About Valve Corporation

• What is Valve Corporation?

Valve Corporation (formerly Valve Software, commonly referred to as Valve and sometimes stylized as VALVᴇ) is an American video game development and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue,Washington, United States. Founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, Valve developed critically acclaimed video game series Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.
It also developed and maintains the Source engine on which most of its games run, and the software distribution platform Steam, which has led to the Steam Machine, a line of pre-built gaming computers running SteamOS.

• What about Half-life?

After securing a license to the Quake engine (through the help of friend Michael Abrash of id Software) in late 1996, Newell and Harrington began working on Half-Life. Originally planned for release in late 1997, Half-Life launched on November 19, 1998. Valve acquired TF Software PTY Ltd, the makers of the Team Fortress mod for Quake, in May 1998 with the intent to create a standalone Team Fortress game. The Team Fortress Classic mod, essentially a port of the original Team Fortress mod for Quake, was released for Half-Life in 1999. Gearbox contributed much after the release of Half-Life. Gearbox Software is responsible for the Half-Life expansion packs, Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift, along with the home console versions of Half-Life for the Sega Dreamcast and Sony PlayStation 2 which included a third expansion pack called Half-Life: Decay, that enabled two-player split-screen co-op.

• About the Source game engine

After the success of Half-Life, the team worked on mods, spin-offs, and sequels, including Half-Life 2. All current Valve games are built on its Source engine. The company has developed six game series: Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead and Day of Defeat. Valve is noted for its support of its games' modding community: most prominently, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Day of Defeat. Valve has branched out with this tradition to continue developing Dota 2 as the standalone sequel to the Warcraft III mod.[6] Each of these games began as a third-party mod that Valve purchased and developed into a full game. They also distribute community mods on Steam.[7] Valve announced the Source 2 engine on March 3, 2015.[8]

• Curiosities

The HL-CFC is a movement founded in 25 December of 2011 in order to report the lack of communication between Valve and the Half-Life community. In other words, it is a movement that searchs for
recognition regarding the long wait for a Half-Life 2:Episode 2 sequel.

The "Valve Time" is an industry term used jokingly with game releases from Valve, used to acknowledge the difference between the promised date for released content stated by Valve and to the actual release date; "Valve Time" includes predominant delays but also includes some content that was released earlier than expected.
Valve itself has fully acknowledged the term, and usually uses it on their public development wiki.

• Welcome to the Valve Headquarters

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