Mike Harrington is the co-founder of the computer game development

Game development

Game development is the software development process by which a video game is developed. Development is undertaken by a game developer, which may range from a single person to a large business. Mainstream games are normally funded by a publisher and take several years to develop. Indie games can...

 company, Valve Software and a lead programmer of the game Half-Life.

Previously a games developer at Dynamix

Dynamix

Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of computer games from 1984 to 2001, best known for their flight simulator, Red Baron, the Front Page Sports series, Betrayal at Krondor, and their online multiplayer game, Tribes.-History:...

 and a developer on the Windows NT

Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 at Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, Harrington founded Valve in 1996 with Gabe Newell

Gabe Newell

Gabe Logan Newell is the co-founder and managing director of video game development and online distribution company Valve Corporation.-Work:...

, another former Microsoft employee: he and Newell privately funded Valve through the development of Half-Life. Half-Life became a game industry phenomenon, winning more than 50 Game of the Year Awards; it was also named the "Best PC Game of All Time" by PC Gamer

PC Gamer

PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...

 Magazine.

On January 15, 2000, after the success of Half-Life, Harrington dissolved his partnership with Newell and left Valve to take an extended vacation with his wife, Monica.

Harrington returned to the software industry in 2006, when he co-founded Picnik

Picnik

Picnik is an online photo editing service. It is headquartered in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. Currently it can import photos natively from Facebook, Myspace, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Yahoo Image search, Google Plus and also offers options to upload from a computer or to upload...

 with long-time friend and former colleague Darrin Massena. Picnik was acquired by Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

in March 2010.