Valve is an international publisher and developer computer games, owner of the popular Steam service and creator of the Steam Machines gaming platform. The company is one of the most open and user-friendly, and is considered almost the only major bastion of originality in the path of soulless corporate machines.
More details
Just look at the company logo - a bald man with a valve in the back of his head. The second logo is also a man with a valve, but this time in his eye. By the way, the name Valve itself translates as “valve,” and to the question “Why Valve?” Gabe Newell(company founder) responded simply: “Because it sounds so much better than Rhino Scar.”
Returning to the topic of logos. It turned out that in this way the company wanted to promote the idea “Open your mind. Open your eyes". As for the bald man, he was found randomly in some cafe, after which he was dragged into the studio and the famous photograph was taken.
The story with the valve did not end there. Valve recently released a “GIF” in which a bald man began to turn around, and it turned out that his gaze was unkind and, in general, far from normal. What the company wanted to say by this is still unclear, but let’s hope that in the future the guys will give an explanation for such an epic event.
How it all began
It all started in 1996, when the company heard the roar of broken pots, after which two developers of early Windows versions Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell. Working at Microsoft made these guys wealthy people, so they decided to plow everything they earned into new company Valve Software.
Two years later, the studio releases its first notable project - a shooter. The game instantly gained cult status and turned its owners into stars of the gaming industry. The success of Half-Life turned out to be a long-lasting phenomenon, since a huge number of mods were released for the game. Valve showed considerable interest in the creativity of fans, as a result of which particularly successful options, like Day of Defeat and , were quickly transformed into separate games, and their creators joined the young team of the company. Subsequently, these mods themselves became the basis for the creation of other games, in particular, the Team Fortress series of online shooters.
In 2003, the company launched the digital service Steam. It was assumed that Steam was supposed to make it easier to install legal patches, but after the launch of the second part of Half-Life, the service turned into an independent channel for selling games. In 2005, projects from other companies began appearing on the service, and today, according to various estimates, Steam owns more than half of the digital game sales market.
Valve today
On this moment Valve is considered one of the largest international publishing houses, under whose wing there are such famous brands, like Half-Life, . Moreover, the company decided to go beyond being a game developer and recently introduced its line game consoles under the general brand Steam Machines. The line of consoles features a variety of designs and characteristics, and runs on Steam OS, an operating system based on . However, the key feature of the entire line is the ability to modify consoles, which other consoles do not have in principle.
Valve's Napoleonic march is all the more surprising given that the company employs only 300 people, which is several times less than the staff of other large publishers. In essence, the company sets an example of how to work effectively and without interruption from its audience.
And I was able to visit the Valve office in the town of Bellevue.
Dota 2, all parts of Counter-Strike, Half-Life and Half-Life 2, spin-offs Portal and Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2 - all this was invented by people from Valve itself strange company in the world.
Why strange? Essentially it is a ship without a captain. The company proudly claims to be "boss free" since 1996! That is, complete anarchy reigns at Valve. There are no bosses here. Each for himself and for himself, but one for all and all for one. Absolute chaos!
And at the same time, Valve releases games one after another, which are either recognized by all critics and fans as the best in the world, or simply break all popularity records. This company has changed game world, creating the Steam platform and gradually constructing his own universe around it. All cool games(not only from Valve, but in general everything) are sold today through Steam. There are about 100 million users on the platform. At the very popular game, Dota 2, is played by 25 million people. In addition, Valve creates hybrids of a gaming computer and Steam Machines, innovative Steam Controller joysticks, and has recently been trying to master virtual reality.
All this happens as if by itself. How do they do it? Very simple!
Valve employs the best of the best. There are about 400 people in total. No one knows exactly how much the company earns. Co-founder Gabe Newell says Valve is "extremely profitable" - more profitable per employee than Apple or Google. According to some estimates, this is about $1 billion in net profit per year.
The beauty of working at Valve is that the employee enjoys absolute freedom of action. People can do whatever they want and develop their own projects within the company. They migrate from team to team, from project to project. Teams compete with each other to recruit the best programmers and the best designers. This is a self-organizing system, everyone manages their own time. There are rumors that some Valve employees still have more weight in decision making, but this often does not apply to the game creation process. Newell, who is technically listed as CEO, insists that he is less of a boss than anyone else at Valve.
Such a system introduces a healthy amount of confusion into business organization. For example, recently the term “Valve Time” even appeared - it refers to the difference between the promised release date of a game and the actual release date. But who cares about being three months late if tens of millions of people will still buy this game.
01. So that you don’t forget where you are, a barnacle from Half-Life 2 immediately greets you at the reception.
02. The company symbol is a valve (Valve is translated exactly like that). They say this one was taken from a real ship. 
03.
04. Heroes of Valve games constantly appear on the covers of popular gaming magazines. Not surprising: at least Half-Life 2 was considered by some to be the best computer game in history. 
05. Lots of rewards 
06. These are the Spike Video Game Awards statuettes earned by Left 4 Dead. 
07. Shelves with souvenirs. In the lower right corner lies a headcrab from the Half-Life series. This particular one seems to be from the second part) 
08. It turned out that this is not a potato launcher, but a portal gun from the Portal series. 
09. Modification of the PC case in the style of Half-Life. 
10. Dota 2 is one of the main e-sports disciplines. It hosts many tournaments around the world, the most prestigious ones being hosted by Valve itself. 
Last tournament The series The International ended in Seattle on August 13th. Do you know what the prize fund was? $20.7 million! Moreover, the organizers raised $20 million from ticket sales! 
Photo: @dota2ti
The Wings Gaming team from China received a record prize money for winning the final - more than $9 million. Tough! 
Photo: @dota2ti
How do you like the scale? 
Photo: @dota2ti
The same amount of money came to e-sports as to regular sports. And in Asia and the USA it is already becoming more popular and profitable. I will have to study the industry and write a detailed post. 
Photo: @dota2ti
11. But in addition to millions of dollars earned through honest labor, developers give eSports players cute souvenirs. 
12. There are portraits of dudes from Team Fortress 2 hanging in the hallway. 
13. As I understand it, this is a blank used to stamp cases for the Steam Controller. But it is not exactly) 
14. Atlas robot from Portal 2. 
15. Turret from Team Fortress 2. Looks like a tennis ball machine) It moves, by the way. 
16. This is Vault-boy, a symbol of the Fallout series of games. It's not being developed by Valve, but Fallout games They are also sold through Steam, so why shouldn’t it be here. 
17. Another turret, but from Portal 2. 
18. Heroes Japanese game Dark Souls III 
19. The office has 5 floors in total, communication between them is via stairs. 
20. Artifacts from games are everywhere. 
21.
22. Behind this partition they make Counter-Strike. It's hard to believe, but a game that has been played by tens, if not hundreds of millions of people for so many years is made by a small team in one small room. 
23.
24. Due to its unusual organization, Valve constantly engages in headhunting to feed itself with fresh creative talent. On the website you can download " reference book newbie". Among other things, it says that the company does have a founder/president, but even he does not run Valve. In addition, it says that one of the most important decisions which must be accepted new employee, – what project to work on. 
All Valve employees are divided into several large “cabals” (a group of conspirators or a political cabal) to work on one or another project. And then all decisions are made within the team. The authors advise newcomers not to be afraid of “screwing up” and to talk with colleagues more often in order to successfully overcome all difficulties.
Once a year, the quality of an employee’s work is assessed through anonymous surveys of his colleagues. That is, you won’t be able to cheat no matter how much you want) It’s funny that in Valve there is formally no “career growth” as such, because there are no positions either. They are invented only for the company’s communication with the outside world.
25. These seem to be hats from Team Fortress 2. 
26. Yoga room. Some offices here have been converted into gyms. There are showers on three floors because people often arrive on bicycles. In addition, employees can go for massages and hair salons without leaving the building. 
27. Fat man from Left 4 Dead. 
28. Canteen 
29. Kitchen 
30.
31. All sorts of snacks. Everything is free. 
32.
33.
34.
How do you like the office? Cooler than
Hello! Today we will talk about an outstanding wonderful company in the gaming and PC industry - Valve. Just look at the Steam service, its own operating system SteamOS based on Linux and the Half Life series of games! But first things first, friends.
The company's founders are Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. I would especially like to talk about the first of them: Gabe is quite for a long time worked at Microsoft on the Windows operating system, and then on the game Doom, which, in fact, inspired him to create games in the future. He is still the CEO of Valve. Gabe Newell
And in 1996, he and his friend Michael co-founded the Valve company. As Newell later said in an interview, they thought about the name of the company for a long time, tried to visualize it and eventually came to the conclusion that a valve would be best suited.
After founding the company, they immediately began developing games. First of all, they bought a license for the Quake engine, which at that time was famous for its achievements in 3D graphics. The engine was heavily modified and was named GoldSCR. Subsequently, the games Half Life were developed on this engine.
Half-life was a pioneering fps (first person shooter) game. It was famous for its advanced artificial intelligence of the enemy, as well as the presence of in-game scenes (the game does not have so-called QTE scenes and all actions took place directly during the game).
The game was also famous for its plot. For that time, the plot was generally something ingenious, and in half of the games it was simply absent. Professional screenwriter and science fiction writer Doug Lombardi was invited to write it.
The game was presented at E3 1997, and the game literally blew up the public. In theory, the game was supposed to be presented in 1997, but it was presented a year later - on October 31, 1998 - not so long ago it celebrated its 15th anniversary.
You will play as 27-year-old physicist Gordon Freeman from the Black Mesa laboratory and take part in an experiment that could change this world. I won’t say anything further to avoid spoilers and I would like to advise you to play this game yourself - you will get a lot of pleasure, despite the age of the game. I personally went through it twice high level difficulties.
Later, Gearbox released 3 story modifications for this game: half life blue shift, half-life Oppositing Forse and, exclusive to PS2, Decay.
Game Half Life has gathered a large army of fans, and there is still talk about this game. It often takes first place in the TOP game ratings. Many ports of this game have appeared, for example, on the engines Quake, Source (official port from Valve), Doom (this port even works on Symbian) and development is underway on Unity engine to port it to mobile devices. At the moment, the most ambitious project is Half Life Pocket, which is being developed by Alexey Ivanchukov. Already done big steps in this case: a *.bsp loader has been written that allows you to load textures and maps from the original Half Life (instead of recompiling them for Unity).
Here, in the year 2000, we will finish the first part of the article about Valve. The next part of the article will be released very soon and we will talk about the development of the Steam project and the continuation of the famous Half Life series.
Valve Corporation is the company that created such legendary games like Half-Life, Counter Strike, Dota 2, Portal and others.
The company was created by Gabe Newell, whose biography also includes working at Microsoft for 13 years. To say that Valve Corporation is an innovative company is an understatement. She is, perhaps, more “innovative” than many who consider themselves such. And this concerns not only developments and the activities themselves, but also what the company is like from the inside. After reading a few of the inner workings of Valve Corporation, you may be thinking “what the hell is going on there”, and perhaps want to work there yourself.
Everyone does what they want
New employees at Valve Corporation often cannot understand what is happening during the first few weeks of work. They came to work for the company, but why doesn’t anyone give them specific tasks? And they won’t give them. The company does not hire people to do any specific job. She simply recruits promising and talented people. And they themselves must understand and decide what useful things they can give to Valve Corporation. Well-known programmer Michael Abrash recalls his first weeks at the company: “I assumed that I would be immediately assigned some kind of task. But I only heard a couple of suggestions from employees about what I might need to do... These were just their thoughts, and not direct instructions for action. Days passed, and no one gave me any specific work. And then I realized that everything here is arranged in a special way. I need to find my own “place” in Valve Corporation.”
Everyone is involved in finding new people
Finding new employees is a top priority for the entire company. You will never hear “Valve Corporation does not currently require any specialists.” They are always needed, and the process of finding new people never stops. Moreover, absolutely the entire staff is involved in this. And the sooner an employee begins to attract new specialists to the company, the more management will like him. The company has this rule: “If you are currently busy searching for a new employee, conducting an interview, or anything else related to the recruitment process, then you need to put all your other tasks aside and not even think about them.”
No bosses or subordinates
Gabe Newell, founder of Valve Corporation, believes that innovative companies should not have traditional relationships between employees based on the “boss-subordinate” principle. This is only suitable in the military field, where soldiers must strictly obey the orders of the commander. Or the production sector, where it is necessary to constantly produce the same product. The modern computer industry does not fall under either option. Valve Corporation does not have the organizational hierarchy familiar to many, there are no bosses, subordinates, and even no positions. Sometimes Valve Corporation employees come up with the name of their position so that they can write it on business card, since many people will not be able to take a specialist seriously without a title.
Not even Gabe Newell himself has a position. Once in an interview, Greek Coomer, one of the company's earliest employees, said that he did not know what position Newell occupied: “Following logic, he probably CEO. But I can’t say this with certainty.” Each new employee at the company is given a small guide to Valve Corporation, which states that “no one in the company is your boss, and Gabe Newell least of all is.”
Tables with wheels
Since at Valve everyone can do what they want, so too workplace can be anywhere. That is why every desk in the office should have wheels - so that it can be easily moved to a convenient place. This way employees can quickly unite into teams and work on one common task. Or simply move their desk to where they think they will work better and more comfortably. In the same manual for new employees there is a point about moving desks around the office: “Unplug the computer cable from the outlet, move your desk, plug the cable into a different outlet. Now we can go back to work.”
More creativity
The more interesting and unusual the employee’s background, the better. That is why the company employs a former actress of a children's puppet theater, the creators of a satirical website about video games, a developer of special effects for the film “The Lord of the Rings,” and an artist who draws cool graffiti. And there are a lot of such people in the company. To get a job at Valve Corporation, you don't have to have any knowledge of video game development, but you do have to be interesting and creative.
And Valve Corporation does not cooperate with any intermediaries. All company shares are owned exclusively by its employees. And it is unlikely that they will ever appear for free sale on stock exchanges. Therefore, in order to have at least some relation to Valve Corporation, you need to become a part of it. There is no other way.
Valve Corporation(previously Valve Software listen)) is an American computer game developer company that created the Half-Life, Portal, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, Left 4 Dead, Ricochet, Alien Swarm and Dota 2 series of computer games; game engines GoldSrc, ; software: Steam, Valve Anti-Cheat, SteamOS, Steam Audio; as well as hardware: Steam Machines, Steam Controller. Founded on August 24, 1996 former employees Microsoft by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.
Story
Foundation and Half-Life
After thirteen years of work at Microsoft, Gabe Newell, together with Mike Harrington, founded Valve Software in 1996, under the tutelage of Sierra Studios. To simplify things, a license for the Quake game engine was acquired, after which the eighteen-month development of the Half-Life (HL) game began.
The game's working title was Quiver. Professional science fiction writer Mark Laidlaw was invited to work on the script. The game became a sci-fi 3D first-person shooter. Gabe and Mike wanted to create something similar to DOOM, the same dark creation. The game received more than fifty awards from publishers, including the title “Best Game of All Time.”
The game was first demonstrated at the exhibition in 1997, and became a real hit of the exhibition. The game was planned to be released in 1997, but the release took place on October 31, 1998. The game became iconic and brought fame to the developer.
Next, Valve focused on developing the SDK, which was released in April 1999. Min Lee, together with the developer hiding under the nickname “Cliffea”, use it to create a modification of HL - Counter-Strike (CS), a multiplayer shooter based on the idea of confrontation between a group of terrorists and a special police unit. The game has become one of the leading eSports disciplines.
Creating your own engine and ending Half-Life
The success of the game inspired the company, and it immediately began creating a game no less large-scale than its predecessor. The entire development was kept in the strictest confidence. After 5 years of development, Half-Life 2 was presented at E3 2003. The game was made on a new game engine - Source Engine, because the graphics part, at that time, was beyond competition. Almost all objects in the game could be moved and deformed. The game took first place on metacritic.com's list Best games of all times.
The new engine was an excellent help for modders and promised the company in this regard eternal youth. The company counted on the community: an SDK, documentation and a set of utilities were provided. The company wanted to focus modders on innovation and gameplay and did everything possible to achieve this. Systems such as day and night cycles and deformation were not used in the game, but were implemented in the engine.
But showing and releasing a game are two different things. The game was not released in September 2003 as promised. On the contrary, the release of the game was postponed indefinitely. But a leak occurred and a demo version of HL2 became publicly available. This situation almost killed the company, but it did not give up, found money and the release took place on November 16, 2004, collecting more than 30 Game of the Year awards.
According to founder Gabe Newell, the company decided that it wasn't worth keeping fans waiting for another six years, so it adopted an episode creation model that allowed it to produce at least quality games in just a year and a half.
Latest singles release
As a final step and a crushing blow to competitors, on October 9, 2007, Valve released The Orange Box, which included the following games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2 . The collection was simultaneously released for PC, PS 3 and Xbox 360.
As a special feature for all of these games, an achievement service was developed (similar to achievements on the Xbox 360), which worked through the Steam service and was available for implementation in games distributed through the service. Has its own social network- Steam Community, also based on Steam. For this purpose, personal profiles were implemented, the ability to add friends, and the in-service chat was improved.
Steam Multiplayer Games
Left 4 Dead was released on November 18, 2008. On March 5, 2010, Portal 2 was announced. On July 19, 2010, the online third-person shooter Alien Swarm was released. On April 19, 2011, Portal 2 was released. On August 21, 2012, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released.
In 2011, Valve announced that it would release a multiplayer game Dota 2, which would be a continuation of the modification for WarCraft 3. The main developer of this modification, better known under the nickname IceFrog, also joined the company.
Steam Technology Development
As a first step in helping the Debian community, Valve has made downloading the company's games free to all Debian developers.
SteamOS uses the Big Picture mode user interface. operating system will be shipped in a Steam Machines minicomputer, however, this free OS will also be released separately for stand-alone installations, which will allow third-party companies to create their own devices for SteamOS. This operating system has the ability to broadcast to a TV from a desktop PC, access to Steam Cloud (access to all purchased games from any device using a single account). The operating system is capable, in addition to games, of playing audio and video files.
Music is officially distributed through the Steam client and the audio player is built directly into the client. The interface is available in Steam Overlay mode. As of the end of 2014, only basic playback capabilities are provided, but, for example, it is possible to create a playlist. Both local audio files on the user’s machine and game soundtracks purchased on Steam are available for playback. To celebrate the opening, Valve made music albums from the Half-Life and Portal series and the documentary film Free to Play for free.
A new stage of development was the release of a video console and a controller for it.
On March 1, 2015, Valve Corporation presented a helmet at Mobile World Congress virtual reality SteamVR, which was developed jointly with HTC. Start of sale - November 2015.
Video on the topic
Company products
Games
At the end of the nineties, Valve released 7 games: in 1998, a demo version of “Half-Life: Day One”, followed by a full-fledged game - “Half-Life”; in 1999, the demo version of “Half-Life: Uplink”, “Half-Life: Opposing Force” and the original “Team Fortress Classic”; in 2000, thanks to the possibility of modifying the engine, the “Counter-Strike” mod and the new product “Ricochet” were released.
At the beginning of the 2000s, additions to past successful releases were released: in 2001, “Half-Life: Blue Shift”, “Half-Life: Decay” and “Deathmatch Classic”; in 2003 original game"Day of Defeat" and the version for slot machines "Counter-Strike Neo".
At the end of the 2000s, in addition to new games, sequels and additions were released, and games were created specifically for the Asian market: in 2008 “Portal: Still Alive”, “Counter-Strike Online”, “Left 4 Dead”; in 2009 "Left 4 Dead 2" and "Left 4 Dead: Survival Pack DLC" with "Left 4 Dead: Crash Course DLC". In 2010, it became rich in additions to L4D of two generations: “Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice DLC”, “Left 4 Dead 2: The Passing DLC” and “Left 4 Dead 2: The Sacrifice DLC”; however, a new product has also appeared - “Alien Swarm”.
In the early 2010s, the company produces more more games: in 2011, the continuation of “Portal 2” and the additions to it “Portal 2: Peer Review DLC”, and “Portal 2: Sixense MotionPack DLC”; in 2012, the additions “Left 4 Dead 2: Cold Stream DLC”, “Portal 2: Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC”, as well as a new game- “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive”; in 2013, the new “Dota 2” and “Counter-Strike Online 2”. Valve did not release any standalone gaming products in 2014, with the exception of Left 4 Dead 2 - Uncensored, which was released to the Australian public.
Corporate culture of the company
Ideology
According to Gabe, hierarchy is inappropriate and useless in the technology industry, there is no need for formal management and career growth. In an interview with the newspaper " The New York Times" Greek Coomer (an early employee) doubted that Newell was the CEO, but noted that technically he most likely was. Valve's beginner's guide states that Gabe Newell, among others, is the most non-boss.
Structure
The anarchic structure of the company assumes that employees independently choose which project to work on; no one at Valve has the right to tell them what to do. They form working groups, luring each other from project to project. Among themselves, the group only decides who will become the current leader, who will keep in mind all the information about the project and coordinate it. Valve encourages frequent changes in group compositions so that they are not swallowed up by bureaucracy and remain on the user's side. This approach is manifested, in particular, in the fact that the desks of all employees are equipped with wheels - this simplifies constant movement.
Problems of the approach
This freedom makes it extremely difficult to find new employees. In fact, the entire company is focused on finding new recruits; potential employees are regularly called for interviews.
The company is attracted to people with extensive experience, “better than others in this business.” For example, the company employed Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, who was hired because Gabe liked his blog about the European financial crisis; former puppet theater performer; creator of special effects for the films “The Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong”. The company values people who can simplify or quickly solve a problem, and also clearly explain how exactly they did it.
Such a system can only exist if the company is completely independent. Independence from publishers is ensured by the Steam service, which makes Valve itself the publisher. The company was founded without investors, and at the end of 2014, all assets were owned by the company's employees. According to Newell, if things go poorly, the company will be dissolved rather than sold.
The lack of hierarchy creates problems for employees outside the corporation: they have to invent positions for themselves in order to be taken seriously.
Audience and capitalization
According to Forbes magazine, as of 2011, the Steam store audience was 30 million people.
As of 2011, the service accounts for 50-70% of the four billion (in US dollars) online game distribution market.
Valve's financial performance is unknown, but according to founder Gabe, the company is "extremely profitable." In October 2011, the corporation's press service announced a record profit for Valve, 200% higher than the previous year's profit. According to Forbes, Valve is valued by various sources at between $2 and $4 billion. In 2012, Michael Pachter valued the corporation at US$2.5 billion in an article in The New York Times.
Mikhail Khomich, on the pages of Kommersant, claimed that the company’s net profit for 2013 amounted to about $1 billion.
Notes
- Langley, Hugh. , Tech Radar(March 3, 2015). Retrieved March 3, 2015.
- Wingfield, Nick. Game Maker Without a Rule Book (English) // The New York Times. - 2012.
- Why Valve? Or, what do we need corporations for and how does Valve’s management structure fit into today’s corporate world? | Valve. Retrieved April 29, 2014.
- The history of Valve, or success from the first game. - 2014.
- contact. - “Postal address: PO BOX 1688 Bellevue, WA 98009.” Retrieved June 18, 2014.
- Valve history.
- Our people. - “creating the Half-Life storyline.” Retrieved December 28, 2014.
- Chan, Oliver. Half your life for the game // Forbes.
- Best PC Video Games of All Time - Metacritic. Retrieved December 27, 2014.
Surveyor. Who is a surveyor? Description of the profession. Profession surveyor Surveyor training
Magellanic clouds: who are they?
Pepper Steak Sauce Creamy Pepper Sauce
How to create a competent portfolio for a designer
If you dreamed that a house burned down - interpretation of the dream according to the dream book