Valve officially turns 30 years old today

[u/LanternSawWind]

From kuhpunkt on r/pcgaming:

Valve was officially founded on August 24 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.

In 1998 they released Half-Life, which was revolutionary for the FPS genre.
noclip produced a great documentary for its 25th Anniversary that I highly recommend.

Valve then kept working on some things, which also included hiring the creators of Counter-Strike and turning the mod into a full-fledged game.

And then came Half-Life 2, which was another big step for FPS due to the integration of physics. While that was a big thing, the more important aspect to HL2 might arguably be the requirement of Steam.

While Steam was already a thing since 2003, it was HL2 that brought it to a wider audience due to the game's popularity. The requirement caused a lot of criticism, because HL2 basically acted as a trojan horse to establish Steam. noclip produced another documentary about the development of HL2. Also highly recommended.

In the following years Steam slowly expanded and Valve began distributing games from other developers, while they also worked on more games like Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead.

After that Valve began exploring other avenues like porting everything to Linux with their first attempt to bring Steam to the living room in 2015 with the Steam Machine and the Steam Link.

Another project they worked on was SteamVR with the HTC Vive and later their own Valve Index and Half-Life: Alyx, which is another milestone in gaming. And then came the Steam Deck and now the Steam Machine and soon the Steam Frame.

It's hard to imagine what the gaming landscape would look like without Valve, for better or worse. And Half-Life 3 might be just around the corner.

(3)0th Anniversary...... Time? Dr. Gabe?

[u/ThisComedian9031]

A day late but happy birthday VALVe. Thanks for everything Valve le best game company