{"id":61402,"date":"2026-10-29T10:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T07:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauditimes.net\/en\/?p=61402"},"modified":"2026-10-29T10:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T07:23:07","slug":"valve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauditimes.net\/en\/valve\/","title":{"rendered":"Valve: The Company Behind Steam, Half-Life and Dota 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valve Corporation is an American video game developer, publisher and hardware maker based in Bellevue, Washington. It created Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal and Dota 2, and it runs Steam, the online platform where PC players buy and play games.<\/p>\n

Valve is in the news in 2026 for hardware. Its new Steam Machine, a gaming PC for the living room built on the Linux-based SteamOS, went on sale from 29 June 2026, adding to a range that already includes the Steam Deck handheld.<\/p>\n

\"Valve:
Lobby of Valve's offices in Bellevue, Washington, 2016. Photo: Tim Eulitz, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Overview and Founding<\/h3>\n

Valve was founded in August 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, two long-serving Microsoft<\/a> staff. Forbes reported that they paid for the start with their own Microsoft stock options and that Valve never took venture capital.<\/p>\n

The company stays private and unusually flat. Its own site describes it as “boss-free since 1996” and says it brings people from many fields together to collaborate and create.<\/p>\n

Its first game, Half-Life, came out in 1998 and sold 2.5 million copies in its first year, Forbes reported. Newell bought out Harrington after Harrington left the company in 2000.<\/p>\n

Valve created Steam in 2003 as a way to deliver its own games over the internet. It later opened the platform to outside publishers. By 2011, Forbes reported, publishers earned a gross margin of around 70 percent selling games through Steam, against about 30 percent through retail stores.<\/p>\n

Steam kept adding services over time. Forbes noted that Steam Cloud, launched in 2008, let players keep their games and saved data on any PC with Steam installed, and that a virtual goods market followed in 2010.<\/p>\n

Key Milestones<\/h3>\n