One of the first things Newell and Harrington did was pay Abrash a visit at ID software. And inspired by fellow Microsoft alum, Michael Abrash who left to work on Quake for iD, they decided to start their own company in 1996. This is not totally related to the history of Valve, except that Gabe Newell, and co-founder Mike Harrington were part of this wave of Millionaires. You got all kind of investments that were predicated on a fantasy that this flow of money would go on forever.” Roberta Pauer, Economist, Washington State Employment Security Department You got really high levels of consumer spending - houses, cars, boats - that were not sustainable. In a Washington Post article on the topic, Roberta Pauer mentions: The company would generate nearly 10,000 millionaires, all living in the Seattle, Washington area. Not just the programmers and salespeople, but all the way down to the janitors. In the early years, employees received stock options as part of the compensation packages. This period of time in Microsoft’s history is known as the era of the Microsoft Millionaires. He spent more than a decade at the company, working on early versions of Windows. So it’s understandable, from Gabe’s point of view, why trading the Harvard crimson for a job at Microsoft made sense. Which, ya know, is a useful skill – but not nearly as useful as how to actually develop software.” In Harvard, I learned how to drink beer while doing a handstand in the snow. “learned more in three months with those guys at Microsoft than I did the entire time I was at Harvard. According to Newell, Ballmer finally said to him one day: “Well, if you’re going to be spending all your time hanging out here, you need to do something useful.” Soon, Gabe was working for the company. He was constantly at the office visiting his older brother who had gotten a job there, to the point of aggravating Steve Ballmer. His story of starting at the company is very reminiscent of others in the early days of the software industry. However in the early 80s, when he started, the company was not nearly the powerhouse it is today. Gabe Newell is a Harvard Dropout who went to work for Microsoft. Welcome to Arcadology: The Development of Half-Life. And none of it would have happened if it weren’t for the era of the Microsoft Millionaires. The game, inspired by Doom, another FPS that turned the hobby on its head, would make Valve a power player in the industry. 20 years ago this month, in 1998, a startup named Valve released Half-Life, and it would change the face of gaming.

Half life e3 1997