LogIn"There's an alternate universe where Half-Life disappeared after release."
Valve
We know Half-Life as one of the most important games in the industry and the best experience for many players still, but there was a time when it was on the verge of being Valve's first and last title, doomed from the launch.
According to Monica Harrington, Valve's chief marketing strategist at the time, her quick thinking helped the studio avoid an early death. In her memoir, The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside, she recalls the issues the team had with Half-Life's publisher Sierra On-Line and how her experience at Microsoft, where she and Valve's co-founders Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell worked, helped the game secure its future.
Half-Life's playtesters deemed the game "just OK," which was far from what the studio wished for. "If Valve shipped the game we had, it would launch and quietly disappear, and all of the work we’d all done would account for nothing," Monica said. "All of the people we’d hired would lose their jobs, we’d lose the money we’d invested. It was a disaster."
So, the team decided to strart from scratch using the knowledge they had from the previous attempt. However, Sierra did not agree with the move and refused to invest more. Valve was on its own with Newell's money. Harrington, who had worked on Half-Life's marketing, left Microsoft to develop the launch strategy full-time.
When Half-Life released in 1998, it was a hit. The Wall Street Journal published an article about it where it barely mentioned Sierra, and this was Harrington's strategy: "Since we were funding the development, we wanted Half-Life to be known as a Valve game, not a Sierra Studios game."
This was not the end of Valve's trials, however. Soon, Sierra announced it was moving on from the game to focus on other products while the developers were "trying to market a franchise-worthy game that we could build on for years to come." If Sierra had stopped its promo efforts, Half-Life would have been doomed.
"There's an alternate universe where Half-Life disappeared after release simply because it wasn't being stocked or supported in the retail channel. If Half-Life failed in the marketplace, the company would not have survived," Harrington told PC Gamer. "And that almost happened because Sierra had no idea how to handle a hit of Half-Life's potential magnitude."
Valve
Thanks to her Microsoft experience, she knew how to "maximize Half-Life's potential in the marketplace" and make Sierra fulfill its responsibilities. She told the publisher to support the Game of the Year Box re-release, otherwise, "we were going to walk away from our agreement and tell the industry that had fallen in love with Valve how screwed up Sierra really was." And it worked.
However, Sierra owned the Half-Life IP and held exclusive rights to publish Valve's next two games at a 15% royalty rate only.
"We would do all of the development work with an upfront royalty advance of $1 million for each of those games, and Sierra would get 85% of the revenue and all of the intellectual property. At the time, I knew development costs were approaching $5 million or more per game."
Valve
That wasn't right, so Harrington helped Valve pressure Sierra into renegotiating the contract. Otherwise, the team would stop making games and move to software development.
Harrington also pitched a then-tiny company called Amazon an idea for a new online entertainment platform "that would bring users together in a sticky, compelling entertainment experience, with digital and offline content sales." Supported by Amazon's agreement, Valve had more leverage against Sierra.
A lot has changed since those early days, and now Valve doesn't have to worry about losing everything: even though it doesn't release many games, Steam is the main PC platform for gamers, thriving as ever.
With Deadlock getting new updates before its launch, the company can rest easy in this area as well.
If you want to know more about the early days of Valve, read Harrington's story here. Also, join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.