What makes Valve money

Valve's history dates back to 1996, when Gabe Newell created a gaming company inspired by the success of Doom and Quake. After the release of the Half-life game in 1998, the company gained incredible popularity, from which it began its rapid development. Already in 2000, Valve made an equally successful release of Counter-Strike 1.0. After 2 years, VAC: Valve Anti-Cheat was born, and in 2003, Valve officially released the Steam online distribution service, which became the most popular PC launcher.

In 2004, a whole bunch of releases come out: CS:Source, HL2, the Source engine. The Source game engine was the logical development of GoldSource (which in turn is an adaptation of id Software's QuakeEngine) and was introduced to the world with the release of Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2.

In 2011, it became known about the imminent release of Dota 2, and the official release of the game took place in 2013. Portal 2 becomes the highest rated game on Steam for a long time and Dota 2 The International main tournament is announced. In 2012, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is released - one of the most popular esports disciplines in the world. In 2015, Dota 2 moved to the new Source 2 engine. After that, the company's rapid development slowed down, along with this, the number of releases also decreased.

And it would seem that these successful games brought the company huge sums of money and general popularity. In part this is true, but Valve has other ways to make money. In this article, we will look at what exactly brings money to Valve.

Steam, the same online service for the digital distribution of computer games and programs, which is an endless cash cow for Valve. Despite the fact that in 2003, there was already a successful launcher from Blizzard, Valve decided to take the risk and make their own launcher. But unlike the same Battle.net, Valve did not limit itself only to its projects, and already in 2005 Steam began to actively promote games not of its own design through its game store.

Since then, Steam has been considered the most profitable project for Valve. And for good reason, because Valve has introduced commission fees on its site for absolutely everyone. For example, commissions on Steam for developers reach 30%. In addition, all transactions that are carried out on the Steam marketplace are also subject to a commission of at least 5%.

2007 was an eventful year for Valve, but the most memorable was the release of Team Fortress 2. The game was well received by critics and players alike. It was appreciated for its pleasant visual style, gameplay, humor and character specificity. The development team in the same 2007 even released a series of videos in which they talked about the game classes.

Thanks to constant updates and a close-knit user community, the game grew until the Sniper vs. Spy update was released in May 2009. A feature of this update was the same hats for each class in the game. And this same update became the starting point in the creation of skins.

August 9, 2011 is the birthday of the Steam marketplace. That was the day the Steam Trading beta became available, and players who had items from Team Fortress 2 could start trading them. And this idea came to Gabe Newell after he began to farm gold in World of Warcraft for the sake of an experiment.

Gabe spoke about this in an interview with British magazine EDGE:

With the release of Dota 2 and CS:GO, Valve has discovered another endless influx of money by releasing new sets and cases with skins. Also with the release of these two games, the golden era of the Steam Market began, which also received a percentage of the resale of the same skins from the games.

Valve has always had a well-developed sense of profit, and Gabe Newell was well aware of projects that would eventually bring not only huge popularity and universal love, but also big earnings.

For example, Valve already in 1998 made one of the most successful purchases. The company acquired TeamFortress Software, and a year later the Team Fortress Classic game was released, which rapidly gained popularity. And in 2007, Valve released Team Fortress 2, which hits the tops online to this day.

In 2005, a group of students from the DigiPen Institute of Technology created the Narbacular Drop game and presented it at the Valve Corporation office. Students acting as Nuclear Monkey Software showed the first developments of the portals that were presented in the game. Gabe Newell, without waiting for the end of the demonstration, told the students that they should immediately join Valve. After 2 years, the popular game Portal became the debut project of the new branch.

The history of Turtle Rock Studios and Valve begins in 1999, when the first version of Counter-Strike appeared. It was Chris Aston from Turtle Rock Studios who created the most popular mod for Half-life. When Valve bought the rights to Counter-Stike, Chris was offered a job with the company, but after a short time, he left the company and worked with Valve on CS on a contract basis. But after a few years, Turtle Rock employees became increasingly competitive with each other, playing Counter-Strike in the office. It got to the point that personal grievances began to grow, so the developers began to look for ways to play together as a team against artificial intelligence. This idea led to the creation of the Counter-Strike mod, in which the terrorists carried knives and the players tried to survive. This mod eventually evolved into a Left 4 Dead game. When Chris showed Valve what they were working on, Valve decided to fund the project and buy Turtle Rock Studios.

Since 1996, Valve has shown its intention to be the best and the release of the Half-Life series of games has shown how serious they can be. Valve decided not to stop only at creating games, and the creation of Steam, a trading platform, skins, holding eSports competitions is a confirmation of this.