Steam

Gamers dislike many things and many people, but if theres one company that they have (almost) universally come to revere, its Valve. Its pretty easy to see why. Its the company behind Steam, the most popular PC gaming platform in the world and the bearer of irresistible game sales. Its the company behind Half-Life, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead.. And its the company run by Gabe Newell, who is, somehow, the most mocked and the most beloved figure in the gaming industry.

So Valve is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential gaming companies around, but its taken 17 long years to reach the point its at today. Believe it or not, there was a time when people werent so willing to create websites like this. To find out why--because, really, that sites great--we went back to the history books, and took a look at Valves roots. Heres what we found

Two Microsoft millionaires venture out on their own

It may seem weird given their somewhat antagonistic nature today, but Valve as we know it today would not exist without Microsoft. There, a Harvard University dropout named Gabe Newell spent thirteen years helping to produce early versions of the Windows operating system. Naturally, he learned a good deal about the software business working under Bill Gates and crew, and financially, he amassed more than a million dollars as a result of Microsofts desktop dominance.

But by the summer 1996, Newell was looking for a change. So by that August, he and his fellow co-worker/millionaire Mike Harrington took their fortunes and used them to start their own gaming company. They called it Valve, LLC, and they moved their operations to Kirkland, Washington--about five miles west from Microsofts headquarters in Redmond. Once they were situated, they got started on their first game: Half-Life.

Half-Life makes for a grand introduction

Three years before Newell and Harrington left Microsoft to make games, another Microsoft (and later Valve) employee named Michael Abrash did the same. He joined up with Doom developer id Software, and later, helped his former co-workers get a license to use ids Quake engine. With that toolset in tow, Newell, Harrison and their team dug in to create a sci-fi-themed first person shooter of their own.

Valve had big ideas for Half-Life, and it initially had some troubles finding a publisher for the game because of it. Washington-based Sierra On-Line were the one who ended up taking a chance on the young company and its new IP--and when Half-Life launched in November 1998, the move paid off in spades. Half-Life succeeded by almost every metric imaginable, breaking new ground for shooters with the way it seamlessly melded its smart narrative with its smarter gameplay. Millions of copies were sold; Gordon Freeman and his trusty crowbar became iconic; and Valve was firmly on the map.

Valve gets incorporated and moves (slightly) away

As it continued to support Half-Life and its hungry community, Valve made a few notable moves as a business. In 2000, Harrington departed from the company he co-founded, which left Newell as the lone head honcho. In 2003, it dropped the LLC from its title and became Valve Corporation.

Around that same time, it moved its headquarters about five miles south to Bellevue, Washington. And while all this was happening, Valve started work on two new endeavors that would take it beyond mere game development: Source and Steam.

Steam makes Valve more than a game developer...

Steam was first unveiled at GDC 2002. When it launched a year later, it was far from the all-encompassing behemoth that we know it as today. In fact, it was first posited as a simple digital distribution surface whose main purpose was to deliver patches and other updates to online games more easily. Before, said patches had a nasty habit of crashing games like Counter-Strike and rendering them unplayable for days at a time. When it was out and about, though, people quickly realized Valves angle--and they werent entirely pleased.

Though most of us dont mind now, more than a few Valve loyalists werent happy with Steams online authentication, game launching, and DRM requirements to start. And they were doubly unhappy when Valve announced in 2004 that all of its future games would require Steam to be played. You see, Steam was a bit of a buggy mess at the time, frequently buckling under duress and causing games to crash along with it. Its offline mode was cumbersome for those who didnt want to be forced online all the time, and while it could host multiplayer games and deploy anti-cheating software, it wasnt nearly as featured as it is now. Valves own games and mods were the only ones available for the platform at first, and to top it all off, its UI was ugly. So it had a rocky start.