Valve is an American video game producer. Valve is the creator of the Half-Life and Counter-Strike series. In 2003 the company launched the Steam digital distribution platform. The company was founded in 1996 in Kirkland, Washington, D.C., and moved to its current headquarters in 2003. 1)
Counter-Strike (often shortened to CS, formerly Half-Life: Counter-Strike) is a first-person shooter computer game created by Minh “Gooseman” Le and Jesse “Cliffe” Cliffe on June 19, 1999, and is a modification of Half-Life. Initially, Counter-Strike required Half-Life to work, but over time, more versions have been developed, which evolved into standalone productions using only the original game engine. 2)
Steam (Valve's game platform and store) already has over 1 billion accounts. 3)
Source is a game engine displaying graphics and is the successor to GoldSrc. It was developed by Valve Corporation. The engine premiered in October 2004 in the game Counter-Strike: Source (made available to holders of Condition Zero before the release of Half-Life 2). 4)
At first, the platform delivered only seven games when it debuted in 2004. However, this number has continuously grown over the following years. In 2018, an incredible 9,050 games were published on Steam. The number fell slightly to (a still massive) 8,290 in 2019. 5)