Fifty Million Dollars Per Employee?

There is a gaming company called Valve. If you are middle age or younger, you will recognize it as the company behind the online gaming platform Steam. But even that younger audience will be stunned to learn that Valve makes almost fifty million dollars per employee.

That number is not a typo. It is the highest revenue per employee of any major company in the world. No bank compares. No tech titan compares. No oil giant compares.

On the surface, it looks like a triumph of business. But if we are honest, it is a diagnosis of humanity. Revenue like that does not come from productivity. It comes from escape.

An entire culture is disappearing into digital worlds. And the numbers prove it.

The Number That Should Scare Us

Valve has roughly 350 employees. Yet the company pulls in an estimated seventeen billion dollars per year.

This is a tidal wave of money flowing into the hands of a company that sells nothing physical, nothing tangible, and nothing that improves human life in the traditional sense.

This is not the economy of workers. It is the economy of retreat.

Millions of people are disappearing into games, virtual marketplaces, battle passes, digital cosmetics, and endless online worlds for hours each day.

There can be no other way a company this small produces numbers that large.

The product is not software. The product is a human flight from reality.

Childhood Used to Go Outward. Now it collapses inward.

If you grew up before the smartphone era, you remember something that feels almost mythical today.

Mattel cars on the floor. Lincoln Logs. Erector sets. Rock’em Sock’em Robots. Bicycles tossed on a lawn. Treehouses. A front yard full of friends. Scraped knees.

Childhood used to push outward. You explored. You experimented. You lived in the physical world. You met people. Real people. Friends from school. Kids from the neighborhood. Strangers who became part of your story. You learned how to talk, how to laugh, how to handle conflict, and how to belong because daily life required it.

Now childhood pulls inward.

Gaming consoles glow all day. Battle passes are purchased on a whim. Virtual achievements replace real ones. Kids grow up scrolling instead of climbing. Digital filters replace real faces. Even friendships are managed through avatars and chats rather than face-to-face.

A generation is being raised trapped inside screens.

The Economy of Escape

We call this the gaming industry. That is not accurate.

The real industry is attention. The real commodity is the human soul. And Valve’s profit line shows exactly where our society now spends its hours.

We are not a gaming generation. We are an escapist generation.

Reality is hard. Reality is uncertain. Reality is stressful. Reality requires courage. Screens require nothing. They offer instant comfort. No growth. No risk. No responsibility.

The spiritual vacuum

People retreat into fake worlds because the real world feels overwhelming. Confusing. Divided. Spiritually empty. Screens pretend to offer what is missing.

Purpose.
Community.
Adventure.
Identity.
Belonging.

Faith once filled these spaces. So did family. So did real community. Remove those, and individuals will look for meaning elsewhere. If they cannot find it, they settle for stimulation instead.

That trade is deadly because reality always returns. And reality always collects what was neglected.

Dating collapse: the missing human connection

People often ask why dating has collapsed among young people. The answer is not complicated. It is hiding in plain sight.

One in three young men now reports zero romantic or physical contact over the past year.

Among 18- to 29-year-olds, the share who are not dating and not interested in dating has quadrupled within a single generation.

Young men are now significantly more single than young women, a pattern not seen in modern American history. And here is the part nobody wants to talk about. Women are increasingly turning to older men because the young men their own age are disappearing into digital worlds.

This is not happening because young people have stopped wanting companionship. It is happening because companionship now competes with consoles.

When you were young, the dating pool was real life. You met people at school, church, work, the mall, the skating rink, the bowling alley, the movies, and through friends. You interacted. You showed up. You talked.

Today, courtship has been absorbed by digital worlds.

Hours of gaming.
Social feeds instead of social lives.
Virtual friendships are replacing physical ones.
Dating apps that train people to swipe, not commit.
Delayed adulthood.
Fear of rejection because real-life skills were never formed.

Screens teach avoidance. Screens teach passivity. Screens teach people to choose comfort over connection.

So, dating collapses. Human relationships shrink. Birthrates fall. Loneliness spikes. Drama disappears from physical spaces because it now happens entirely in virtual ones.

This is not a moral lecture. It is a sociological fact.

A generation that trades meaning for entertainment

Entertainment is not evil in moderation. The problem is the scale. We are talking about billions of hours poured into digital illusions that leave no mark on the world.

Entertainment has become a sedative.

Instead of building families, communities, or churches, people build character skins and virtual inventories. Instead of confronting real problems, they wander through imaginary ones.

Romance. Community. Faith. Family. All require presence. Gaming requires none of them. So, gaming wins the time lottery by default.

The closing line

If Valve makes fifty million dollars per employee, it is not because they built a better company. It is because we built a worse culture. Their profit margin is a mirror, reflecting exactly what we have become.

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Martin Mawyer is the President of Christian Action Network, host of the “Shout Out Patriots” podcast, and author of When Evil Stops Hiding. Subscribe for more action alerts, cultural commentary, and real-world campaigns defending faith, family, and freedom.