Valve Corporation
Valve was founded in 1996 by two former Microsoft employees, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Its first game, Half-Life, ran on GoldSrc, a heavily modified Quake engine, and Valve has built its own engines ever since: Source for Half-Life 2 and Source 2 for Dota 2, Half-Life: Alyx and Counter-Strike 2. It also runs Steam and makes the Steam Deck.
History
- 24 August 1996. Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, both ex-Microsoft, founded Valve, L.L.C. near Redmond.
- November 1998. Half-Life released; built on a modified Quake engine (GoldSrc).
- 2003. Valve launched the Steam digital distribution service, followed by Half-Life 2 in 2004.
- January 2008. Valve acquired Turtle Rock Studios (renamed Valve South), which developed Left 4 Dead.
- September 2015. Dota 2 became the first game on Source 2 after its 2015 port.
- March 2020. Half-Life: Alyx, a VR game, released.
- 2022. Handheld Steam Deck released.
Engines
- GoldSrc (in-house): Half-Life (1998)
- id Tech (licensed): Quake engine access used as the base for GoldSrc (Half-Life)
- Source (in-house): Half-Life 2 (2004), Counter-Strike: Source, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead
- Source 2 (in-house): Dota 2 (ported 2015), Half-Life: Alyx, Counter-Strike 2
In their words
Nobody writes a design doc and hands it to somebody and says, ‘you go build this’.
Doug Lombardi, Marketing manager, Valve. Source: Wikipedia.
Valve Corporation games on Gamenator
Each game links to its article; engines and genres link to our pages.
At a glance
- Founded
- 1996
- Founders
- Gabe Newell, Mike Harrington
- Headquarters
- Bellevue, United States
- Owner
- Private; Gabe Newell is reported to hold a majority, employees the rest
- Status
- Active
- Website
- valvesoftware.com
Sources
Checked .
- Valve Corporation — Wikipedia
- Source 2 — Wikipedia
- GoldSrc — Wikipedia
- About Us - Valve Corporation — Valve
- Dota 2 — Wikipedia
Image credits
- Gabe Newell speaking at the Game Developers Conference in 2010 — Official GDC. CC BY 2.0. Resized and converted to WebP
