Valve

Valve is a software company best known for their digital distribution platform Steam and their multiple hit video game franchises. The company was founded by ex-microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington in 1996.

Steam

Steam is a video game distribution platform for computers running windows or mac operating systems. Steam offers its users a way to download old and new games from multiple publishers. Community features have been added to the platform that allow users to create a profile, add friends, join groups, schedule events, and see and join games that their friends are playing. In addition to these features, Steam also has a cloud feature that lets users save their game preferences and save files on the Steam servers so that they can access them across multiple computers.

Valve Anti-Cheat

Also known as VAC, this is the anti-cheat system employed through Steam. It works by scanning a user's computer memory looking for the signatures of blacklisted hacks. Valve uses a deliberate delay between when they detect hacks and when they ban a user. The reason for this is because Valve does not publicly release a list of which hacks are detected. By keeping this information confidential, gamers who use hacks will not know which hacks triggered the ban. Thus, Valve is able to lure hackers into a false sense of security with regard to certain hacks. This allows them catch a higher percentage of them.

Games

Valve has had many hit games since the company was founded. Their earliest and arguably most popular game series is the Half-Life franchise. In more recent years they have had success with games such as Portal 1 & 2 as well as Left 4 Dead 1 & 2.

Year	Title
1998	Half-Life
1999	Team Fortress Classic
1999	Half-Life: Opposing Force
2000	Deathmatch Classic
2000	Ricochet
2000	Counter-Strike
2001	Half-Life: Blue Shift
2003	Day of Defeat
2004	Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
2004	Half-Life: Source
2004	Counter-Strike: Source
2004	Half-Life 2
2005	Day of Defeat: Source
2005	Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
2006	Half-Life 2: Episode One
2007	Half-Life 2: Episode Two
2007	Portal
2007	Team Fortress 2
2008	Left 4 Dead
2009	Left 4 Dead 2
2010	Alien Swarm
2011	Portal 2