1996-08-24

Valve Corporation 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 2 games. Valve was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Their debut product, the PC first-person shooter Half-Life, was released in 1998 to critical acclaim and commercial success, after which Harrington left the company. In 2003, Valve launched Steam, which accounted for around half of digital PC game sales by 2011. By 2012, Valve employed around 250 people and was reportedly worth over US$3 billion, making it the most profitable company per employee in the United States.[5][6] In 2015, Valve entered the game hardware market with the Steam Machine, a line of third-party built gaming PCs running Valve's SteamOS operating system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation