Valve was going to ship The Orange Box in a white box before staff 'destroyed' the idea, and yes they saw you all doubting Portal before release: 'You guys are gonna eat those words'

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"A great example of how Valve dysfunctionally works but works well."

The Orange Box
(Image credit: Valve)

On October 10 2007 Valve released what is perhaps the greatest deal in gaming history: The Orange Box, a compendium of Half-Life 2 with both episodes, the long-awaited Team Fortress 2, and the unknown quantity Portal. OK, Half-Life 2 was a few years old by this point (Episode 2 was new), but every single game in that package is an all-timer, and you got the lot for the price of one retail game.

And at the time, retail still mattered to Valve: Steam was a few years old, but boxed sales were the focus for The Orange Box at launch. Which naturally made the box itself a very important part of the whole deal and… well, this is the one aspect on which The Orange Box fell flat. The final product was a weird tripartite presentation of all three games, which have distinct aesthetics, and a bunch of text telling you what was in the box.

To return to the box, it comes down to an internal meeting which is "a great example of how decisions get made," says Faliszek. "Going into the meeting the box is the most important thing possible because it's going to talk about the game on the store shelves. We're not even trusting Steam yet, this is like 2007. The box is gonna be the most important thing, and you have to convey value in the box. Everyone who worked there back in the day will remember this meeting because they show this box and… it's like an Apple box, it's got nothing on it, except [whispers] 'Half-Life 2' or maybe 'The Orange Box.'"

"There was The White Box, The Black Box too, it was super-confusing," says Faliszek. "But it was so stately and so beautiful and we were all like 'this is stupid, this is just dumb,' and these were senior people pitching this, and oh my god the ridicule they're getting for this idea, this game box… and it does look like nothing else, but…

"Everybody who's been working and crunching, this is our relief valve, I'm using a bunch of puns here, our way to blow off steam and get this out of our system. That box… man I wish I had it, any of the art from that I'd love to see it again because it makes me laugh. Peoples' hearts were in the right place, they were trying something, you know you talk yourself into it. But then it meets reality and the first playtesters for anything are always other people at Valve… and that got destroyed."

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Rich Stanton
Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."