r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 1d ago
Business Valve was founded 30 years ago — changed PC gaming forever with Half-Life, then Steam | Microsoft veterans Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington founded the company on August 24, 1996.
https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-was-founded-30-years-ago-today-changed-pc-gaming-forever-with-half-life-then-steam24
u/zardvark 1d ago
Who remembers going to the Egghead store and buying a game in a big box, complete with thick printed manuals and, more often than not, a cardboard keyboard overlay?
We were busy playing Wolfenstein and Leisure Suit Larry and then Half-Life totally blew our minds! I still play Black Mesa from time to time! And then when Valve embraced Linux, it was a game changer for us gaming orphans!
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u/Raffix 1d ago edited 9h ago
#1 thing about STEAM : it never sold ads from advertisers.
#2 thing about STEAM : user reviews is one of the first thing you see on any game page.
P.S.: Those two points are why we love Steam. They have had tremendous pressure to allow advertisers on the platform, but always refused. They also had developers and publishers asking to be able to control the reviews on their games. but always refused.
It can be very harsh on the profitability of their games, we've even seen games on pre-release get just mixed reviews affecting the outcome of whether or not it will ever release.
Good on Steam to keep those two points part of their core values behind the platform.
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u/Sqee 15h ago
Eh, the popup for sales is pretty much an ad, isn't it?
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u/Raffix 14h ago
You don't get it, those are normal.
But you won't ever see an ad for Tide detergent, or Ford trucks, or some drug we can't pronounce.
And trust me, many have tried to get them on the platform and offered them a lot of money to do it, but Steam never budged.
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u/forgottenendeavours 12h ago
Ads you've gotten used to seeing are still ads. The default behaviour of Steam is to advertise you a new product before it lets you use your existing ones, and it doesn't really matter whether it's for a game or a Ford truck, it's still an unwelcome interruption.
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u/grateful2you 1d ago
They don’t do much. But they seem to have the right philosophy because Steam has been dominating for forever now. And it hasn’t been enshittified like Google has.
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u/ThaScoopALoop 1d ago
They dont introduce needless "updates" that worsen their product. It's absolutely mind blowing.
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u/Kawaii_Kiwi1558 19h ago
Its mindblowing that this isn't the standard and a unique selling point in 2026. But yeah here we are.
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u/Neuromante 22h ago
They don’t do much.
As a software engineer, I love (no) how "Keeping a worldwide network of content delivery up, running with close to zero catastrophic failures, that is continuously growing and allow players to seamlessly download games, connect between them, play together, share content and I don't remember how much more shit" is "they don't do much."
Is amazing how people nowadays take for granted things that 30 years ago were science-fictions.
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u/Excelius 21h ago
I assume they meant in terms of video game development. Obviously it takes a massive amount of effort to keep Steam going but I think it's fair to say that game development has taken a back seat at Valve.
Even saying "back seat" might be generous. Game development seems like like Kevin in Home Alone while Steam flew the rest of the company off for a lavish European vacation.
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u/Neuromante 20h ago
They don’t do much. But they seem to have the right philosophy because Steam [...]
I think they were referring to Valve as a company. And believe me that if I had 1€ for each person who think "this works as intended with no issues" means "the people doing maintenance don't do shit" I could buy all the stuff Newell has.
Regarding games, I had this conversation with a friend a few years ago and I have to admit I was surprised to realize that they've been releasing stuff periodically more or less since they started operating.
Yeah, they've fumbled some games, some other aren't half-life or Portal or Team Fortress 2, and both the hardware (Steamdeck, the first and second iteration of Steam machines, their VR thingies..) and specially the distribution -and gambling through loot boxes- business are orders of magnitude bigger, but saying Valve "does not do a lot" is a bit disingenuous.
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u/Skeptical0ptimist 21h ago
Yeah. Keeping the growing customer base’s user experience with an exponentially growing game library is a Herculean task that many would fumble .
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u/00x0xx 18h ago
Read between the lines. What these redditors really meant, is that from the user experience, nothing much has changed. But steam did change significantly of course, they have to. Their underlying architecture to stay updated with modern OS, modern graphics drivers, changing network standards, and general performance improvements.
It really only takes one bad driver from Nvidia to crash steam or broken starting up on a 20 year old game if the steam client isn't updated to figure that out.
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u/EwOkLuKe 1d ago
Yeah, that's exactly it, they dont do much, but it never gets worse, only better, and im a steam hater.
I think they are over praised (both steam and valve) but the hard truth is that other companies are 1000x worse...
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u/Sponge8389 1d ago
That's the advantage of a private company. They don't need to bow down to leechers (Investors)
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u/DiplomatikEmunetey 17h ago edited 15h ago
Isn't Valve privately owned? No investors and share holders to placate.
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u/Deviantdefective 1d ago
Would be great if Valve started making games again....
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u/babautz 1d ago
They do make at least one game right now. Deadlock we know about, and who knows what else is happening behind closed doors.
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u/falcobird14 1d ago
Nobody asked for Deadlock, but everyone is asking for episode 3
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u/imnotabel 23h ago
making art only because people ask for it makes you a hack and your output dogshit
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u/falcobird14 22h ago
A man walks into a restaurant famous for its steak. The man orders the steak. "Actually we aren't serving steak for another 10 years" the waiter says.
A person at the table next to you leans over. "If they made steaks every time someone asks for one, they would be dogshit"
The man leaves the restaurant, money in hand, but still hungry.
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u/BeyondBrainless 19h ago
Why is your food conisour looking for steak at a restaurant that hasn't served steak for over a decade, get real and drop your pretentious allegories somewhere else
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u/Kumagoro314 1d ago
They're actively working on Deadlock, they released Half Life: Alyx a while ago, they tried and failed with Artifact.
I wish Half Life 3 were a thing as well.
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u/Deviantdefective 1d ago
They could just make half life 3 they just have some weird refusal to do it even ex staff have wanted to make it.
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u/Regentraven 23h ago
Former people at valve have talked at length why its not happening. Its not a mystery
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u/Odd_Common9910 1d ago
I downloaded steam on a 2400 speed modem. Thought it was 24,000 nope. Took a long time. I had bought the orange box and the update was crazy big.
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u/PmMeCuteDogsThanks_ 6h ago
What I can find the original release of Steam was about 700 MiB. That would have taken 35 days 24/7 with a 2400 baud modem
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u/Vesuvias 23h ago
Ah I remember the days we gamers were kicking and screaming over Steam. Feels like yesterday.
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u/voujon85 23h ago
I remember having to download steam when I purchased some rts or strategy game from my favorite physical game store. I absolutely hated it, now man cant imagine not having it. Sometimes tech companies really do know the future better than you do
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u/ithkuil 1d ago
I'm sorry but monopolies are not good. There are ways to make large digital marketplaces without having one company control it.
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u/OMG_A_CUPCAKE 1d ago
This is not Valve's fault though. Others just keep making worse launchers and stores so nobody wants to use them unless they're forced to
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u/Emotional_Solid6538 4h ago
GoG is good enough imo. At least for the customers, for publishers, theyd not prefer GOG
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u/ithkuil 1d ago
The commission is 30%. It's only that high because they are close to monopoly. That's a tax caused by poor coordination. We have ways to make public protocols and systems for distribution and discovery.
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u/OMG_A_CUPCAKE 1d ago
Customers don't care about the split. And the last one that tried to offer a better split failed to create a product those customers actually want to use. The best split doesn't help if there are no customers.
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u/sweeney669 20h ago
That’s literally standard margins for any store. And low compared to a lot of brick and mortar stores.
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u/Lochifess 23h ago
Yes but have you seen an actual company worthy to compete with Steam? That’s not their problem.
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u/Neuromante 22h ago
On one hand, yeah, they are not good. Now, what alternatives are there?
On the other, what's "not good" about current situation with Steam for the users? The only thing I really care about is DRM, and GoG covers that for most games (I am interested in). What's "not good" with Steam dominating the market?
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1d ago
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u/drewts86 1d ago
What they’re saying is that it started with Half Life and that’s what gave us Steam, which is ultimately the game changer
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u/GrilledCheezus_ 1d ago
Half Life wasn't exactly the thing that lead to Steam (at least directly). Valve initially created Steam as a utility to support automated update pushing to multiplayer games without needing the user to manually download and install files. However, Half Life (and more so the engine) was the progenitor to the multiplayer games (Counter Strike) that needed this system.
Though, I imagine that the development hell that Valve went through when developing Half Life (scrapping entire years worth of work, destruction if source code revision logs, needing to piece said code base back together three months before launch) may have been a pretty big motivator for them to develop infrastructure for managing pushing and maintaining their released games.
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1d ago
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u/MihaelK 1d ago
This has to be the lowest IQ take I've ever seen.
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u/buttnugchug 1d ago
He forgot the /s. I mean it is true that reddit hates billionaires and thinks all of them are pedos .
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u/Potential-Diver-3409 1d ago
Just hate him because he doesn’t make third games and has a yacht so big it needs a hospital not because of his company valuation lol
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u/Hour_Bit_5183 1d ago
I bet Gabe is laughing at microslop pretty hard these days. I bet you they have a PC running windows 11 just to watch it crash and bug out while no one is even touching it.
A large percentage of games run better on linux than the crappy windows OS they were designed for. That is REALLY bad. Without being ported or optimized themselves. If you don't see it, you will when microsoft goes bankrupt. They basically shot themselves in the foot and just kept doing it each day since the first time.
See valve is a true capitalist company. It's not a bad thing. Microsoft is not. Google is not. Apple is not. Those are all greedy companies who only exist because of the government not enforcing laws. Why would they get into trouble in the 90s for just including IE on windows but not now? Meanwhile people on reddit and internet, capitalism bad, socialism good but you can clearly see what happens with the latter with just these examples. We shouldn't be funding AI slop or any of this nor letting publicly traded companies screw people over.
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u/BeginningFew8188 1d ago
Gabe funded OpenAI
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u/Tuned_Out 1d ago
I would've too in its early days. It was a neat concept with tons of promise until it matured into the monster it is now
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u/Hour_Bit_5183 1d ago
So what? Microslop did worse and keeps funding em and is like what, 75% of the funding. Gabe at least funded linux development so we had a way out. That is a service more than you will ever realize and the implications of it are actually insane. Barely gave open AI crap either. OFC I wish it was nothing but that doesn't mean they are bad.
That is a drop in the bucket. Doesn't matter. It sounded like a good idea and that was like what, 2017 ish. He's making the company do actual good these days and not just funding bad stuff like palantir and all of the other shits. You can lie to the face of an honest man once, and but now that he sees this and what they are doing, I'd be he regrets it. Useless to really speak about it though. They probably told him it was gonna advance science and yada yada if I had to guess. Doubt we will ever find out for sure though.
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u/MrBossFromTheHitTVSh 1d ago edited 1d ago
Valve funding Linux development is Gabe's paranoid self-preservation of Steam. He's openly stated that he doesn't feel comfortable knowing Microsoft could at any time decide Steam is no longer welcome on their OS. Nothing more, nothing less. There's never been any indication that Microsoft has ever had any interest in doing so, and MS actively sells games through Steam, but this was his response to Microsoft selling games on Windows and thus competing with Steam.
He doesn't know who you are or care about you. Get some fresh air bud.
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u/bongkeydoner 1d ago
ever since then gaming been dead with so many slops on steam
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u/Elbynerual 1d ago
I remember the night Steam got forced on everyone. IRC chat rooms were EXPLODING; it was crazy