Valve's Gabe Newell was quoted as saying defiantly that he'd rather let the company disintegrate over time than sell to a mega-corporation that would "cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate.”
Valve software is now valued at $2.5 billion, and has eyes on opening its scope to new services such as Steam TV and Steam Greenlight.
Meanwhile, this probably is one of the motivating factors for Electronic Arts instituting its own digital distribution service, Origin.