Valve

Valve Corporation (formerly Valve Software, commonly referred to as Valve and sometimes stylized as VALVe) is an American video game development and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, United States. Its European-based office opened in 2012 in Luxembourg. Founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, Valve developed critically acclaimed video game series Half-Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead. It has also developed and maintains the Source engine for which most of its games run on, and the software distribution platform Steam, which has led to the Steam Machine, a line of pre-built gaming computers running SteamOSValve was founded by longtime Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington on August 24, 1996,as an L.L.C. based in Kirkland, Washington. After incorporation in April 2003, it moved from its original location to Bellevue, Washington, the same city in which their original publisher, Sierra On-Line, Inc., was based.