Wow, seeing this made me surprisingly emotional as I realized that downloading the pre-release leaked source code for some testing levels of HL2 (which included an early version of what would become Steam, as well)
- and then debugging / figuring out how to hack together a version that would compile in Visual Studio (back when you had to have a license… in theory…) as a preteen -
had a way bigger impact on me than I gave it credit for at the time. I think seeing the sheer scope of that codebase and realizing how much I didn’t understand and still had to learn is part of what put me in my path into both the game industry and software startups. I found both Valve’s and Gabe’s stories that much more compelling after gaining an appreciation for how much there was under the hood.
Cheers to everyone who has worked on this engine, this project, and this company over the years. I suspect your influence runs deeper than you know.