Valve corporation

Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington. The company’s debut title, Half-Life, has won over 50 Game of the Year Awards and was named "Best PC Game Ever" in the November 1999, October 2001, and April 2005 issues of PC Gamer, the world's best-selling PC games magazine. Half-Life was released in 1998, and the company's more recent titles include Half-Life: Alyx, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Dota Underlords, Artifact and Team Fortress 2.

Valve’s portfolio also includes titles in the award-winning Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Portal and Dota franchises. This portfolio of titles accounts for over 100 million units sold worldwide, and include some of the most played online games in the world. In addition to producing best-selling entertainment titles, Valve is a developer of leading-edge technologies including the Source® game engine and Steam®, a leading platform for digital content offering thousands of games to millions of users around the world. In 2015, Valve introduced the Steam Hardware devices, a collection of hardware devices designed to extend Steam beyond the desktop. In 2016, launched SteamVR, a platform for the creation and distribution of leading edge VR products. Valve created Steam in 2003 as a digital content distribution channel, and the platform now lets creators and publishers deliver content and build direct relationships with their customers. Its consumer hardware includes the Steam Deck handheld, the Valve Index VR kit, the Steam Controller and Steam Link, and the company developed the VR technologies behind the Vive, which was brought to market with HTC. For hardware, the company runs playtests and shares prototypes with partners and players, then follows the results through manufacturing.

Today, Valve is composed of over 300 of the industry's best artists, programmers, and writers. In the company's history, it has risen from "unlikely new entry" to industry leader, producing a string of best-selling and critically-acclaimed PC products and technologies. Valve describes itself as a flat company without hierarchy or job titles, and it hires across art, audio, game design, hardware, software engineering and other fields.