The History of Valve

THE HISTORY OF VALVE Valve Software was founded in Kirkland, Washington in 1996. In April 2003, it moved from its original location to Bellevue, Washington, the same city in which their original publisher, Sierra On-Line, Inc., was based. Two long-time Microsoft employees founded Valve and acquired a license to id Software's Quake engine, which they began to build Half-Life on top of. Valve also eventually hired teams of developers to their company to create additional games using first the Quake engine, and later Valve's own Source engine. Valve has developed 6 main series of games: HL TF HALF LIFE TEAM FORTRESS A first person shooter, the main protagonist being Gordon Freeman, a physicist at the fictional Black Mesa Research facility. Half Life was the first game Valve began working on soon after the company was formed. They based their game on the Quake engine licensed from id Software. The series consists of Half Life, Half Life: 2, two episodic games, and three expansion packs. Originally a mod based on the Quake engine, Valve hired the 3-person development team, who ported the game to Valve's half-life engine. This game was released as "Team Fortress Classic". It's sequel, Team Fortress 2, was released 8 years later. 96/100 92/100 CS DoD COUNTER STRIKE DAY OF DEFEAT A tactical first-person shooter, where players are either terrorists or counter-terrorists. Counter-Strike became rife with "hacks" which allow the cheaters to gain a variety of improvements, such as "Wallhacks" which allow players to see through walls. A team-based multiplayer first person shooter based around Europe during World War II. Originally a 3rd-party mod, Valve hired the development team to produce a standalone version. 88/100 79/100 L4D PORTAL LEFT 4 DEAD A single-player puzzle-platform game inspired by a freeware game "Narbacular Drop", whose development team was hired by Valve. The player must solve puzzles by teleporting through portals they can place using their portal gun. The game received critical praise for it's groundbreaking gameplay. A cooperative first-person shooter game set in a zombie apocalypse. The game has four protaganists, and allows four people to play the campaign cooperatively, or with AI. In the game players fight off the infected zombies, trying to eventually reach safety in the Florida Keys. 90/100 89/100 PORTAL HAS WON 76 AWARDS INCLUDING 36 GAME OF THE YEAR AWARDS Valve's games have consistently been received very well, critically. Fans of the games, eager to play their sequels, have frequently been frustrated by development delays. The joking term "Valve Time" is used in the industry to describe the difference between the expected release time and it's actual release. Valve explains that they value the games over corporate deadlines, which leads them create more high quality games. THE VALVE CORPORATION WAS FOUNDED IN 1996 96, VALVE'S DEBUT TITLE WAS HALF LIFE Z6, HL '98 TEAM FORTRESS HALF-LIFE CLASSIC OPPOSING FORCE TF HL '99 COUNTER STRIKE CS 00 HALF LIFE: BLUE SHIFT - HL '01 VALVE RELEASES "STEAM" THEIR CONTENT SHARING PLATFORM 70, DAY OF DEFEAT "03 DODY....... COUNTER STRIKE CONDITION ZERO HALF LIFE 2 CS HL- "04 (Đ HALF LIFE 2 DEATHMATCH DAY OF DEFEAT SOURCE HALF-LIFE 2 LOST COAST DoD HL '05 HALF LIFE 2: EPISODE 1 HL 90, TEAM HALF LIFE 2 EPISODE 2 FORTRESS 2 PORTAL HL TF P'07 LEFT 4 DEAD {L4D 80. LEFT 4 DEAD 2 (L4D 60, LEFT 4 DEAD 2 LEFT 4 DEAD THE PASSING Doo (L4D '10 THE SACRAFICE NON-DIGITAL UNITS SOLD* Half-Life (98) Half-Life: Opposing Force (99) 9.3M 1.1M Counter-Strike (00) Half-Life: Blue Shift (01) Half-Life 2 (04) 4.2M 800,000 6.5M Counter-Strike: Source (06) 2.1M Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (04) 2.9M Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (06) The Orange Box (07) 1.4M 3м *STEAM SALES DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM VALVE AS OF $10.5 2008 MILLION VALVE'S REVENUE WAS Infographic by EJF0X.com 1 Meta Critic Rating