, respectively: “No” and (thus far) silence.
Let’s assume, for the sake of our collective sanity, that these figures are basically correct. They would suggest that with an effective commission rate probably somewhat beneath the 30 per cent baseline, and adjusted for costs, Steam handled perhaps $10bn of games sales in 2021.
Taken by itself, the chart indicates Steam had an operating margin of about 60 per cent and made $2bn of commission revenues, for about $1.3bn in profit just from Steam commissions in 2021.
If we assume that:
1) All Valve’s admin staff work on Steam (obviously untrue, and therefore conservative for per-head estimation purposes) 2) The numbers we’ve cited are roughly correct (not unfathomable)
It suggests Steam perhaps, maybe, possibly makes about $11.4mn per head in profit, per year, from commissions alone. Which is pretty spicy. For context, Wall Street money machine Jane Street can only boast a profit-per-head of $4.3mn. Even if you assume that the rest of Valve only breaks even, Steam’s cut from sales alone would mean the company as a whole makes nearly $3.9mn of profit per employee (higher than Citadel Securities, FWIW).
One thing that does perhaps support the chart’s credibility is how rapidly Valve’s lawyers moved to get the documents removed from the public docket.
Filed in the court docket for the active class action is this chart, which projects that Steam’s overall revenues will pass $10bn next year (high-res):
No source is given in the filing, but the chart is taken from the Global PC Games Market Report 2024 by Video Game Insights, a market research group that has subsequently been bought by Sensor Tower.
In its methodology, VGI explains that those figures were derived from a mix of factors, including the number of reviews, how often certain games appear on user profiles, bestseller lists and “proprietary research”. Logically, we would expect this to include sales of Valve’s own games via Steam.
Like with most market research, it ought to be taken with a bucket of salt, although it’s at least in the same rough ballpark as an estimate by Microsoft that Valve as a whole made $6.5bn in revenue in 2021. Again, assuming these figures are even roughly true, what can they tell us?
Chiefly, it would indicate that commissions — despite being extremely lucrative — aren’t responsible for the majority of Steam’s overall revenues (if both disclosed charts, or Microsoft, are correct, we can compare $2bn in Steam commission income in 2021 to $6.5bn to $7.4bn of overall sales).
It’s tricky to believe. Sure, Valve likely makes chunky direct revenues for its own games, and associated microtransactions for things such as Counter-Strike “skins” — on which margins are likely to be excellent — but we’d suspect things are more tilted towards commissions.
Or, of course, that VGI’s figures — or any of the others we’ve seen — are just wrong. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Hard profit figures remain elusive, but on overall revenues, at least, a court document from 2024 — shared by The GameDiscoverCo Newsletter — offers a teasing look inside the black box. In it, a heavily redacted email chain shows Valve employees discussing the company’s revenues per hour.
Kristian Miller, one of Valve’s data scientists, describes the company in the emails as a revenue “outlier”, sharing two charts that seem to put it above Silicon Valley’s top companies — possibly well above (high-res one and two):
It’s safe to assume that Valve is the redacted company at the top
In this, as with so many things, we invite readers to believe whatever it is they want to believe. If you work for Valve and want to tell us more, please get in touch. The company did not respond to our requests for comment on its financial performance or any other part of this article.
The prospect of a drawn-out court battle may mean more of the platform’s secrets spill out in the coming years. For now, Steam’s position — of an ultra-lucrative, efficient presence of a relatively small but healthy sector — seems secure. Yet as the games industry continues to grow, the temptation for a major tech company to take a serious swipe at it will only grow.
“Anybody who wants to put Valve out of business could do so, but nobody cares,” argues Michael Pachter, a gaming industry analyst at Wedbush Securities.
That said, it’s not like nobody has tried. Steam’s biggest rival is probably the Epic Games Store, which has been powered largely by the success of battle royale sensation Fortnite. Yet despite this huge draw, Epic “has failed to really impact Steam in any meaningful way”, according to Harding-Rolls:
This strategy has involved offering a better share of sales to developers and publishers and giving away lots of free games. This has prompted Steam to change its own revenue share policies. However, Steam continues to grow and is as dominant in terms of premium PC game sales as it has ever been. I think this illustrates that displacing Steam would be very challenging.
There are also several smaller distributors, such as Good Old Games — which made a sliver of profit on sales equivalent to about $55mn last year, and is owned by Poland’s CD Projekt — and indie platform Itch. Microsoft (which, in a different timeline, could surely have dominated this area) runs a somewhat unambitious store, while gaming heavyweight EA shut down Origin, its own launcher, earlier this year.
Visibility on market share across the sector is poor, but none, currently, seem to be approaching the reach and revenues of Steam.
Valve is a very weird company, and cheerfully admits it. Its 56-page Valve Handbook for New Employees lays out its unusual structure, and right at the start concedes that “it can take some time getting used to”.
And, pretty quickly, it’s made clear that Valve is indeed not like the other businesses:
Hierarchy is great for maintaining predictability and repeatability. It simplifies planning and makes it easier to control a large group of people from the top down, which is why military organizations rely on it so heavily.
But when you’re an entertainment company that’s spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value. We want innovators, and that means maintaining an environment where they’ll flourish.
That’s why Valve is flat. It’s our shorthand way of saying that we don’t have any management, and nobody “reports to” anybody else. We do have a founder/president, but even he isn’t your manager. This company is yours to steer — toward opportunities and away from risks. You have the power to green-light projects. You have the power to ship products.
The message is that Valve employees basically self-organise in what the company describes as a “flatland”, with even Newell (the “founder/president” referred to above) freed from hierarchical duties (the reality, according to one ex-insider, may be slightly less radical).
Flatness involves some interesting decisions. On a practical level, all desks at Valve have wheels, with staff physically shifting themselves around the office to be near the people they’re working with.
The handbook even includes a little illustration of how this should work:
Does this system produce results? On one level, yes: Valve seemingly makes loadsamoney. On another very visible level, absolutely not: Valve releases major new games at a glacial pace. The much-anticipated third title in the Half-Life series became the video game equivalent of Samuel Beckett’s Godot, until it was quietly cancelled.
“I’ve not met anybody who had a career there,” says Wedbush’s Pachter. “They all leave after, you know, 10 years. They last long enough to make money. But the developers I’ve known there have left for greener pastures because the company doesn’t publish games.”
Another oddity is the company’s use of “stack ranking”. Once a year, staff are asked to rank colleagues within their division based on skill level, productivity, group contribution and product contribution. These rankings are aggregated, and then used to determine compensation. As the handbook says:
By choosing these categories and basing the stack ranking on them, the company is explicitly stating, ‘This is what is valuable.’
This is potentially problematic, and not just from a financial planning perspective.
Whatever a company’s culture, it is bound to work for some people better than others. An investigation by YouTube channel People Make Games offers some interesting anecdata from people for whom it didn’t work, and explores the limitations of stack ranking (which, it suggests, rewards short-term, high-visibility work over less-glamorous, longer-term projects):
That’s not the only challenge. Valve presents itself as jocular, confident and unruffled, but the internet is a complicated place.
A report by the US’s Anti-Defamation League, published last year, claimed Steam’s forums were “rife with extremism & antisemitism”, with thousands of users deploying symbols such as the Nazi swastika, the sonnenrad and the Totenkopf. They found 1.18mn “potentially extremist” copypastas on Steam’s forums, with swastikas “by far” the most popular.
Their report suggests Valve has struggled — or ceased — to put a lid on such content:
A [ADL Centre on Extremish] analysis of copypastas on Steam also found evidence that Steam attempted to moderate certain extremist content before stopping for unknown reasons. From late 2019 through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when users in gaming spaces reached an all-time high, the use of several swastika copypastas sharply dropped to near-zero rates. The same swastika copypastas then sharply increased in frequency in September 2020, suggesting that Steam moderated this content for a brief period. There is no observable difference between the variations in copypasta posted prior to November 2019 and those posted after 2020.
Moderation issues are not unique to Steam, but Valve’s approach to handling such content on its platform is certainly laissez-faire.
In 2018, after a backlash, the company pulled the game Active Shooter — in which players could simulate a school shooting — from sale ahead of its release. In the wake of that decision, Steam outlined its philosophy for “who gets to be on the Steam store”. Its conclusion:
Valve shouldn’t be the ones deciding this. If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what content you can or can’t buy. If you’re a developer, we shouldn’t be choosing what content you’re allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make…
With that principle in mind, we’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.
Conveniently, it’s the kind of libertarian approach that will probably make Valve the most money.
Valve is made in the image of Newell, who is most easily categorised as a libertarian. And there seems little argument that it has been a fantastic financial success.
Newell is 62 years old. It has been a few years since he gave a press interview, but an interesting profile of him published by Forbes last year said Newell was “rarely” in Valve’s offices any longer, no longer attended company events and had apparently since Covid-19 been living at sea in one of his five ships to avoid the virus.
Newell’s taste for the outlandish is not restricted to his life aquatic. Here’s what The Verge reported in May:
Valve co-founder and CEO Gabe Newell, the company behind Half-Life and DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike and preeminent PC game distribution platform Steam, has long toyed with the idea that your brain should be more connected to your PC. It began over a decade ago with in-house psychologists studying people’s biological responses to video games; Valve once considered earlobe monitors for its first VR headset. The company publicly explored the idea of brain-computer interfaces for gaming at GDC in 2019.
But Newell decided to spin off the idea. That same year, he quietly incorporated a new brain-computer interface startup, Starfish Neuroscience — which has now revealed plans to produce its very first brain chip later this year.
Speaking as part of a Valve-produced documentary about Half-Life, released last year (and not, apparently, on a boat at the time), Newell said:
I always have absolutely nothing interesting to say when people say ‘Would you reflect on your legacy?’. I really don’t look back a whole lot. I’m always excited by the future, right? So to me it’s like, I can look back at the things that we did, but to me they’re just the stepping stones to what we’re gonna be able to do in the future. That’s just how I’m wired.
While its founder takes strides towards becoming literally wired, Valve has settled in a strange spot. Under Newell’s leadership — geographically proximate or not — the company has been able to carve out and defend its own unusual niche, by doing things differently, and — for better and for worse — going where others have feared to tread.
But if he were ever to exit the picture, Valve would surely become a tempting takeover target. In the meantime, we hopefully have lots of fun legal discovery to look forward to, which might give us more information on the black hole of PC gaming.
