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50 free Valve trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Valve was founded on Gabe Newell's wedding day in 1996 by two ex-Microsoft engineers who rejected names like Rhino Scar and Fruitfly Ensemble. Two years later Half-Life split the history of first-person shooters into before and after, and in 2003 Steam turned the studio into the gatekeeper of PC gaming. Along the way came Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Dota 2, Half-Life: Alyx and a run of hardware from the ill-fated Steam Machine to the Steam Deck. This quiz covers the games, the engines, the acquisitions, the cancelled projects, the lawsuits with Vivendi, Blizzard and the Australian regulator, the flat structure with no bosses, and the term Valve Time that the company itself now uses. It also reaches into the hardware era: the HTC Vive, the Index, the Deck and the 2026 Steam Machine. Fifty questions, in sets of ten, from facts any Steam user knows to details only a Valve historian would recall.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Valve was founded in 1996 by Mike Harrington and which other former Microsoft employee?
Gabe Newell
Newell had spent 13 years at Microsoft, including work on the Windows 95 port of Doom.
Q 02To which Washington city did Valve move its headquarters in 2003?
Bellevue
It started in Kirkland, about five miles from the Microsoft campus, before the 2003 move.
Q 03What was Valve's debut game, released in November 1998?
Half-Life
IGN later said FPS history 'breaks down pretty cleanly into pre-Half-Life and post-Half-Life eras'.
Q 04Valve was founded on which personal occasion for Newell?
His wedding day
The date was August 24, 1996.
Q 05Which of these was a rejected alternative name for Valve?
Rhino Scar
Hollow Box and Fruitfly Ensemble were also considered; Newell wanted nothing 'testosterone-gorged'.
Q 06Valve's GoldSrc engine was a modified version of which id Software engine?
Quake
Source was later built from scratch to replace it.
Q 07Which publisher did Valve eventually sign with for its debut game?
Sierra On-Line
The deal gave Sierra the Half-Life IP until Valve renegotiated in 2001.
Q 08Which studio made the expansions Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Decay?
Gearbox Software
Gearbox later went on to make Borderlands.
Q 09In what year did Mike Harrington sell his stake in Valve to Newell?
2000
He left happy with the company's success after Half-Life.
Q 10Which company's digital-storefront offer did Valve use as leverage against Sierra in 2001?
Amazon
The amended deal handed Valve the Half-Life IP and online distribution rights.
Q 11In which year was Steam launched?
2003
It was announced at the 2002 Game Developers Conference and at first only delivered patches for Valve's own games.
Q 12Installing which 2004 game made Steam mandatory for players?
Half-Life 2
It had sold 12 million copies by 2011.
Q 13What is the name of the in-house engine Valve built to succeed GoldSrc?
Source
Source 2 followed in 2015 and powers Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2 and Half-Life: Alyx.
Q 14Portal grew out of which student project?
Q 21Which Taiwanese company partnered with Valve on the Vive VR headset?
HTC
Its Lighthouse base stations allowed room-scale VR.
Q 22What was Valve's 2016 collection of VR minigames called?
The Lab
It runs on Source 2.
Q 23Which Firewatch developer did Valve acquire in April 2018?
Campo Santo
The studio initially helped develop Half-Life: Alyx.
Q 24Which Magic: The Gathering creator designed Valve's card game Artifact?
Narbacular Drop
Tag: The Power of Paint, another DigiPen project, supplied Portal 2's gel mechanics.
Q 15What was the 2007 bundle containing Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Episode Two called?
The Orange Box
A smaller Black Box was announced at the same time; EA distributed both.
Q 16Which studio did Valve acquire in 2008 and rename Valve South?
Turtle Rock Studios
It made Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 before spinning back out in 2010.
Q 17Which Warcraft III mod developer did Valve hire in 2009 to lead Dota 2?
IceFrog
Eul, the mod's original creator, also joined Valve by 2010.
Q 18What is the name of Valve's annual Dota 2 esports tournament, begun in 2011?
The International
Its prize pool is boosted by battle-pass microtransactions.
Q 19Which economist did Valve hire in 2012 to study its in-game economies?
Yanis Varoufakis
He later became Greece's finance minister.
Q 20Which film director did Newell announce a movie collaboration with in 2013?
J. J. Abrams
The announcement came at the D.I.C.E. Summit.
Richard Garfield
Artifact lost 95% of its players within months and was abandoned in 2021.
Q 25What was the company's second-generation VR headset, released in June 2019, called?
Valve Index
Its controllers strap to the palm and detect individual fingers.
Q 26Which 2020 VR game was hailed as virtual reality's first killer app?
Half-Life: Alyx
Full development began around late 2016 with the largest team in Valve's history.
Q 27Which streaming service aired the animated Dota: Dragon's Blood from March 2021?
Netflix
Valve collaborated on the series.
Q 28What compatibility layer lets Windows games run on the Linux-based Steam Deck?
Proton
The Deck shipped in February 2022 on SteamOS.
Q 29Which chipmaker supplies the customised Zen 2 and RDNA 2 silicon in the Steam Deck?
AMD
An OLED model with better battery life and more storage arrived in November 2023.
Q 30What is the name of the hero-shooter/MOBA hybrid Valve began beta-testing in 2024?
Deadlock
Staff from Hopoo Games, makers of Risk of Rain, joined Valve that September.