Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the game franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead and Dota.
Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original Half-Life (1998), Half-Life 2 combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and adds new features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. The player controls Gordon Freeman, who joins a resistance to liberate Earth from the Combine, an interplanetary alien empire.
Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront managed by Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 to provide game updates automatically for Valve's games and expanded to distributing third-party titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like game server matchmaking with Valve Anti-Cheat measures, social networking, and game streaming services. Steam client's functions include game update automation, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game overlay functions and a virtual collectable marketplace.
Bad Mojo is an adventure video game by Pulse Entertainment, released in 1996. The player is cast as Roger Samms, an entomologist planning to embezzle money from a research grant to escape his sordid life above an abandoned bar. An accident with his mother's enchanted locket unleashes a curse — the titular bad mojo — that turns him into a cockroach. The storyline in Bad Mojo is loosely based on Franz Kafka's 1915 novella The Metamorphosis; Roger Samms' name is an imperfect anagram of the lead character's in Metamorphosis, and a cat called Franz appears in the game. The gameplay consists of guiding the cockroach through a series of puzzles.
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a 2003 racing video game developed by Stellar Stone and published by GameMill Publishing. The player controls a semi-trailer truck and races a stationary opponent through checkpoints on US truck routes. Stellar Stone, based in California, outsourced the game's development to Ukraine, and the game was released in an unfinished state on November 20, 2003. Due to a multitude of bugs and lack of proper gameplay, Big Rigs was critically panned, became the worst-rated game on review aggregator websites Metacritic and GameRankings, and has frequently been cited as one of the worst video games of all time by gaming publications.
Half-Life is a series of first-person shooter (FPS) games created by Valve. The games combine shooting combat, puzzles and storytelling.
The Orange Box is a video game compilation containing five games developed and published by Valve. Two of the games included, Half-Life 2 and its first stand-alone expansion, Episode One; had previously been released as separate products. Three new games were also included in the compilation: the second stand-alone expansion, Half-Life 2: Episode Two; the puzzle game Portal; and Team Fortress 2, the multiplayer game sequel to Team Fortress Classic. Valve also released a soundtrack containing music from the games within the compilation. A separate product entitled The Black Box was planned, which would have included only the new games, but was later canceled.
Garry's Mod is a 2006 sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve. The base game mode of Garry's Mod has no set objectives and provides the player with a world in which to freely manipulate objects. Other game modes, notably Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt, are created by other developers as mods and are installed separately, by means such as the Steam Workshop. Garry's Mod was created by Garry Newman as a mod for Valve's Source game engine and released in December 2004, before being expanded into a standalone release that was published by Valve in November 2006. Ports of the original Windows version for Mac OS X and Linux followed in September 2010 and June 2013, respectively. As of September 2021, Garry's Mod has sold more than 20 million copies. A successor, Sandbox, has been in development since 2015.
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a puzzle-platform game for Xbox Live Arcade and Windows PC developed by The Odd Gentlemen. Reviews of the game praised its unique puzzle mechanics, comparing them to the likes of Portal and Braid. It was released for the Xbox 360 on February 17, 2010. It was originally a student's graduate thesis at the University of Southern California. It was published by 2K Play. The PC version was released exclusively via Steam on April 20, 2010.
Bulletstorm is a 2011 first-person shooter game developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games and published by Electronic Arts (EA). The video game is distinguished by its system of rewarding players with "skillpoints" for performing increasingly creative kills. Bulletstorm does not have any competitive multiplayer modes, preferring instead to include cooperative online play and score attack modes. Set in the 26th century, the game's story follows Grayson Hunt, a space pirate and former black ops soldier who gets shot down on a war-torn planet while trying to exact revenge on General Sarrano, his former commander who tricked him and his men into committing war crimes and assassinating innocents.
Deponia is a graphic adventure video game developed and published by Daedalic Entertainment. The game's story sees players taking on the role of Rufus, an inhabitant of the junk planet Deponia, as he attempts to seek a new life on the floating city known as Elysium. However, he soon becomes embroiled with the task of helping an Elysian return to their home and uncovers a plot that threatens his home planet.
Cube World is an action role-playing game developed and published by Picroma for Microsoft Windows. Wolfram von Funck, the game's designer, began developing the game in June 2011, and was later joined by his wife, Sarah. An alpha version of the game was released on July 2, 2013, but saw sparse updates and communication from von Funck, with many considering the game to be vaporware until he officially released it on September 30, 2019.
Denuvo Anti-Tamper is an anti-tamper and digital rights management (DRM) system developed by the Austrian company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH. The company was formed from a management buyout of DigitalWorks, the developer of SecuROM, and began developing the software in 2014. It was introduced with FIFA 15 in September. In addition to Denuvo Anti-Tamper, Denuvo Software Solutions has developed the anti-cheat system Denuvo Anti-Cheat and Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection, which attempts to prevent Nintendo Switch games from being emulated. The company was acquired by Irdeto in January 2018.
The Talos Principle is a 2014 puzzle video game developed by Croteam and published by Devolver Digital. It was simultaneously released on Linux, OS X and Windows in December 2014. It was released for Android in May 2015, for PlayStation 4 in October 2015, for iOS in October 2017, for Xbox One in August 2018, and Nintendo Switch in December 2019. Virtual reality-enabled versions for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive were released on 18 October 2017. The downloadable content Road to Gehenna was released on 23 July 2015.
Digital Homicide Studios L.L.C. was an American video game developer based in Yuma, Arizona. James and Robert Romine founded the company in 2014 and released poorly received games in quick succession. The studio produced roughly sixty games until September 2016, including The Slaughtering Grounds, Temper Tantrum, and Galactic Hitman. The Slaughtering Grounds, Digital Homicide Studios's best-known title, was released via Steam in October 2014. Jim Sterling's criticism of the game led to a dispute with Digital Homicide Studios and eventually a lawsuit by James Romine against Sterling. Romine also filed a lawsuit against 100 anonymous Steam users in September 2016, accusing them of harassment. In response to the latter, Valve removed all Digital Homicide Studios games from Steam, which Romine stated "destroyed" the studio by October 2016. He subsequently withdrew the lawsuit, while that against Sterling was dismissed with prejudice in February 2017.
Clicker Heroes is an idle game that was developed by American independent studio Playsaurus. It was originally released for browsers in 2014, for mobile devices in 2015, and for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles in 2017. The game is a spinoff of Playsaurus's earlier game Cloudstone, from which it uses many graphic elements.
Undertale is a 2015 2D role-playing video game created by American indie developer Toby Fox. The player controls a child who has fallen into the Underground: a large, secluded region under the surface of the Earth, separated by a magical barrier. The player meets various monsters during the journey back to the surface, although some monsters might engage the player in a fight. The combat system involves the player navigating through mini-bullet hell attacks by the opponent. They can opt to pacify or subdue monsters in order to spare them instead of killing them. These choices affect the game, with the dialogue, characters, and story changing based on outcomes.
Scrap Mechanic is a sandbox video game developed for Windows by Swedish game studio and publisher Axolot Games, in which players can build machines, vehicles, and buildings, and share their creations online. The initial version of the game, released on January 20, 2016, was a creative mode with unlimited access to all available parts for building. On the day of its release, it was the top-selling game on Steam and is estimated to have 1–2 million sales. The survival mode update for the game, with new game mechanics including wildlife, scavenging, farming, and cooking, as well as an underwater biome, was released on May 7, 2020. It was the third-best-selling game on Steam the week after the update.
