Valve Corporation

Valve Corporation is an American video game developer based in Bellevue, Washington, made famous by its first product, Half-Life, which was released on November 19, 1998. The company has followed Half-Life ' s success by developing mods, spin-offs, and sequels including Half-Life 2. They have also developed many other games such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and the Left 4 Dead series.

History
Valve was founded on August 24, 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Valve originally started out as an L.L.C. company based in Kirkland, Washington. After incorporation in 2003, Valve moved from Kirkland to Bellevue, Washington.

After the success of Half-Life, the Valve team expanded their portfolio, creating mods, spin-offs, and sequels. Valve has created six different series which include Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Day of Defeat. Valve is mostly noted for its support of the modding community; its games Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Day of Defeat, all started out as third-party mods before becoming full-fledged games. Valve also distributes community mods on their content delivery system, Steam.

Half-Life series


Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell, two former Microsoft employees, founded Valve on August 24, 1996. They began working on the first game of the series soon after the company's formation, and settled on a concept for a horror-themed 3D action game, using the Quake engine as licensed by id Software. The game was a hit at the 1997 E3 convention, where its animation system and artificial intelligence were demonstrated. The game's success led to its first expansion pack, Half-Life: Opposing Force, which was developed by Gearbox Software, a company based in Plano, Texas, and announced on April 15, 1999. Randy Pitchford, founder of Gearbox, said in an interview that he believed Valve gave them the opportunity to produce a sequel to Half-Life to allow Valve to focus on future titles. The game was demonstrated at the 1999 E3 convention, where new locations, characters, and the story were revealed.

On November 16, 2004, Half-Life 2, the sequel to the original game, was released. Following Half-Life 2, the series was continued using a trilogy of episodic games. Half-Life 2: Episode One was the first of these, set around City 17 after the events of the original game, in which Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance must attempt to escape the city after a dark energy reactor core they damaged at the end of Half-Life 2 threatens to destroy the city. It was released on June 1, 2006, and introduced several new graphical effects including new lighting features and facial animation.

The second episodic game, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, was released on October 10, 2007, and continues the story from where Episode One ended. This episode focuses on expansive environments, travel, and less linear play. It was released in The Orange Box along with Half-Life 2, Episode One, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.

Half-Life 2: Episode Three is the third and final installment of the episodic expansions. The game has, presumably, been in development since some time in 2008, since concept art surfaced in July of that year. However, besides passing comments when pressed in interviews, very little is known about the game.

Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat began as a Half-Life third-party mod in 2000. Later, the DoD team joined Valve Software and produced a standalone version published through Activision. Day of Defeat was officially released on May 1, 2003. It was converted over to the Steam delivery system in Version 1.1 and now requires Steam to play. Day of Defeat: Source, an updated version of DoD, which moved Day of Defeat from GoldSrc to the Source engine, was released on September 26, 2005.

Day of Defeat and Day of Defeat: Source are both multiplayer games that simulate squad-level infantry combat between the adversaries of World War II's European Theatre; the Allies or the Axis powers. The goal of the two games is to use teamwork to complete various mission objectives. Players can choose between the Allied armies (American and/or British armies) or the Axis armies. However, in Day of Defeat: Source, there are only the American and German armies.

Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress Software, the creators of the mod Team Fortress, were employed by Valve in 1998 and shortly after began work on Team Fortress 2. To tide fans over, a port of Team Fortress was made called Team Fortress Classic. Finally, after a long development period, Team Fortress 2 was released on October 10, 2007 as a standalone product via Steam and in-stores in The Orange Box compilation pack. Team Fortress 2 is focused around two opposing teams competing for an objective. These teams, Reliable Excavation & Demolition (RED) and Builders League United (BLU), are meant to represent two holding corporations that between them secretly control every government on the planet. Players can choose to play as one of nine classes in these teams, each with his own unique strengths and weaknesses.

Portal


Portal is Valve's professionally-developed spiritual successor to the freeware Narbacular Drop, the 2005 independent game released by students of DigiPen; the original Drop team are now all employed at Valve. The game features Chell, a test subject in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, who must use the Handheld Portal Device to navigate through nineteen Test Chambers, all the while being guided by a supercomputer called GLaDOS.

Left 4 Dead series
Using the Source engine, Valve set out to make a horror film-inspired game that merges single player games' character-driven narrative structure with multiplayer games' social interaction and high replayability; soon after, Left 4 Dead was born. When making Left 4 Dead many aspects of the Source engine were improved, such as more realistically portray hair and clothing, and improved physics interaction with enemies. The Source engine was also improved to have smarter AI, improved lighting, improved cinematic visual effects, and dynamic color correction. After a three-year development process, Left 4 Dead was released on November 17, 2008. The game is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and pits its four protagonists against hordes of the infected.

Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to the original game, was released on November 16, 2009. Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. Development for Left 4 Dead 2 started shortly after the release of the first game. Valve built on ideas from the development team to make the next game "bigger and better".

Steam and lawsuits
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 dated 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 counter-sued, claiming that Valve's Steam content distribution system attempted to circumvent their publishing agreement. Vivendi sought intellectual property rights to Half-Life and a ruling preventing Valve from using Steam to distribute Half-Life 2.

On November 29, 2004, Judge Thomas S. Zilly of the U.S. Federal District Court in Seattle, WA ruled in favor of Valve. Specifically, the ruling stated that Vivendi Universal and its affiliates (including Sierra) were not authorized to distribute Valve games, either directly or indirectly, through Internet 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.

On April 29, 2005, Valve posted on the Steam website that the two companies had come to a settlement in court.

On July 18, 2005, Electronic Arts announced that they would be teaming up with Valve in a multi-year deal to distribute their games, replacing Vivendi Universal from 2005 onwards.

In April 2009, Valve sued Activision Blizzard, which acquired Sierra Entertainment after a merger with its parent company, Vivendi Universal Games. Activision had allegedly refused to honor the Valve vs Vivendi arbitration agreement. Activision had only paid Valve $1,967,796 of the $2,391,932 award, refusing to pay the remaining $424,136 claiming it had overpaid that sum in the past years.