51 Facts About Valve Corporation

Valve Corporation is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington.

Valve Corporation was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.

In 2006, Valve Corporation released Half-Life 2: Episode One, the first of two episodic sequels; Episode Two followed in 2007, alongside the multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 and the puzzle game Portal.

In 2013, Valve Corporation released the multiplayer online battle arena game Dota 2.

Valve Corporation released fewer games in the 2010s and experimented with hardware and virtual reality .

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Valve Corporation uses a flat structure, whereby employees decide what to work on themselves.

Valve Corporation was founded as Valve Corporation, LLC, in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.

Valve Corporation enlisted Gearbox Software to develop three expansions for Half-Life: Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Decay .

In 1998, Valve Corporation acquired TF Software, a group that had made the popular Team Fortress mod for Quake, and remade it for GoldSrc as Team Fortress Classic in 1999.

Valve Corporation released the software development kit for the GoldSrc engine, facilitating numerous user-created mods.

In 2016, Valve Corporation signed a nine-floor lease in the Lincoln Square complex in downtown Bellevue, doubling the size of their offices.

Valve Corporation began developing Half-Life 2 six months after the release of the first Half-Life, using its new in-house engine, Source.

In 2002, Valve Corporation launched Steam, a digital storefront and delivery platform.

In January 2008, Valve Corporation announced the acquisition of Turtle Rock Studios, which was renamed Valve Corporation South.

In 2010, Valve Corporation hired IceFrog, the developer of Defense of the Ancients, a Warcraft III mod.

Alongside Dota 2 in 2011, Valve Corporation started The International, an annual eSports tournament for Dota 2 with a prize pool supported by Valve Corporation and funds from microtransactions from battle passes purchased by players.

In December 2012, Valve Corporation acquired Star Filled Studios, a two-person studio, to open a San Francisco office.

Valve Corporation ended the operation in August 2013 when they decided it had little benefit.

Valve Corporation initially focused on augmented reality, but in 2013 Newell laid off many staff to focus on virtual reality .

In 2015, Valve Corporation released the Steam Machine, a line of gaming computers, which sold poorly.

Valve Corporation announced the Source 2 engine in March 2015 and ported Dota 2 to it that September.

That year, Valve Corporation collaborated with the electronics company HTC to develop the HTC Vive, a VR headset released in 2016.

Valve Corporation experimented with VR games, and in 2016 released The Lab, a collection of VR minigames.

Valve Corporation bought Impulsonic, a developer of 3D audio software, in January 2017 and integrated it into its Bellevue offices.

In November 2018, Valve Corporation released Artifact, a digital collectible card game based on Dota 2, with design by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering.

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In June 2019, Valve Corporation released its second-generation VR hardware, the Valve Corporation Index.

Valve Corporation collaborated with Netflix for Dota: Dragon's Blood, an animated television series based on Dota, to premiere in March 2021.

In February 2022, Valve Corporation released the Steam Deck, a portable game system that runs on SteamOS.

However, as Valve Corporation became its own publisher via Steam, it found the hierarchal structure was hindering progress.

In 2020, Valve Corporation acknowledged that its structure had made it difficult to gather momentum, slowing their output during the 2010s.

Valve Corporation itself has fully acknowledged the term, including tracking known discrepancies between ideal and actual releases on their public development wiki and using it in announcements about such delays.

Valve Corporation ascribes delays to their mentality of team-driven initiatives over corporate deadlines.

Valve Corporation is the main developer and publisher of the single-player Half-Life and Portal games and the multiplayer games Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, Day of Defeat, and Artifact.

Valve Corporation published the multiplayer game Left 4 Dead and developed and published Left 4 Dead 2.

Unreleased and canceled Valve Corporation games include the fantasy role-playing game Prospero and numerous Half-Life projects, including Episode Three.

Valve Corporation worked with Arkane Studios on The Crossing, which was canceled in May 2009.

Valve Corporation announced Steam, its digital distribution service, at the 2002 Game Developers Conference.

In May 2014, Valve Corporation announced that the company's own SteamOS-powered Steam Machine would be delayed until 2015 due to problems with the game controller.

In June 2019, Valve Corporation released their own VR headset, known as the Index, positioned as a higher-end device with wider field of view and higher refresh rate.

Cisco and Valve Corporation intended to deliver a single dial-up service in Q1 2000 in the United States with a 30-day free trial with a bundled copy of Team Fortress modified to support PowerPlay.

In July 2013, Valve Corporation announced Pipeline, an intern project consisting of ten high school students working together to learn how to create video game content.

Between 2002 and 2005, Valve Corporation was involved in a complex legal dispute with its publisher, Vivendi Universal Games .

Valve Corporation had entered into a publishing agreement with Sierra to release Half-Life and subsequent games in 1997, with the contract giving Sierra some intellectual property rights to Valve Corporation's games.

Internally, Valve Corporation started work on Steam as a means to digitally distribute these games, and first revealed this project at the March 2002 Game Developers Conference.

Vivendi and Sierra countersued, stating that Valve Corporation had misrepresented their position in the revised 2001 contract since they had been working on Steam at that point as a means to circumvent the publishing agreement.

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Valve Corporation appealed the court's determination that it "engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations about consumer guarantees", as well as seeking to appeal the fine, but the Australian higher courts rejected the appeals in December 2017.

In January 2018, Valve Corporation filed for a "special leave" of the court's decision, appealing to the High Court of Australia.

The High Court dismissed this claim in April 2018, asserting that Valve Corporation still was liable under Australian law since it sold products directly to its citizens.

Valve Corporation was named as a defendant in two lawsuits in June and July 2016 related to third-party gambling sites that use the Steamworks API to allow betting with the virtual currency of cosmetic weapon replacement textures, better known as "skins", from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which through these sites can be converted from or to real-world money.

Valve Corporation subsequently stated it has no commercial ties with these sites, and that it would demand these sites cease their use of the Steamworks API as they violate the authorized use policies.

In October 2016, the Washington State Gambling Commission required Valve Corporation to stop the use of virtual skins for gambling on Steam, stating they would face legal repercussions if they failed to co-operate.