Hey, did you know these Valve guys are doing pretty well for themselves? Handily going toe-to-toe with Amazon, making more money per employee than Apple, and having a center of gravity so huge that even Microsoft looks set to come crawling back to it. And I'm willing to bet that Monica Harrington, one of the company's original executives and its first chief marketing officer, has a pretty solid idea of why.
During a post-talk interview with PC Gamer's own Ted Litchfield at GDC 2025, Harrington revealed the big, shiny secret to Valve's success—aside from her own technical competence and industry-savviness that saw her going to war with Sierra over its treatment of Half-Life. Simply put, "If you're in this industry, people have to trust you if you're going to be in it for a long time."
