Valve Corporation

Valve Corporation is an American video game development company based in Bellevue, Washington, USA that was founded in 1996, and made famous by its first product, Half-Life, which was released in November 1998.

History
Valve was originally an Limited liability company, based in Kirkland, Washington. After the company became a corporation in 2003 it moved away from its original location to Bellevue, Washington. The city of Bellevue, Washington was also where their original publisher, Sierra Entertainment, Inc., was based.

Half-Life's success was followed by developing mods, spin-offs, and sequels including Half-Life 2. Valve bases all of its games off of its Source game engine, with much of its success coming from mods and sequels. It has produced six series of games; Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Day of Defeat]]. Valve is notable for being extremely supportive of their modding community, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Day of Defeat, all being mods that Valve purchased and developed into full games.

On 10 January 2008, Valve Corporation announced that they had acquired Turtle Rock Studios, adding the California technology company to its portfolio.

Half-Life
Long-time Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington founded Valve on 24 August 1996. After securing a license to the Quake engine (through the help of friend Michael Abrash of id Software) in late 1996, they commenced working on Half-Life. Originally planned for release in late 1997, Half-Life launched on 19 November 1998. Valve acquired TF Software PTY Ltd. in May 1998, the makers of the Team Fortress mod for Quake, 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. Team Fortress 2 was released October 10 2007, bundled with Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Portal in the package The Orange Box.

Valve continued work on Half-Life, releasing several extensions to the game and collaborating with other developers to port it to other platforms. They also took on the development of the highly popular Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat Half-Life mods.

Steam
Valve announced its Steam content delivery system in 2002. At the time, it looked to be a method of streamlining the patch process common in online computer games. Steam was later revealed as a replacement for much of the framework of WON and Half-Life multiplayer and also as a distribution system for entire games.

Between 2002 and 2005, Valve was involved in a complex legal showdown with its publisher, Vivendi Universal (under Vivendi's brand Sierra Entertainment). It officially began on August 14 2002, when Valve sued Sierra for copyright infringement, alleging that the publisher illegally distributed copies of their games to Internet cafes. They later added claims of breach of contract, accusing their publisher of withholding royalties and delaying the release of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero until after the holiday season.

Vivendi fought back, saying that Gabe Newell and marketing director Doug Lombardi had misrepresented Valve's position in meetings with the publisher. Vivendi later countersued, claiming that Valve's Steam content distribution system attempted to circumvent their publishing agreement. VUG sought intellectual property rights to Half-Life and a ruling preventing Valve from using Steam to distribute Half-Life 2.

On 29 November 2004, Judge Thomas S. Zilly of U.S. Federal District Court in Seattle, WA ruled in favor of Valve Corporation. Specifically, the ruling stated that Vivendi Universal and its affiliates (including Sierra) were not authorized to distribute Valve games, either directly or indirectly, through cyber cafés to end users for pay-to-play activities pursuant to the parties' current publishing agreement. In addition, Judge Zilly ruled that Valve could recover copyright damages for infringements without regard to the publishing agreement's limitation of liability clause. Valve posted on the Steam website that the two companies had come to a settlement in court on 29 April 2005. Electronic Arts announced on 18 July 2005 they would be teaming up with Valve in a multi-year deal to distribute their games, replacing Vivendi Universal from then onwards.

Through Steam, Valve is extremely supportive of their games. They regularly release updates, and, in the case of Team Fortress 2, have added 132 achievements, ten new maps, nine new weapons and two new game modes for free.

As of October 1 2008, over 450 PC games are available on Steam, and there are approximately 15 million users.

Development
Turtle Rock Studios announced Left 4 Dead on November 20 2006, and was acquired by Valve Corporation on January 10, 2008 because of the game and long-standing relationship between the companies.