Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software or
simply Valve, is an American video game developer, publisher,
and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington.
It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and
the Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of
Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota series.
There are some wrong notions about Valve over the past years related
to the role they play in taking the virtual platform to the next level! A lot
of the discussion around the Seattle studio centres on the idea that Valve has
simply been riding a tidal wave of triumph and embracing the complacency it
affords.
The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley returned to his journalistic
roots few days back, delivering edition of his insightful The Final
Hours series, in which he covers the last stretch of a game’s development
with unprecedented access. This time around the game in question was this
year’s watershed VR release, Half-Life: Alyx, Valve’s
first Half-Life game in 13 years, and its first proper single-player
game since Portal 2, which was launched in 2011.
In the last decade, the public image of Valve is of a company that
has stepped away from the style of game development that it was known for and
became something of a service provider. Its Steam platform is still
the de facto marketplace for PC games but the company’s ambitions have not
been squashed in light of the platform’s incredible success.
The studio has dabbled in everything from peripherals and streaming
technology to pre-built PCs over the past 10 years. It has even started making
and shipping its own virtual reality headset, the Valve Index. The company has
had a finger in every major trend in gaming over the past decade, but what’s
special about virtual reality, in particular, is that it finally gave Valve a
reason to return to the series that made the company a household name,
Half-Life!
Valve makes its own hardware, software and distribution platform,
and often develops technology with upcoming hardware or industry sea changes in
mind, which fosters an experimental spirit. They are unique in controlling the
full development program!
As evidenced by the litany of cancelled projects under its belt over
the past decade, Valve understands the dangers of complacency better than many
studios. The impression from The Final Hours is that virtual reality
finally provided an uncharted territory Valve needed to create something
definitive, after years of trying to teach an old dog new tricks.
Valve could have made hay while the sun shines, developing
countless Half-Life episodes in the wake of Episode 2’s 2007
release and sold millions of copies. But what The Final Hours tells is
that while it had some incredible, money-printing ideas, a procedurally
generated Half-Life 3, an open-world Left 4 Dead, a Dark
Souls-esque Dota game, the technology to realise its lofty ambitions
didn’t exist then, so Valve decided not to commit until it did.
They are the masters of planning led by decisive stroke making
minds! Valve carries a legacy that is easy to learn from but the toughest to
follow!
