This is the last stop before leaving, and it can be regarded as a circle, and it is back again.

There's no problem, everything is as planned, the game development is step-by-step, and the difficulty of game development itself is not very great, and the only thing that can be called difficult may be the copyright issue.

But for people like Zhou Fangyuan, copyright is not difficult. As mentioned earlier, FPS games are not exclusive to any game company, this is a game genre, and any company can develop related games. The small company didn't dare to tease Valve's tiger whiskers, but Zhou Fangyuan was not afraid, and it was just a big deal to fight a lawsuit. Small companies are afraid because they can't afford the high cost of litigation, and they have a big relationship with a large company, and they are likely to be dragged alongside by the other party. But Zhou Fangyuan didn't have such worries, because he knew that if he fought a lawsuit, Valve was destined to not win.

And the foundation on his side is also thick, so it's a big deal to really fight, beat him for five years and ten years, and see who can't bear it first, and maybe Valve may be dragged down when the time comes. Although this is very shameless, in business, Zhou Fangyuan does not feel that he has done anything wrong. He has also sought permission to develop new games under the name of CS. But obviously, Valve is ambitious, and they obviously hope to keep CS in their own hands for subsequent development, so Zhou Fangyuan can only say sorry, the FPS market is so big, it is impossible for Yuanfang Group not to get involved.

If you can't enter in a more peaceful way, you can simply rush in. When the time comes, he will speak with strength, and he really doesn't believe that he will lose.

Just like in the previous life, CS is powerful, but it was killed by CF, and it lost its voice in the FPS field continuously, which no one expected at the beginning.

Speaking of which, Valve is quite a powerful company.

In 1996, Gabe Newell, a former Microsoft employee, and Mike Harington co-founded Fried Chicken Software. In the second half of 1996, they obtained a license to use the quake engine for the development of the Half-Life series. The original plan was to release it later in 1997, but the final date was set for October 31, 1998. Valve licensed TF Software to make a standalone game for the Fortress Classic game mode, which was originally a mode made by TF for Quake, and its Half-Life version was released in 1999 and was completed by TF.

Valve continued to develop the Half-Life set and released a number of extension modes and interfaces for developers on other platforms. They also made the most popular game modes, Counter-Strike and Day of Victory.

Neither of the founders was simple.

Both Gabe Newell and Mike Harington were employees of software giant Microsoft before starting their own businesses. Newell has been working in Microsoft's programming, systems, and technology departments since '83, and he can be regarded as a veteran. But both had big ambitions, and after Microsoft got bored, they quit their jobs to start their own game companies. In the metascore, which integrates game media and player ratings, the highest score that has been received is 96 points, and there are a total of 5 games with 96 points, 3 of which are produced by Valve.

In fact, at first, they wanted to develop their own engine, but after seeing the Carmack Quake1 engine, they decided to ask ID for permission to develop the game based on it. At that time, as their introducer, it was Abrash, who had asked Bill Gates to keep him personally, but still jumped to ID. At that time, Abrash and Carmack had a very good relationship, and both were big names in the field of computer graphics, so Newell and Harrington met Carmack smoothly. The process of getting the engine license was also quite smooth, but the owners of ID were not very optimistic about both of their companies.

With that out of the way, there's another question: what about the company's name? Newell and Harrington pondered to find a name that would be impressive, but not negative.

After a difficult choice, Valve was finally chosen! This is it! Valve was finally born and began his own legendary journey.

It's all that comes up with talent and publishers.

Newell personally invited John Guthrie and Steve Bond, who were delivering food at the university at the time, and both subsequently dropped out of school. After the company was basically formed, they began to poach people everywhere, and Microsoft did not escape their search. Once again, Newell's choice of publisher began to give Newell a headache when he was fully staffed. But the blessed don't worry, Xuele Mountain, which was ready to buy ID for $2.5 million in stock, extended an olive branch, and it can be said that the Williams do have a pair of discerning eyes, and the choice of both times is quite accurate.

However, in the investment colleagues, Xuele Mountain's requirements are also very demanding - "beyond Quake".

Relying on image technology and carmack alone is tantamount to blocking the car with a mantis arm.

So Valve decided to work on the game's background and plot, as well as the player's sense of involvement. ID's Doom and Quake pursue a sense of speed and gameplay, so Carmack said: "The background of the game is like the plot in an A-movie, although it must be there, but it is not the most important." But Valve tried to break that lockdown. Valve commissioned renowned writer Marc Laidlaw to write the script for himself. So there were the later famous protagonists "Gordon Freeman" and "Half-Life".

With the script, everything is easy to do. Valve began making drastic changes to Quake to fit the design of this new game. In fact, the difficulty is not only in the engine, but also in the design of the map and the level, so Valve's job becomes extremely difficult. How do you make it fun for players and not just kill, kill, kill? Valve spends a lot of time on gameplay enhancements.

Valve has many innovations to the Quake engine, such as Birdwell and Bailey's creation of bones for the model's head in order to achieve the dynamic effect of the character's mouth when speaking. Then there's the AI - the player's opponents will no longer be brainless barbarians, but warriors who will line up formations and use tactics. In the second half of '97, after almost a year of hard work, Valve released screenshots of the game and made a big splash at that year's E3 show. A lot of people praise Half-Life. By the way, at E3 that year, id showed Quake 2, and Romero, who has left id, brought everyone "Broadsword", which was later hailed as the worst game. E3 that year brought a good reputation to Valve, but many people, including Carmack, were still not optimistic about the licensee.

In August, Valve decided to rewrite both the AI and the levels. Everything was done all over again.

Another year has passed, and '98 has been quite an exciting year for Valve. The rewrite was well underway, and the revised Half-Life was once again on E3, with the first beta release in September, which caused an immediate earthquake: "Most of the Texas game development team was overwhelmed by the HL demo," says John Carmack. " "There has never been a demo of that game that has caused such a huge response within id as this demo version of HL. We had our suspicions, but it looks like Valve's plan worked. ”

ION Storm's John Romero is even more addicted to it: "It's amazing. I played non-stop for four and a half hours until I beat it, and you don't get a moment of respite in the game, and that's what makes the player wonder. "Obviously, Valve's initial character and game environment paid off. Its authenticity and detail are unique.

Half-Life has earned numerous accolades – but with it comes the pressure.

Valve then went into a state of squeezing, debugging and debugging in the shortest possible time before handing over a publishable version to the distributor. On November 7, 1998, Newell received an email stating that Half-Life had passed the test, and Half-Life was finally officially released. Since then, Valve has established itself as a player in the game development world, with the release of Team Fortess, Blue Shift and other products, and Counter-Strike, a game mode created by a few young people in their spare time, has unexpectedly become a mainstream FPS game, becoming one of the most popular games after Quake and StarCraft.

But in 2000, one of the company's founders, Mike Harrington, quit his job and went on a circumnavigation with his wife. It's similar to ID, two talented programmers, both creating great games, but both falling apart. Happy Mike goes on vacation, Newell is going to be alone, can he do it?

In 2002, something even worse happened, when Cherry Mountain illegally distributed copies of Valve's game and was sued by Valve. Later, Xuele Mountain was acquired by VUG, which in turn sued Valve for not working well to make the game. The lawsuit between the two has not been resolved. And at E3 that year, Valve didn't even participate, because Newell felt that the game "Half-Life 2", which had been in production for two years, was too bad.

But Newell wasn't going to change his plans because of these changes. He's still recruiting, and this time it's another heavyweight who has been wooed by Valve, and that's Bram Cohen, the father of BitTorrent. Cohen, who was born in 75, created **** technology in 2001, and this new type of P2P download method spread all at once. He caught the attention of Newell, who needed to make a Steam distribution system.

In 2003, almost 2 years after developing Half-Life 2, Newell announced its release date. It means that the development of Half-Life 2 is going to be accelerated. But Newell would not have imagined that the production and release of this game would be more difficult than ever imagined.

The first is engine technology.

Valve doesn't want to use the Quake engine anymore. They wanted to develop a physics engine that was closer to the real world, and the graphics engine couldn't be bad. Today's Valve can no longer live on the wealth laid down by others. It's true that Half-Life has a lot of its own stuff, but this time it's completely on its own. In the end, they chose the Havok engine.

And then there's the script, this time the script has to add a lot of characters, and the original classic characters Freeman and G-Man can't help but appear, so the script begins to get thicker and thicker, the game scene is getting bigger and bigger, and the breadth of the game is also growing exponentially.

Then came the accident, the Half-Life 2 source code leak. In September of that year, a young German named Alex G used the Trojan horse in the email to steal Newell's account, steal the source code and development tools of the soon-to-be-completed Half-Life 2, and publish it on the Internet. Newell was furious and used the offer as a bait to catch the daring hacker. Although angry, Newell had no choice but to change the development plan again, revising the parts that had already been completed.

In this way, it is impossible for Half-Life 2 not to skip the ticket. The hapless Valve made its first jump in September 2003, much to the disappointment of players. However, the production process went smoothly, everyone was hard at work, and players woke up from the initial disappointment and abuse and began to support Valve's work, and some of them even volunteered, all in the hope that Half-Life 2 would be released soon. Newell also returned to normal working order, but he didn't expect the publisher's lawsuit to become another obstacle that prevented Half-Life 2 from being released as scheduled.

Acquired by VUG, Sherry Hills, disappeared from the gaming world, and VUG was a more reckless company. After more than two years of grueling litigation, Valve finally won the lawsuit on November 29, 2004.

Valve, who had been busy with lawsuits before, realized that he couldn't delay it any longer, and he must complete the production of this game that has bounced countless tickets as soon as possible. There is a limit to the player's patience, and Valve does not want his "Half-Life 2" to become the second "Broadsword". In September, Valve finally finished most of the game's production and began post-testing and debugging. On November 26, 2004, Half-Life 2 appeared in front of everyone. Five years of cultivation have finally come to fruition. After its release, the game was well received, with players giving the game high praise and the press overwhelmingly giving high marks. Sales also exceeded Valve's expectations - and Valve finally lived up to players' expectations.

In the days that followed, Half-Life 2 based on the Havok engine began to spin-off new works, including Half-Life 1, CS, DOD and many other games were rewritten with the Source engine.

Do you think that's the end of it?

No, this is just the beginning!

THE FAMOUS STEAM GAME PLATFORM,IN FACT, THIS COMPANY,SINCE IT WAS LISTED IN 02,IT INCLUDES A LARGE NUMBER OF THIRD PARTIES,IT HAS BECOME THE WORLD'S LARGEST GAME PLATFORM。 With the support of series games such as Half-Life, Valve can indeed refuse the cooperation intention of the distant group very hard. After all, the foundation of the family has been established, the family is big, and it is understandable that they do not like to take care of the distant group. But since this is the case, then everyone can only do it knife to gun, which of course has benefits, once the other party is defeated, the distant group can easily take over the other party's authority. It doesn't matter if you lose, after all, as a challenger, even if you lose, at most you miscalculated this time, and you will come back next time. As the challenged side, Valve is the one who really can't afford to lose, starting with FPS games, if they are defeated in their own fields...... That's too much fun.

So although the distant group is also a big business, but in the FPS field, their current situation is that they are barefoot and not afraid to wear shoes, the distant game has never done an FPS game before, and the neighborhood is completely trying from scratch, success will be joyful, and failure will not be sad.

But if Valve is defeated by such a novice, the industry's fame plummets, and the impact on Steam is huge. Now that Vavle's focus has largely shifted towards Steam, it's clear that they're noticing that just making games is far less competitive than doing platforms at the same time.

So if you really want to compare, STEAM is obviously more important, CF, on the surface, it is the challenge of distant games to Valve, in fact, this is such an alliance led by distant games, Blizzard as an important core, a new platform composed of a new platform, a challenge to the STEAM game product platform.

DEFEAT HIM, BLIZZARD GAME PLATFORM CAN BECOME THE LARGEST GAME PLATFORM IN THE WHOLE RICE COUNTRY, AND EVEN IN NORTH AMERICA, THE WORLD'S LARGEST GAME PLATFORM, SUCH A BENEFIT, ZHOU FANGYUAN IS RELUCTANT TO LOSE IT AT ALL, NOT ONLY HIM, MIKE'S SIDE IS ALSO GEARING UP, AND HE HAS LONG WANTED TO GIVE STEAM A LITTLE COLOR TO SEE.

Now, it's such a good opportunity.