Valve Corporation

Valve Corporation is a privately held video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. The studio gained early prominence with its debut title Half-Life (1998) and later became known for blockbuster franchises and multiplayer hits such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Dota 2. Valve also develops and licenses game engines (Source and Source 2) and provides developer services through Steamworks.

In 2003 Valve launched Steam, which evolved into one of the largest PC game distribution and community platforms worldwide, offering game sales, automatic updates, matchmaking, social features, the Steam Workshop, and backend services for developers. More recently Valve has expanded into hardware (Valve Index VR, Steam Deck handheld), compatibility tooling (Proton for running Windows games on Linux), and ongoing platform and engine development. The company is headquartered in...