Monday, August 24th 2026
Valve Celebrates 30 Years of Revolutionizing PC Gaming
On August 24, 1996, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington officially founded Valve, forever changing the world of PC gaming. The company made a massive debut in 1998 with Half-Life, stepping into the realm of legendary PC game franchises. Later on, Valve started creating a variety of games like Dota, Counter-Strike, Artifact, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and many more, all of which became staple releases and gained a worldwide following.
In 2003, the company officially entered the game distribution arena by launching Steam, now regarded as the leading PC gaming client software and the top destination for games, deals, promotions, and launches. With hundreds of millions of players across the globe, the Steam platform has become the largest PC gaming community on the planet. At its peak, Steam has achieved more than 40 million concurrent gamers online, meaning that at one point, 40 million enthusiasts were playing their favorite games, all purchased, downloaded, and managed through Steam.
Valve has also made significant progress over the years with its hardware launches. Initially, Valve introduced the concept of the Steam Machine as the ultimate gaming box, with partners designing hardware to support SteamOS. This was back in 2015 when the hardware was relatively weak, and support from partners was lackluster, leading to its discontinuation in 2018. However, it was not completely abandoned. In 2021, Valve brought its hardware design in-house and launched the Steam Deck handheld console. This year, they updated their hardware portfolio with the Steam Machine, Steam Deck, and the upcoming Steam Frame. More releases and updates are planned, the hardware is selling well, and Steam continues to experience massive growth. For 30 years, Valve has achieved amazing results, and we can't wait to see what the coming years will bring.
In 2003, the company officially entered the game distribution arena by launching Steam, now regarded as the leading PC gaming client software and the top destination for games, deals, promotions, and launches. With hundreds of millions of players across the globe, the Steam platform has become the largest PC gaming community on the planet. At its peak, Steam has achieved more than 40 million concurrent gamers online, meaning that at one point, 40 million enthusiasts were playing their favorite games, all purchased, downloaded, and managed through Steam.
65 Comments on Valve Celebrates 30 Years of Revolutionizing PC Gaming
Total number of DRM-free games: 1,824 out of 41,562 games in total
That is not "most"
IN VALVE I TRUST. 30 MORE YEARS.
So I give valve a lot of credit for that and despite my concerns of what happens once gabe is gone, I won't really complain about getting 30 years of better experiences than anyone else was willing to offer me. I do also buy games on GoG but mostly saw that as my source for older games that steam didnt sell. Even if I still have a CD or floppy copy somewhere, I'm happy to buy a digital copy that frees me from the heavy lifting of getting really old games to run. As you said, this service is better than shady websites peddling viruses & malware, finding dead links to patches, and forums that dont exist anymore but once held the secrets we needed to find. I suppose we now have the option of feeding crash reports into a coding AI assistants that can puke out a custom patch for us...but raising my eletricity bill 30% is a shit trade off when GoG has the game on sale for $7.
cause win 8
www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-i-think-windows-8-is-a-catastrophe-for-everyone-in-the-pc-space/
Half Life series is a technology demonstrator for them. The things HL2 did was amazing at the time, it pushed the boundaries of what was achievable. And Alyx was a very polished, very good game demonstrator for Virtual Reality.
What is coming on the horizon that is so significant that it warrants a HL3 release? Nothing is on the horizon. I doubt we'll see in 10 years. This is preferrable to releasing annual sequels with no focus on what they are doing other than to increase financials.
What they are doing now with SteamOS is much more significant, a push away from Microsoft and their monopoly. SteamOS is their "Half Life 3".
in the casinoon the stock market so it's unlikely anybody who would inherit it would kill it for fun. It's profitable and there are no shareholders to put any pressure.Out of the 30, thanks for the last 20
Other than that:This. :)On Steam, you own a lifetime licence to the game. I don't think Valve is closing doors anytime soon, so that's good enough for me.
Judging by the case of War of the Roses, an online game that shut its servers down years ago, while I can still download the game through Steam even today, I'm positive.Are you jealous? Tell me you wouldn't have one if you were him. ;)
But sure, I would start a nice cars collection !
As a sidenote, I don't mean to take away from the achievement. Even if a mod gets swept under Valve's flag, kind of like Black Mesa, it's still good to have. A bit of big corpo funding helps, too, I guess.
But, well, plans changed and we know how things turned out.
L4D3 apparently was in the works at some point, but was shelved due to Source 2 not being ready.
At this point, all we know is that HLX does exist (whatever it will turn out to be) and is being worked on. When and if it actually comes out - fuck knows, it’s Valve.
Steam gives you a lifetime licence. Whether that counts as ownership is up to debate.