Gabe Newell: The Visionary Behind Valve and Steam

Early life and education

Newell was born on November 3, 1962, in Colorado, and attended Davis Senior High School in Davis, California. He worked as a paperboy, and later a telegram messenger for Western Union. He enrolled at Harvard University in 1980, but was convinced to drop out to work for Bill Gates at Microsoft by the head of sales in 1983.

Career

Microsoft

Newell spent 13 years at Microsoft as the producer of the first three releases of the Windows operating systems. Newell later said he learned more during his first three months at Microsoft than he ever did at Harvard, which was one of the primary reasons why he dropped out.

In late 1995, Doom, a 1993 first-person shooter game developed by id Software, was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 95. Newell said: "[id] ... didn't even distribute through retail, it distributed through bulletin boards and other pre-internet mechanisms. To me, that was a lightning bolt. Microsoft was hiring 500-people sales teams and this entire company was 12 people, yet it had created the most widely distributed software in the world. There was a sea change coming." At Microsoft, Newell led development on a port of Doom for Windows 95, which is credited for helping make Windows a viable game platform.

Valve

Inspired by Michael Abrash, who left Microsoft to work on the game Quake at id, Newell and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft to found the video game company Valve on August 24, 1996. Newell and Harrington funded development of the first Valve game, the first-person shooter Half-Life (1998), which was a critical and commercial success. Harrington left in 2000.

Newell gave Valve no deadline and a "virtually unlimited" budget to develop Half-Life 2 (2004), promising to fund it himself if necessary. Meanwhile, he spent several months developing Steam, a digital distribution service for games. By 2011, Steam controlled between 50% and 70% of the market for downloaded PC games and generated most of Valve's revenue. At a technology conference in Seattle that year, Newell argued that software piracy was best addressed by offering a superior option rather than pursuing anti-piracy technology. He cited Steam's success in Russia, where piracy is rife, as an example.

In 2007, Newell expressed his displeasure over developing for game consoles, saying that developing processes for Sony's PlayStation 3 was a "waste of everybody's time". On stage at Sony's keynote at E3 2010, he acknowledged his criticism but discussed the open nature of the PlayStation 3 and announced a port of Portal 2, remarking that with Steamworks support it would be the best version for any console. Newell also criticized the Xbox Live service, referring to it as a "train wreck", and Windows 8, calling it a threat to the open nature of PC gaming. At the 2013 LinuxCon, Newell said the Linux operating system and open source development were "the future of gaming". He accused the proprietary systems of companies such as Microsoft and Apple of stifling innovation through slow certification processes.

In 2009, IGN named Newell one of the top 100 game creators of all time, writing that it was "almost impossible to gauge" Valve's influence on game design, technology and the video games industry. In December 2010, Forbes listed Newell as "A Name You Need to Know", primarily for his work on Steam having partnerships with multiple major developers. In 2013, Newell was added to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame and received the BAFTA Fellowship award for his contributions to the video game industry. In October 2017, Forbes listed Newell among the 100 wealthiest people in the United States, with an estimated net worth of $5.5 billion. In December 2021, Forbes estimated that Newell had a net worth of $3.9 billion and owned at least one quarter of Valve. According to Charlie Fish, the author of The History of Video Games, as of 2021 Newell was the richest person in the video game industry.

Other ventures

Newell is the owner of the marine research organization Inkfish. In November 2022, Inkfish purchased the Hadal Exploration System, a private deep-sea exploration platform, from the undersea explorer Victor Vescovo. In 2020, Newell and the Valve employee Yahn Bernier created a car racing team, The Heart of Racing, to raise funds for children's charities in Seattle and New Zealand.

Personal life

Newell formerly suffered from Fuchs' dystrophy, a congenital disease which affects the cornea. He was cured via two cornea transplants in 2006 and 2007. On the same day he founded Valve with Harrington, Newell married Lisa Mennet. They have two sons. The birth of their first son in the late 1990s inspired the final boss of Half-Life, as the couple considered childbirth the most frightening thing they could think of at the time. As of 2019, Newell and Mennet had divorced.

In 2011, Newell said his favorite video games included Super Mario 64, Doom, and a Burroughs mainframe version of the 1971 Star Trek game, which was the first game he ever played. Doom convinced him that games were the future of entertainment, and Super Mario 64 convinced him that games were art. Newell was a fan of the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. He also recorded a voice pack for the Valve game Dota 2, which referenced many previous statements and phrases from himself in a humorous manner.

Within the gaming community, Newell has the nickname Gaben, derived from his work email address. Newell said that he tried to grow into his public image: "[Fans] hug me when they run into me. I'm not a hugging person, but that's what they want. I was with my kids the first time that happened in public, and my kids were pretty cool with it. But I wasn't. 'Dad, roll with it.' Even now, I'm learning from our customers."

Newell was visiting New Zealand with friends when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, and elected to stay in Auckland once travel restrictions were eased. As an expression of gratitude for New Zealand's hospitality, he and others arranged a free event, We Love Aotearoa, with live performances from musical artists across New Zealand. It was accompanied by VR stands for Valve games such as Half-Life: Alyx and The Lab. The event was postponed from August to December due to a lockdown induced by a second wave of COVID-19. Newell applied for permanent residency in New Zealand in October 2020, but had returned to Seattle by 2021.