Former Valve Exec Claims Half-Life Sales Were Saved by a ‘Game of the Year’ Sticker
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- Valve initially struggled to sell Half-Life until they put a ‘Game of the Year’ sticker on the box.
- Monica Harrington says Half-Life’s case may have been the first proactive use of the GOTY label.
- In November 2023, Half-Life celebrated its 25th anniversary.
Half-Life didn’t sell well at first until it got a ‘Game of the Year’ sticker on the box, according to Monica Harrington, Valve’s first chief marketing officer and a founding team member.
Harrington revealed in a recent sit-down chat with PC Gamer’s Ted Litchfield that, back in the late 1990s, Half-Life, was not catching anyone’s attention on store shelves. Monica claims that it was happening because of the original box art, which was an orange blur of graffiti-styled branding and a cryptic Lambda symbol.
Monica realized that Valve was in trouble, and worse, the company had to depend on its publisher, Sierra, to reissue the game with new box art and an the ‘Game of the Year’ sticker.
Valve’s former chief marketing officer highlighted that the label wasn’t just marketing fluff, as Half-Life had earned great reviews from critics and industry outlets. Still, calling attention to that acclaim with a literal sticker (and eventually, new cover art featuring protagonist Gordon Freeman) made the sales take off.
Looking back, Harrington believes this may have been the first time a developer used a GOTY label so proactively. “It had never been used in that way,” she said.
Half-Life, which is now considered one of the greatest games of all time, was Valve’s debut product and the first game in the series. It received acclaim for its graphics, gameplay and narrative and won multiple awards. Half-Life inspired numerous fan-made mods, some of which became standalone games, such as Counter-Strike.
In November 2023, for the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, Valve updated the Steam version to revert content to its original 1998 state, fix long-standing bugs, and add content including the Half-Life: Uplink demo, four new multiplayer maps, Steam Deck support, rendering improvements, and support for 4K monitors.
Valve also released an hour-long documentary on the creation of Half-Life, featuring commentary from the original developers, designers and artists. Two days after the documentary’s release, Half-Life reached 33,471 concurrent players on Steam, its highest-ever number.
