Something about me and my work

Valve Corporation (commonly referred to as Valve) is an American video game developer and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. The company is known for the Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota 2 games, and its software distribution platform Steam.

Valve was founded in 1996 as a limited liability company by former Microsoft employees Gabe Logan Newell (me) 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 2004, Valve launched Steam alongside the critically acclaimed Half-Life 2. By 2011, over half of digital PC game sales were through Steam, and Valve was the most profitable company per employee in the United States.In 2015, Valve entered the game hardware market with the Steam Machine, a line of prebuilt gaming computers running SteamOS, a Valve-developed fork of the Debian operating system.

about Steam

Valve announced its games platform Steam in 2002. At the time it looked to be merely a method of streamlining the patch process common in online video games, but was later revealed as a replacement for much of the framework of the World Opponent Network service and also as a distribution and digital rights management system for entire games.


Alongside these changes to the SSA, the company also declared publicly the incorporation of Valve S.a.r.l., a subsidiary based in Luxembourg.Valve set up a physical office in Luxembourg Kirchberg. According to Valve's project manager Mike Dunkle, the location was chosen for eCommerce capabilities and infrastructure, talent acquisition, tax advantages and central geographic location – most major partners are accessible, with 50% within driving distance.

Valve S.a.r.l. was used to sell games to United Kingdom–based users to avoid paying the full 20% VAT.The tax loophole was expected to be closed on January 1, 2015.In December 2015, the French consumer group UFC Que Choisir initiated a lawsuit against Valve for several of their Steam policies that conflict or run afoul of French law. One of the reasons was for using the tax loophole.Valve S.a.r.l. stopped doing business on January 1, 2017, with the main company taking over EU sales again.

About me

Gabe Logan Newell ( born November 3, 1962), often nicknamed Gaben, is an American computer programmer and businessman who is best known as the co-founder and president of the video game development and digital distribution company, Valve Corporation. Born in Seattle, Newell attended Harvard University in the early 1980s, but dropped out to work for the American technology company Microsoft, where he spent the next decade working as a producer for some of their early Windows operating systems.


Valve Corporation
Steam