Valve Corporation
American video game development and digital distribution company
Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, publisher, hardware, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of game franchises including Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead and Dota, the software service Steam, and hardware including the Steam Frame, Steam Machine, Steam Deck and Valve Index.
Valve was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Their debut game, the first-person shooter (FPS) Half-Life (1998), was a critical and commercial success that had a lasting influence on the genre. Harrington left in 2000. In 2003, Valve launched Steam, followed by Half-Life 2 (2004), the episodic sequels Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007), the puzzle games Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011), and the multiplayer games Team Fortress 2 (2007), Left 4 Dead (2008), and Dota 2 (2013).
During the 2010s, Valve released fewer games and focused on hardware and virtual reality (VR). They released the first Steam Machine console in 2015, the Valve Index VR headset in 2019, their flagship VR game, Half-Life: Alyx, in 2020, and the handheld system Steam Deck in 2022. In 2026, Valve released a redesigned Steam Machine and a standalone VR headset, the Steam Frame.
Valve uses a flat organizational structure, allowing employees to choose their own projects.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Valve Corporation” as american video game development and digital distribution company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as american video game development and digital distribution company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193559. VIAF identifies the subject as 147977846. The Library of Congress control number is nr2004037172. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2003.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Valve Corporation”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Valve Corporation primary sources, Valve Corporation archive and Valve research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Valve Corporation”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Valve Corporation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.