Through the Recreation Developer’s Convention 2025, Monica Harrington—one among Valve’s founders and its first chief advertising and marketing officer, who as soon as outright threatened Sierra over the rights to Half-Life—gave an illuminating speak on the corporate’s infancy. Earlier than, in fact, it turned the goliath-felling firm it’s right this moment.
Whereas that is attention-grabbing in itself—one other fascinating snippet she shared was about how Gabe Newell, circa 1998 to the early 2000s, had his eyes set on a social community. Y’know, like Fb, Instagram, or X. “Gabe had attention-grabbing concepts that had nothing to do with software program,” Harrington mentioned. “I imply, with video games—and a few of these would have been actually attention-grabbing.”
Actually attention-grabbing certainly, which is why PC Gamer’s Ted Litchfield requested about it when he sat down for an interview along with her after the speak. Harrington revealed the bombshell that, if a time traveller had gone again and stepped on a butterfly, we may all be yelling at one another on a Valve-owned social media platform as an alternative.
“Certainly one of them that simply struck me—as a result of this was not in a video games context in any respect—an interactive social hub … I am making an attempt to recollect among the conversations we had at the moment, however he was not speaking about, just like the group that exists on Steam or something like that.”
Harrington says that each she and Newell had a robust nostril for the place gaming was going—and the way huge it may doubtlessly be. However they additionally knew that the web normally had the ability to be a particularly efficient social hub, too. She talks about it in virtually prophetic phrases:
“What he was very conscious of—and I used to be too—was that the web may very well be this extremely social place, and folks weren’t excited about it that approach at the moment. Y’know, individuals had been doing transactions, tech corporations … they weren’t excited about the psychology and the social elements of it.”
She’s not improper. To place a pin within the timeline, Myspace debuted in 2003 (could she relaxation in peace), Fb arrived in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, and Instagram dropped in 2010. Valve had its finger on the heart beat of a thrumming community of social media giants that was about to bloom, its knee downright swollen from the approaching storm, and finally determined nah. Let’s not.
“The place Gabe’s thoughts was going [was] about increasing that social factor, however not in a gaming context … I feel it in all probability would not have regarded something like Fb or what occurred, however yeah.”
The one query is, what wouldn’t it have been known as? Steam would not change PC Gaming ceaselessly till 2003, so perhaps Gabe ‘n’ Co would’ve cribbed the title for that. In some alternate universe, we’re all posting Steets, or moving into arguments in quote-vents. Nonetheless, seeing as Steam barely felt the Amazon making an attempt to muscle in on its nook of the market? Valve possible made the proper alternative.
