I'm not sure Valve would be considered "large corporation", at least at this point. Last time I checked, they had something like 300 employees. I'm not sure where the line would be for me to consider something a "large corporation", but at least 10000 would be my first guess.
Valve has to be worth way more than a billion dollars. A billion is like medium-stage startup at this point. They have to be worth 10x that easy, as a floor. Much higher (100x) for a strategic acquisition from a company like Microsoft.
"Much higher (100x) for a strategic acquisition from a company like Microsoft" is grossly exaggerated. There were only 171 companies worth more than $88.3bn (<100x a billion) as of December [1], a number that may have even dropped during current market conditions. Activision Blizzard is worth today ~$60bn and Microsoft is buying it at ~$68bn [2]. It's one the largest acquisitions they've made, and the largest publicly known amount by far [3] with LinkedIn (2016) second at $26bn.
Agree that Valve is likely worth at least 10x a billion, though.
Interesting, I've never considered the value/valuation/profits to be a part of what makes a corporation large or not, but mainly focused on just the size of the organization. So a corporation could go from small -> medium -> large without even changing the headcount?
It's about the amount of power and influence you can wield. In a discussion like this, "large corporation" is just a shorthand. When it comes to the legal system everyone should be on equally footing. That they aren't is why these things are so upsetting.
Number of employees is irrelevant here. Revenue, profit, holdings, these are what is relevant to the issue at hand. On those measures, Valve is enormous.
