Former Valve Marketing Director Reveals How Studio Boosted Half-Life Sales With One Simple Trick

Today, the original Half-Life is considered one of the most successful PC games in history, but at the start of sales, gamers were in no hurry to line up for the adventures of Gordon Freeman. Until Valve resorted to one trick.

Image source: Valve

Former Valve marketing director Monica Harrington, who founded the studio with her ex-husband Mike Harrington, spoke to PC Gamer about the difficulties of promoting Half-Life.

According to Harrington, when Half-Life first came out, almost no one paid attention to its boxes. The game came in orange packaging with a “lambda” on the cover (see image below).

Harrington realized something had to change. Valve had to rely on the game’s publisher, Sierra, to add a novelty element to Half-Life packaging: a “Game of the Year” sticker.

Half-Life was so critically acclaimed that the sticker’s veracity was never questioned. The badge was first applied to existing copies, and then Sierra re-released the game with new cover art (see image below).

The idea worked, and it boosted Half-Life’s sales. According to Harrington, Valve was the first to use the Game of the Year badge to market its product, although it’s not just established hits that are using the ploy these days.

Harington also previously described how Valve began to combat piracy. The studio developed an authentication system in which buyers had to verify and register their copy of the game directly through Valve.