Monica Harrington, one of the founders of Valve and the company's chief marketing officer, gave a speech during the 2025 Game Developers Conference GDC, reviewing the company's history. She revealed that "Half-Life", which has since been regarded as one of the most important works in the history of video games, was not actually a best-seller from the beginning.

In her chat with PCGamer, she further discussed some of the challenges the company faced in the late '90s, including the fact that Half-Life had trouble post-launch because not many people would pay attention to a new game whose name was a physics term. And the game’s packaging isn’t particularly attractive either.

Harrington realized that Valve was in trouble: Not only was the game's lackluster sales causing financial problems, but Valve also had to rely on publisher Sierra to fulfill its distribution commitments. So the company re-released the game with a new box innovation, and a "little trick": a "Game of the Year" label on the box.

Although it didn't sell well, Half-Life has received a lot of positive reviews from many parties, so this is not false advertising. After making this decision, Sierra released the game with the cover featuring Gordon Freeman, the protagonist we all know.

Nowadays, many games will launch "Game of the Year Edition" or use "Game of the Year" as one of their marketing methods. Does this mean that V is the first to do this? Harrington replied: "I think so."

"I mean, it [Game of the Year title] has certainly never been used like this before. As far as I know, there's never been a game that got so much acclaim so quickly in a given year. Sometimes, people think of a game and say, 'That was an important game.' But it was unusual for a title to top so many plans so quickly [at the time]."