Valve is 30 years old today, and it all began with two former Microsoft employees and a risky bet on games

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In context: Most companies mark a major birthday with a press release and a photo of a cake in the break room. But Valve has done nothing of the sort so far for the big day. On August 24, 1996, thirty years ago today, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington signed the paperwork on a company they registered as Valve, LLC.

Interestingly, both Newell and Harrington had just quit Microsoft before they started Valve. Newell had been there for thirteen years by that point, working on early versions of Windows. The job had also made him rich enough to fund a startup himself, since he left with more than a million dollars of his own money.

However, it was Harrington who suggested they spend it on games. The two had known each other since a birthday party in 1987, and once they agreed to go ahead, they set up shop in Kirkland, Washington. That put their new office about five miles down the road from the Microsoft campus in Redmond.