Valve Corporation

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Valve Corporation, (also called Valve Software or just as Valve), is an American computer game advancement and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States. It is also popular for its social-distribution network steam; and for developing the Source engine, which has been used in every Valve game considering that its intro in 2004. A QUICK INTRO TO THE HISTORY OF THE BUSINESS:

Valve was founded by long-time Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington on August 24, 1996 as an L.L.C. based in Kirkland, Washington. After incorporation in April 2003, it moved from its original area to Bellevue, Washington, the same city in which their initial publisher, Sierra On-Line, Inc., was based. After the success of Half-Life, the group worked on adjustments, spin-offs, and sequels, including Half-Life 2. All present Valve games are developed on its Source-Engine, which owes much of its success to adjustment and follows up. The company has established 6 game series: Half-Life, Group Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead and Day of Defeat.

Valve is noted for its assistance of its games' modding community: most prominently, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Day of Defeat. Valve has actually branched out with this tradition to continue developing the Warcraft III-based mod Defense of the Ancients with Dota 2. Each of these video games started as a third-party mod that Valve acquired and became a complete video game. They also distribute neighborhood mods on Steam. Because Valve Corporation's launching, it has expanded both in scope and industrial value. On January 10, 2008, Valve Corporation revealed the acquisition of Turtle Rock Studios.

On April 8, 2010, Valve won The Escapist Magazine's March Trouble competition for the very best designer of 2010, vanquishing Zynga in the semi-final and BioWare in the finale.

VISION, MISSION AND CORE VALUES OF THE EMBRACED COMPANY:
" WE'RE ALWAYS CREATING"
When you provide wise talented individuals the freedom to create without fear of failure, fantastic things happen. We see it every day at Valve. We're always trying to find imaginative risk-takers who can keep that streak alive. "IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU"

We are not pleased unless you and your family feel safe, pleased, and taken care of. We produce Joy world over.

CORE VALUES
* Freedom
* Employee Satisfaction
* Equality
* Creativity & Innovation

OUR TEAM COMMENTS ON THE ORGANISATION :
* Highly Flat organization structure.
* The atmosphere of freedom nurtures high creativity.
* Its’ not just about the development of the company but the employees and their families as well. * One of the most talked about success stories in gaming world.

GENERAL ENVIRONMENT
The general environment factors that we have considered in our case are the ones effecting Gaming Industry in particular.

Technical Factors:
The company has to be abreast with the technical aspects to survive the competitors , although the hardware is only as useful as the software running on it, and there’s a vast web of intertwined issues and questions to be resolved about how the combined hardware-software system might work and there exists a technological inflection point after which everything has to be changed.

Social Factors:
It has always been a challenge for the gaming companies to predict the changing gaming requirements of the consumers. Apart from this parents do not have high regard towards present gaming culture.

Economic Factors:
Gaming which is considered as the luxury may not be opted in economic conditions such as high inflation resulting in low income for the company. Another economic threat is piracy and its very predominant in the gaming industry.

Political Factors:
The Supreme Court has struck down few laws that have banned selling "violent" video games to children, a case balancing free speech rights with consumer protection recently and such regulations hinder the market of many interesting games.

SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENT

Specific environment mainly consists of the customers/gamers, Censor board, Competitors, retail shops and employees.
Customers/Gamers
The main customers for our company are in the age group between 12 and 35 and they are the life blood of our company.
Censor Board
All games developed by our company have to be certified by censor board to be launched in market and this board checks various criteria’s on which the game is categorised.
E.g. 18+, A rated, etc Competitors

The main competitors of VALVE are Electronic arts, Rock star games, Ensemble studios, Microsoft studios, Activision etc Retail shops
The sale of games from retail shops and internet downloads are inversely correlated.
Employees
We provide abundant freedom for our employees and encourage creativity. We also facilitate innovation and cares for employee’s satisfaction. Currently Valve has 293 employees. One among the prominent feature of our company is that we don’t have any stakeholders. Ownership is diluted within the owner and the employees.

ENVIRONMENT COMPLEXITY
Specific Environment General Environment
Social- Mentality

Technology

Political
Customers
Censor Board

Competitors

Economic

Piracy, Free Games

Specific Environment| General Environment| Interdependence| Censor Board| Political| Politicians may use clout to censor more games considering them to be too violent.| Censor Board| Social| Based on the social background of a particular region/country games may not go through. | Customers| Social| While gaming in some societies is considered to be a professional sport in others it may be considered as a useless pastime.| Customers| Technology| While some customers will be having the latest hardware technology there will be many who may not have the latest.| Competitors| Technology| Competitors may come up with better software to utilize the current hardware and thus attract more customers.| Competitors| Economic| Pirated games may hit hard more on the company if our game is more successful than our competitors. Also there are quite a few companies which cater to the same crowd but give out their games for free.|

ENVIRONMENT DYNAMISM
Stable Environment
* The company is self-funded, so it is not dependant on some outside economic factors. * The social stigma that people have would not change in a very short span of time like in India people are more passionate about cricket so we can't shift our customer base to games like rugby very easily. This thinking according to the demography would remain stable.

Unstable Environment

* The competition of the gaming company can be termed as unstable due to which regular updating of the games is needed. * The customer base is controlled by various economic and social factors which keeps on changing as time progresses. * The economic factors are unstable as the buying pattern also changes with changing global economy. * In today's world when the technology keeps on changing so with this changing technology the games are also needed to be changed. * The policies of government may keep on changing which would have an impact on our gaming software in the market.

ENVIRONMENTAL RICHNESS

VALVE is a self funded company which operates majorly in gaming industry which happens to be a luxury in most of the regions. So there exist a huge market and large population base to operate. The organization is located in a developed country where there is no shortage of supply of resources for the company. The major resource for the company is the man power, apart from this the infrastructure and hardware setups required for the company to run are available in plenty. Despite the "Resource Advantage", there exists a tough competition in the markets. Company has a huge market base to operate but easy susceptibility of its consumers to move to another option is very high.

BIBLOGRAPHY
1. http://www.valvesoftware.com/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation
3. http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/ 4. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/16/valves-michael-abrash-hierarchical-management-bottlenecks-innovation/