Valve has grown 50% in recent years

Valve's business has grown 'about 50%' in recent years, according to company co-founder Gabe Newell.

The Half-Life studio has enjoyed considerable success in the past decade, most notably with its Steam platform that launched in 2002.

Newell was at the British Academy Games Awards last week to pick up a BAFTA Fellowship, where he claimed Valve's success was due to having an open-platform like Steam for other developers to work with.

"I think in the last few years our business has grown about 50% on the back of having these opportunities created by having these open platforms," he said.

Newell also spoke about the future, where he expects designer and community to continue to work together.

"If you think of a multiplayer game or a social game really as being a collaboration between a game designer and a community, we continue to see that," he added.

"We have stuff like the workshop where we're actually drawing users in and they're making 300,000 Euros a year generating content for each other.

"I think we are going to continue to see tremendous innovation coming out of that potential, out of the unusual, crazy, weird, disgusting but ultimately wonderful experiences that people will create for each other."

Valve's next project is the Steam Box, which is expected to compete with next-gen consoles.