VALVE TIME

As Half-Life returns at last, we take a rare step inside one of the industry’s most secretive companies

- Alex Spencer

We find ourselves visiting the Valve offices at a crucial point in the studio’s story. When we arrive it is preparing to do something it hasn’t done since 2007, a gap that spans a narrow majority of the company’s entire lifespan: release a game with the words Half-Life in the title. It’s a huge moment for the studio, one that looked like it might never come – and it’s just a fraction of what is going on across the nine floors of Valve’s Bellevue headquarters.

After a whirlwind year-long development process that has seen it rapidly gain and lose players, Dota Underlords has just left early access, officially marking Valve’s first foray into mobile games. Meanwhile, Steam is in the process of breaking its own record for concurrent user numbers, buoyed by a recent expansion into China, and – seven years on from its release – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is doing the same, having recently followed other Valve titles like TF2 and Dota 2 into the waters of free-to-play.

It is, frankly, an incredible amount of activity for a studio with a headcount of 350, especially when you consider that number includes Valve’s nascent hardware division. This is the story of how it came to be, and where the studio goes next.

HALF-LIFE:ALYX