Gabe Newell’s company, however, loathes stagnation and sought to secure inroads into a number of new markets to further consolidate its position. It has long dominated the digital content distribution market, with any real competition emerging only recently, in the form of the Epic Store. Steam is no longer an upstart, but a genuine behemoth worth billions of dollars-and is basically de rigeur for every PC gamer in the world. The last game in the franchise, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, was released in 2007. Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, later spent years trying to convince the expectant gamers that the subsequently released Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two were in fact Half-Life 3, but nobody was ready to believe him just yet.įifteen years have passed since Half-Life 2. Today, the second installment in the franchise is considered a seminal FPS title in the history of gaming, and the long wait for the final chapter in the trilogy has since become of the most popular memes in the gaming realm. Half-Life 2 was not just supposed to sell-sales were expected to drive the growth of Steam.

To run the game, players had to install the aforementioned Steam-a digital content distribution platform. Half-Life 2, however, was not an end in itself-rather, it was supposed to promote that which would make Valve a veritable giant among electronic entertainment studios. This allowed players to begin playing the long-awaited sequel immediately after the developers “flipped the switch.” Half-Life 2 was an immediate hit-released to critical and popular acclaim, the game ended up with a whopping 96/100 rating at the online review aggregator site Metacritic. Additionally, Half-Life 2 would become the first title in history to be available for download via Steam-even before its official premiere.

Source was supposed to provide players with exceptional visual and sound experiences, and offer unparalleled capabilities in terms of enemy AI.

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