Valve considered making a 'B title' before Half-Life, until an exec told Gabe Newell 'that's just not gonna work… the company will fail'
Harrington says Valve was headhunting developers in the late 90s, and one of the ideas linked to this was to work on another ...
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Valve Used ‘Game of the Year’ Sticker to Turn Half-Life into a Success
Monica Harrington from Valve shared some interesting facts about the company during her talk at the GDC 2025. One of the most surprising stories was about how Valve struggled to sell Half-Life due ...
Steam's DRM was inspired by an exec's nephew and his trusty CD burner
Harrington has a somewhat contentious relationship with Valve's origin story. In 2024, she said that her name had been erased ...
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Valve invented the 'Game of the Year Edition' marketing strategy, former exec reveals
At GDC 2025, former Valve chief Monica Harrington explored the challenges of marketing a game, and how the Game of the Year ...
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Valve's DRM Origins Include An Exec's 19-Year-Old Pirate Nephew
A fun myth to hear about relates to a friend's uncle working at Nintendo to get the scoop on secrets. But what if your ...
How a Microsoft exec managed to pitch Microsoft Word through the genius tactic of being able to actually use it in a 'type-off' demanded by clients: 'I was the only one …
And like many of Valve's earliest employees, Harrington came there from Microsoft, where one of her major responsibilities ...
Former Valve exec says the company struggled to sell Half-Life until coming up with the ultimate 'one simple trick' of marketing manoeuvres: slapping a 'Game of the Ye…
One of this year's GDC highlights was a talk by Monica Harrington, a founding member of Valve and the company's first chief ...
How a nephew’s CD burner inspired early Valve to embrace DRM
PC Gamer pulled that interesting tidbit from a talk Harrington gave at last week's Game Developers Conference. In her ...
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The Dramatic Half-Life Deal That Altered The Fate Of Valve Forever
The terms of the deal, Harrington said, was that Valve would fund all but $1 million of the development costs of Half-Life's ...
Video Gamer10d
OG Half-Life publisher Sierra planned to “abandon” the game before Valve threatened them
The original Half-Life was almost abandoned by publisher Sierra On-Line before Valve threatened to reveal their unsavoury ...
Former Valve exec recounts the meeting where Half-Life's publisher almost killed the iconic FPS: "Half-Life would quietly die. I was stunned"
Ex-Valve CMO Monica Harrington, in a recent panel from the Game Developer's Conference, once again remembered an era where ...
‘It’s kind of frightening’: Tesla owners on alert after Las Vegas fires
No arrests had been made in the blazes that torched several Teslas the day before, and some owners were worried about ...