Along with "The Orange Box", a collection of five Valve games utilizing the Source engine, Valve was originally going to release "The Black Box", which would only contain the three previously unreleased games: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box also includes Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One, each of which had already been released individually.

Production of physical copies of The Black Box was cancelled, but the collection is still available for download through Steam, using a coupon found in an ATI bundle that included an ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT and a coupon for the Black Box.