Valve Corporation
About Valve
A private video game company and distributor of digital media.
It’s headquarters are in Belleview Washington
Has over 400 employees
Its equity is approximately $2.5 Billion a year.
Famous for its “Steam Engine” and for making the video games
Half-Life
Left for Dead
Won the Escapist Magazine  best developer of 2010.
Founding
About Gabe Newell
Worked as a producer for Microsoft corp. for 13 years.
In 1996, alongside colleague Mike Harrington, left Microsoft to create Valve.
Background in Microsoft helped Valve start out with a relationship with Microsoft and Gearbox (famous for Borderlands).
Relationship with these companies would forever affect Valve.
Valve
Became a respected company in 1998 when it created the game Half-Life.
After Half-Life the company went on to create other famous games (from 1998 to present)
Team Fortress
Portal
Counter- Strike
Left For Dead
Dota 2
New ventures
In 2001 the Valve went online and launched its online page, and through it gave us Steam.
Steam made Valve corporation the famous distributor of media that it has become.
What Steam is
A online distribution program where customers can buy pc games and entertainment software. (similar to iTunes)
Allows the public to access their games and software from any computer, Linux, or mobile device around the world.
Allows independent game developers to sell their games
Why Steam
is better then the rest
Offers bundles and packages that other game distributors wouldn’t.
Steam sales would have games from different publishers at 50-75% off.
Has over 2,000 games to choose from.
Gamers connect with over 40 million users.
They can form groups
Exchange items
Even create new content for games
Steam players obtain tools to develop personal things (sort of like DLCs) for their own games: items, clothes, etc
The Steam Box
In 2012 announced the current development of the Steam Box was announced
Will be a mixture of a computer system and a console game that will run in their new Steam OS
Will work with the Steam engine
Will be able share games with friends
Have parental controls
Will have the option to live stream gameplay
Its design is made to eliminate the use of disk space, since the games will be online
The Steam box
Valve Controller
Valve is owned by Gave Newell and Mike Harrington and is not listed in the Stock Exchange.
Currently Valve’s strongest competitors are
GameStop corp.
Gamefly corp.
Electronic Arts Inc.
Valve’s bright future
Valve’s rise in commercial value allowed it to buy Turtle Rock studios in 2010.
2013: creation of Pipeline
Intern project for high school students to learn how to create video games.
In 2013 announced that it had a deal with director Peter Jackson to make a movie of Portal or Half-Life.
3.  This Bloomberg BusinessWeek announced that Apple is in the midst of talks to purchase Valve.
SWOT
Strength
Weakness
Opportunities
Threats
Strength
Due to their experience from working with Microsoft they had connections with other publishers
With no chair holders the owners are able to do anything they want without consent of others except those in head of department.
Well known for their source engine which they use in all their games
Weakness
Due to their games and publishing they’ve had a few incident and copyright claims some with
Blizzard, Inc
Viviendi Universal
Due to new consoles having same hardware as current computers , it affects sales on computer games because gamers are now able to play high res games on their TV consoles taken away sales from computer games.
Opportunities
They are constantly updating their programs and always keeping up to date with current competitors
They are always expanding and are interested in trying new things
They are always looking for new talented people
They offer tutorials for those who want to start getting into game design
Threats
Other big publishing companies such as:
Gamefly
RedBox
EA
citation
Article
Bernstein, Mark. “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web.” A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites. A List Apart Mag., 16 Aug. 2002. Web. 4 May 2009.
Edwards, Cliff. “Valves Steam Machine Join Game Console War.” BloombergBusinessWeeÂk, BusinessWeek.com, Online. Published November 13, 2013. Accessed, November 15, 2013.
Hoovers, “Valve Competitors” http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/competition.Valve_Corporation.92ff360a341fdd05.html
Alec Kubas-Meyer, “Will Valve’s New Steam Controller Revolutionize Video Game Play?” , http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/27/will-valve-s-new-steam-controller-revolutionize-video-game-play.html , Online, Published September 27th 2013
Tom Risen, “Valve Gaming Console Targets Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox”
Images
http://t4.rbxcdn.com/50d55564ed3ba7bca052b456dd1ea3cd
