Valve is an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. The company is based in Bellevue, Washington.[1] Valve's first game was Half-Life, a first-person shooter released in 1998.[2] It sold over nine million retail copies.[3][4] Alongside Half-Life's launch, Valve released development tools to enable the player community to create content and mods.[5] The company then proceeded to hire the creators of popular mods such as Counter-Strike.[1]
Valve continued their trend of developing predominantly first-person video games in the 2000s with a number of critically successful releases. In 2004, they released the highly anticipated sequel Half-Life 2 through their own digital distribution service Steam. The game sold over 10 million copies and was met with acclaim. Valve released two subsequent episodes for Half-Life 2 and later packaged those games together with the puzzle game Portal and the multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 in a collection known as The Orange Box.[6] By the end of 2008, combined retail sales of the Half-Life series, Counter-Strike series and The Orange Box had surpassed 32 million units.[4] Newell also projected that digital sales of Valve's games would eventually exceed retail sales as Steam continued to grow.[4][7] In the late 2000s, Valve released two zombie-themed first-person shooters focusing on cooperative gameplay with the Left 4 Dead series. The company continued to release multiplayer games with the launches of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2,[6] both of which have large esports communities fostered by Valve.[8] During the 2010s, Valve began focusing on supporting their established multiplayer games with regular content updates.[6][9][10][11] In the late 2010s, Valve began investing in virtual reality and started to develop games and other software that make use of the technology, such as Half-Life: Alyx.[12][13]
Valve is considered one of the most important and influential companies in the games industry.[14] The reception of their games, along with the creation of Steam, has prompted some publications to list Valve as one of the top game developers of all time and the most powerful company in PC gaming.[15][16][17] Newell received a BAFTA Fellowship award in 2013 for recognizing the impact Valve had left on the gaming industry in producing several successful game franchises.[5]
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