Few companies can claim a bigger role in video game history than Valve. Founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington — both former Windows developers at Microsoft — the company’s first title, Half-Life, launched in 1998, is widely credited with transforming the first-person shooter genre. Harrington left the company in 2006, leaving Newell (known to some online obsessives as “Gaben”) as its de facto head.
