Different people associate Valve with various products. For most computer players, Valve is a store of Steam games and the legendary Half-Life series. For professional players, Valve is Counter-Strike and Dota. Anyway, today Valve plays a huge role in the world of technology in general and the gaming industry in particular. From the point of view of management, the company manages to remain a phenomenon, showing an example of an effective and successful corporate anarchy.
Valve history is inseparably associated with the history of nominal founder and CEO, Gabe Newell. Today this name is so firmly fused with the brand of Valve and Steam that few people remember that Newell worked for Microsoft before. In 1996 Gabe Newell with a friend from Microsoft Mike Harrington left the company and set out to realize their own dreams.
The first game in the history of the Valve was the legendary Half-Life. Newell and Harrington wanted to create something dark, in the style of DOOM, but in the end they did Thriller with a gripping storyline, forever known in the history of the industry. After the release, which took place in autumn 1998, Half-Life received more than fifty awards, including the title “Best game of all time”. The most correct decision of the company after that was the development of tools for independent game designers. Valve’s SDK (software development kit) was released in April 1999.
However, the creators did not stop and continued to work and in 2000 they released the hit, computer game Counter-Strike. This is a multiplayer game based on the confrontation of the two teams — terrorists and Special Forces, the world tournaments which have been held for the past 12 years. In subsequent years, Valve has released several new games, including another two episodes of Half-Life, action-puzzle game Portal and the sequel to Team Fortress. And in 2011 — it has made another revolution in E Sports, the creation of Dota 2.
Valve is a truly unique company. It has never engaged third-party investment. Initially, the project was developed by savings of Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Then they quickly began to make a profit. In 2014, Google wanted to buy Valve. The Internet giant has offered the company $18 billion, but Newell refused to sell his creation. It was partly happened because of leadership change that would probably destroy the unique internal structure of the company.
