10 VR Games That Revived Awesome Game Studios Back

Game Studio: Valve

While Valve never declined as a profitable entity, for the last seven years as a game developer, they have definitely suffered.

To recap their history: the studio reinvented the FPS genre in 1998 with Half-Life, then took the multiplayer scene by storm with Counter-Stike, only to surpass both with the masterpiece of Half-Life 2.

Valve then released their digital storefront, Steam, which managed to singlehandedly rescue a PC gaming scene ravaged by piracy and genre burn-out during the mid-noughts.

Surprisingly, the dev managed to balance both priorities, as they successfully continued Half-Life with Episodes 1 & 2, whilst creating iconic new franchises like Left 4 Dead, Portal, Team Fortress, and DOTA. All this while nourishing Steam, to almost behemothic proportions...

But then Steam and its weird experiments (e.g. the Steam box) took precedent, the lack of a Half-Life sequel became a meme, and their sole new IP in almost a decade, Artifact, was an underwhelming card collecting RTS.

Had Valve lost all interest in game development?

Last year answered that question, with Half-Life: Alyx. An experience that basically rewrote the VR gamebook and elevates the FPS genre to places you couldn't dream.

It has shot Valve back up on top as the best current devs, plus broke ground for the medium: as it is the first VR game to land several major nominations at the annual Game Awards.