Valve turns 30, and Steam still owns PC gaming

Thirty years ago today, two ex-Microsoft employees started a company in a garage. Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington probably didn’t know they were about to reshape how the entire world buys and plays games, but here we are.

Valve turns 30 today, and honestly, the timeline is wild when you lay it out. Half-Life dropped in 1998 and instantly became one of those games people still reference decades later. Then came Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Dota. Not every swing landed (RIP Artifact), but the hit rate is stupidly high for one studio.

The real power move, though, was Steam. Launched in 2003, it’s now basically the only place PC gamers buy anything. Hundreds of millions of players use it, and at its busiest, Steam has hit over 40 million people playing at the same time. That’s not a niche platform anymore; that’s the whole PC gaming industry running through one client.

Valve Hardware took a few tries

Valve’s hardware history is messier, and that’s part of what makes it interesting. The original Steam Machine launched in 2015 with weak specs and half-hearted partner support, and it quietly died by 2018. I reckon most companies would’ve dropped the whole idea after that.

Valve didn’t. In 2021, it brought hardware design in-house and released the Steam Deck, which actually worked. This year Valve is doubling down with a new Steam Machine, an updated Steam Deck, and the upcoming Steam Frame headset.

Thirty years in, Valve’s still shipping games, still running the biggest storefront in PC gaming, and still tinkering with hardware nobody asked for until it suddenly works. Not bad for a garage startup.

For more updates like this, check out the news section!