Valve as a company and Gabe Newell himself were on the verge of bankruptcy in the days before the launch of Steam and Half-Life 2, thanks to a lawsuit from publisher Vivendi Games. Disaster was narrowly averted thanks to the fact that Valve just happened to have access to a summer intern who could translate Korean.
Back in 2004, Valve had already launched a handful of the best FPS games ever made, including Half-Life and Counter-Strike, which had both been published by Sierra Entertainment, a subsidiary of Vivendi Games. While Valve intended to self-publish Half-Life 2 on the then-new Steam platform, Vivendi had retail publishing rights to the game. Ahead of Half-Life 2's release, Vivendi was distributing copies of Valve's games to cyber cafes in Asia - something which, Valve argued, Vivendi did not have the right to do.
