'Every year they got f***ing chocolates that we didn't': Valve gives a box of sweets to Steam's biggest breadwinners every year, and Peak's devs finally got one after years of jealously watching their Slay the Spire office mates enjoy GabeN confections

(Image credit: Aggro Crab / Landfall)

What's the best part of making $800,000 in videogame sales on Steam in a single year? You might think it'd be the money, but not so. It's actually the free chocolate you get from Valve for making all that money on its digital sales platform.

As Gamesradar noted in its report on this, there's a video on YouTube where games marketing consultant Chris Zukowski talks about Valve's coveted "chocolate tier": a special class of studios that, once they get up to around $800,000 in annual revenue, receive a box of fancy chocolates as a gift from Valve at the end of the year.

The team didn't receive a gift from Valve in 2024 despite pulling in the right amount of cash from that game, which stung; when Kaman emailed Valve about it, he got an apology. The team's unrest was compounded by the fact that Aggro Crab shares a building with Mega Crit, the Slay the Spire developer—as you might expect, that team has gotten chocolate year after year.

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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