A short tour of the semi-secret projects inside Valve’s headquarters (photo gallery)

BELLEVUE, Wash. — I took a short trip to Valve’s headquarters this week to view the company’s latest products. I didn’t see Gabe Newell, the chief executive of Valve, or Half-Life 3. But I did get a briefing on both Steam Machines, the Valve-powered Steam OS gaming computers with a special controller for big-screen TV play, and Valve’s virtual reality system, as demonstrated on the HTC Vive VR headset. While I was there, I snapped some photos of Valve’s headquarters.

Valve remains one of the most interesting companies in the game industry as it controls its own destiny. Founded by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, the company started out in 1996 as a game developer, and its first game, Half-Life, was a huge hit when it debuted in 1998. It produced hit after hit, and along the way, it created the Steam digital distribution service on the PC. Now Steam has turned Valve into a digital game distribution giant.