Valve Corporation publishes its own games through its digital distribution platform Steam. It was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington after leaving Microsoft. Notable games include Half-Life, Portal, and Counter-Strike. Valve focuses on PC gaming and emphasizes creative freedom for employees without formal managers or directors. It uses proprietary Source engine software as well as filmmaker and Havok middleware to develop high-quality games across multiple genres.

1. Valve Corporation
Publishers
Publishers are companies, which publishes video games that has been either
developed by them or developed by other game development companies
such as Valve, Bungie, and Treyarch etc. Valve Corporation’s main publisher is
Vivendi S.A. (Originally named Vivendi Universal). Valve would of contacted
Vivendi S.A. if they wanted any games published. But later on they ran into
some legal issues between them two and Sierra Entertainment. Valve
Corporation started there own in-house publisher called ‘Steam’ it started in
September 12th
2013. One of the first games, which were released on ‘Steam’,
was Half Life 1.
CEO and Founders
Gabe Logan Newell and Mike Harrington are the original creators of Valve
Corporation. Gabe Logan Newell was working for Microsoft for about 13
years; after he had left Microsoft he described himself as a “producer of the
first three releases of Windows.” Both Gabe Logan Newell and Mike
Harrington were late employees at Microsoft. After Gabe Logan Newell and
Mike Harrington both left windows they started a company called Valve in
1996. Then they used their own money to fund the company to make sure
they develop a game called Half-life. In 2000, Mike Harrington left Valve
Corporation to go on an extended vacation with his wife.
Project Director / Manager / Producer
Valve Corporation doesn’t have a project director, manager and producer.
This is being Valve Corporation likes to give freedom to its employees, for
example if you wanted to work on Half-Life 3, you would have to move to a
different location in the building so you could work on it. Valve Corporation
has a very good idea on letting everyone do whatever he or she want due to
the fact that it lets people be more creative. So Valve Corporation doesn’t
have a project director, manager or a producer.
Programmers
Valve Corporation has many programmers that work on different projects.
The programmer’s job is to make sure it develops the engineering behind all
of the games, for example they would have to program all of the moves a
character would have to do. Programmers are very important in creating a

2. game due to the fact that they are the brains behind all of the development of
the game.
Artists
Artists are very important in Valve Corporation, because sketch out ideas to
make sure everything looks perfect for the game. They also help all of the
game designers to make sure they get the perfect image in their head. Valve
Corporation is known for having beautiful games due to the fact they have
very good artists to sketch out how the game looks like. It’s very important to
have artists working for your company because they design all of the basics
within the game, which helps the game designer produce the final product.
Designers
Valve Corporation has a wide range of designers, who work on many different
games. They are very important because they design all of the game for the
final product. They are the ones who are going to use programs like SDK and
SFM. They design all of the levels of the game as well as designing the
characters for the game.

3. Publishers
Vivendi S.A.
&
Steam
CEO and Founders
Gabe Logan Newell (Managing Director of Valve aka Lord Gaben)
Mike Harrington (Co-Founder of Valve)
Project Director / Manager / Producers
N/A
Technical Manager
N/A
Creative Manager
N/A
Design Manager
N/A
Programmers
Adrian Finol
Kristopher Katz
Stefan Landvogt
Joe Ludwig
Mike Morasky
Brandon Reinhart
David Speyrer
Kutta Srinivasan
Alex Vlachos
Matt T. Wood
Artists
Ken Banks
Eric Krichmer
Matt Logue
Mike Morasky
Wade Schin
Chris Welch
Andrea Wicklund
Designers
Ken Banks
Jeremy Bennett
Greg Coomer
Eric Hope
Kistopher Katz
Jeff Lane
Randy Lundeen
Erik Robson
David Speyrer
Matt T. Wood

4. Platform Technology
Valve Corporation produces games for PC, PlayStation and Xbox. They are
currently working on there own machine called ‘Steam Machine.’ They have
released games for all of these consoles due to the fact that they want a wide
range of audience. With the new eighth generation consoles coming out, it
gives Valve’s developers a big benefit on what they can create due to the fact
that the new generation consoles are better and faster. For example the new
PlayStation 4 has a much faster processor, better graphics as well as more
ram. Valve Corporation mainly focuses on PC games due to the fact that you
can be more creative on making PC games because PC is more evolved than
consoles like PS3, Xbox one etc. Valve Corporation is a very creative company
who have came out with games like Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Portal etc.
Valve hasn’t created anything for the new consoles such as PlayStation 4,
Xbox one etc.
Game Types
One of the most famous games Valve has made is the Counter-Strike series.
Counter-Strike: Source is a first-person shooter, which became very popular
quickly. Valve Corporation makes a wide range of different game types such as
MOBA’s, First-Person Shooters, Puzzle, Survival horrors etc. So we see that
Valve Corporation likes to make games, which have different game types,
because they probably like to make loads of different games to make sure the
audience likes any of the games that get released by them. Valve Corporation
isn’t like Rockstar (A different company that develops games). Rockstar is
mainly known for making open-world adventure games, which means they
mostly make open world games.
Games on multi-platforms
Valve Corporation has released many games on a wide range of consoles like
PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows etc. Valve Corporation
mostly focuses on PC games. There are many different companies that only
produce games, which are exclusive for certain consoles for example Halo is
exclusive to Microsoft.
Regulatory Bodies
There have been many problems with games having disturbing content shown
in them, which could lead into the game getting banned. Throughout Valve’s
history there hasn’t been that many problems with them before, due to the
fact that Valve gets their games ranked as being ‘Mature’. The ‘Mature’ rating
doesn’t really mean that younger audiences cant play their games because

5. there isn’t that much disturbing violence within the game. Games like
Counter-Strike, Half-life etc. help people increase on certain skills while
actually playing the game, for example if people play loads of Counter-Strike
they might increase their reflexes.
Even though, Valve haven’t had much problems before, the problems that
they have had were that they got a game banned from countries such as
Australia and Germany due to the fact that they wouldn’t accept the
classification of the game due to the amount of violence and blood in the
game which is ‘Left 4 Dead 2’. Later on, Valve changed the game around to
make sure that they get unbanned from those countries, they done this by
actually making the enemies disappear and then a very little amount of blood
coming out of them to make sure it doesn’t disturb the audience that is
actually playing it. PEGI is a company, which covers all of the age rating of
games, for example we see that FIFA 16 has a PEGI sign at the bottom left to
inform the audience that the age rating of the film is 3 due to the fact that it
doesn’t have any violence, swearing etc. In this picture we see that PEGI has
also added different features
what the game might include,
for example GTAV would have
violence so it should have a
violence sign on the back of the
game to make sure that the
audience understands that it has
violence in it. The BBFC controls
all the age rating of films, this isn’t very different to PEGI, and the only
different thing is that BBFC covers films whereas PEGI covers the games age
ratings.
Development software
Valve corporation uses many different development software, they have
created there own company called ‘Source’ which does all of the character
animation, advanced AI, real-world physics, shader-based rendering, and
super extensibility. This company that they have created has helped them
make loads of games look more good-looking also it has been considered the
most flexible, comprehensive, and powerful game development environment
out there. Source SDK is software, which is very good to development games
on, there have been many games developed such as, Half-life, Half-life 2, and
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Using source is very important for Valve
corporation because they will have the best software out there to make sure
that all of there games look amazing.

6. Middleware
Valve corporation uses source film maker, to make there cut scenes and
trailer which will make sure that they have the best quality of cut scenes and
trailers out there which will make them look very good. Valve Corporation also
uses a modern advanced version of Havok, which is basically valve’s second
engine to make sure if anything happens that have a second engine.