Valve

On August 24, 1996, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, who had just left MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, founded Valve in Kirkland, Washington.⁠[1]

Half-Life was released in November 1998 and sold 2.5 million copies within twelve months.⁠[1]

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) sued Valve in August 2014. In 2016 the Federal Court of Australia found that Valve had breached the Australian Consumer Law and ordered penalties totalling A$3 million, and on December 22, 2017, the Full Federal Court dismissed Valve’s appeal.⁠[2]

The courts held that Valve, though based in Washington, carried on business in Australia and was bound by that law, and that Steam’s no-refund statements would lead consumers to believe no refund was available in any circumstances. In late April 2018 the High Court of Australia dismissed Valve’s application for special leave to appeal.⁠[3]

On January 20, 2021, the European Commission fined Valve and five PC game publishers a total of €7.8 million for geo-blocking Steam activation keys, with Valve’s share just over €1.6 million; the Commission found the practices ran between September 2010 and October 2015.⁠[4]

Valve said it had cooperated fully, disagreed with the findings and planned to appeal.⁠[4]

In April 2021 Wolfire Games sued Valve, alleging that it used Steam’s dominance of the PC gaming market to suppress competition; Dark Catt Studios filed a separate suit the same year, and the two cases were combined in July 2022. Steam’s commission starts at 30% and falls to 20% as sales grow; Valve has called the rate “industry standard.”⁠[5]

In 2024 the court certified a class of about 30,000 computer game publishers in the case (No. 2:21-cv-00563); the plaintiffs allege that Valve imposed price and content parity policies that limit competition from rival platforms. As of December 2024 the court had not ruled on the allegations.⁠[6]

On November 12, 2025, Valve announced the Steam Machine living-room console, the Steam Frame wireless VR headset and a new Steam Controller for release in early 2026, without announcing prices; Valve said the Steam Machine was more than six times as powerful as the Steam Deck.⁠[7]

In October 2026 developers began finding that the Steamworks build checklist listed a requirement to play the game through Steam for five minutes: developers must first run their own game through Steam before they can complete the pre-submission check.⁠[8]

Steam was first built to deliver game updates and later also sold other companies’ games.⁠[1]

Valve requires both a store-page checklist and a game-build checklist to be completed, reviewed and approved before release, and the store page must be submitted for review before the build.⁠[9]

Valve says a build review typically takes three to five business days and asks developers to plan for at least seven; the product must start up properly and launch on every operating system listed on the store page, listed features must be implemented, and in-game transactions must use the Steam Wallet.⁠[10]