Steam's patriarch and the hero of gaming memes: the story of Gabe Newell

In 1983, the 20-year-old came to visit his brother at the office of the company that had just released MS-DOS. The usual family trip ended in an unusual way: he received a job offer personally from Steve Ballmer, the same man who later shouted "Developers! Developers!" on stage. At the same time, he dropped out of Harvard before he graduated. And after 13 years of working at Microsoft, he became a millionaire. But everything changes when he finds out that the shooter Doom is installed on more computers than Windows 95 itself, which he has been working on all these years.

At first, he helped port Doom to Windows, which quickly raised its profile in the gaming world. But in the end, he made a more radical choice - at the age of 34, on his wedding day, our hero founded Valve, the studio that would go on to create DOTA, Steam, Counter-Strike, and a meme called Half-Life 3. You guessed it, the "guy's" name is Gabe Newell, and today he is called the richest man in the gaming industry with a fortune estimated at $9.5 billion as of 2024.

Quick Transition

• How newspapers, telegrams, and Harvard led Gabe Newell to Microsoft
• A Microsoft millionaire who got bored
• 24 August 1996: Wedding day, Valve day
• Half-Life (1998): the game that changed everything
• Steam (2003): the platform that everyone hated at first - and then couldn't live without
• How mods, fans, and students helped Valve build its own multiverse
  
  • Counter-Strike: from mods to millions of players
  • Team Fortress: caps, rockets, and the perennial "we'll do it later"
  • Dota 2: how a mod from Warcraft III turned into a million-dollar e-sport
  • Portal: students, portals, and sarcastic artificial intelligence
  • Left 4 Dead and the Valve formula: see, support, scale
• Welcome to Flatland: how Valve has no bosses but everything else
• In search of hardware: how Valve decided to enter the hardware business and hit a wall
• Gaben: a man, a meme, a myth
• In a nutshell: the trail of Gabe Newell

In a world where top managers rally on stages and make promises faster than Instagram updates, he is an exception. Gabe Newell created Steam, the platform that revolutionised the gaming industry, and quietly stepped into the shadows, leaving everything to work without fanfare.

He doesn't attend presentations, doesn't get involved in trends, doesn't promise releases "coming soon" - but his name has become a meme, and his fans call him simply: Gaben. In a world where everyone wants to be in the spotlight, he runs an empire without bosses, with a community that creates a cult around him.

This text is about how the guy who dropped out of Harvard to join Microsoft eventually founded Valve, made Half-Life, launched Steam, and accidentally became a myth. And yes, we're going to ask him too - where the hell is Half-Life 3?

How newspapers, telegrams, and Harvard led Gabe Newell to Microsoft

Gabe Newell was born on 3 November 1962 in Colorado, but grew up in Davis, California. He didn't sit idle at school - he delivered newspapers, and then worked as a courier and delivered telegrams for Western Union. That is, even before the age of 18, he understood what deadlines were and that money was paid for work. Along with telegrams, code appeared in his life. Already at the age of 13, he was tinkering with the ALGOL programming language, and this was the beginning of a long and beautiful love affair with technology.

In 1980, Newell entered Harvard. But after three years, he left - not because he couldn't handle it, but because Microsoft was more interesting. He came to visit his brother, who was already working there, and accidentally caught the eye of Steve Ballmer. The latter quickly realised that he was a man to grab. That's how Gabe got a job offer and, instead of a diploma, a direct ticket to the world of big tech.

Newell himself once explained this decision in the most straightforward way possible:

"I learnt more in three months at Microsoft than I did in all my time at Harvard.

And that's not a pose - that's his whole point. Gabe has always been for practice, not prestige. Theory is fine, but the real drive and knowledge come when you actually do something, build it, launch it, and learn on the go. Microsoft in the early 80s was the perfect platform: chaos, start-up pace, and computers that were just starting to enter every home.

And what's interesting is that the path to Microsoft was not part of any clear plan "how to become a billionaire by the age of 40". This case perfectly describes how the industry worked back then: you just find yourself in the right place with your head on your shoulders, and it opens doors. It also shows that initiative, interest and instant connection can mean more than a degree from a prestigious university.

A Microsoft millionaire who got bored

In 1983, Gabe Newell officially became Microsoft's 271st employee. At that time, it was not yet a monster corporation, but a company that was just starting to put the gears in place for a global IT revolution. And Gabe was right in the centre of that engine. His role? Producer of the first two versions of Windows. He was the man who held the reins of launch, managed the chaos, and cleaned up everything from systems to applications. He worked in several divisions, was involved in Windows NT, servers, even early experiments with multimedia and the Information Highway PC concept - before the word "Internet" was even commonplace.

Over the course of these 13 years, Newell not only honed his technical and managerial skills, but also earned his name, literally. Like many early Microsoft employees, he became a "Microsoft millionaire" - a person who, thanks to the company's shares, no longer had to think about salary at all.

At the final stage of his Microsoft journey, Gabe Newell suddenly catches the moment of truth. In fact, a slap in the face from reality. The Doom shooter turns out to be installed on more computers than Windows 95, which he himself was working on. The platform on which serious programmes, documents, spreadsheets were supposed to run was losing out to a game with monsters and a chainsaw.

And Newell wasn't just offended. He realised that the power was in the games, and he did everything he could to make Doom officially available on Windows 95. Not only did this help Microsoft "stop being ashamed" of gamers, but it also established Windows as a viable platform for gaming. Gabe began to look at operating systems not as a utilitarian technical base, but as a stage for an interactive show.

Another trigger was when Michael Abrash, a colleague from Microsoft, left to work at id Software on Quake. And then Newell sees clearly: he wants to create experiences, not just build "platforms". He wants to be not where the soil is made, but where something unique grows.

And most importantly, he already has everything: the technical base, management experience and money. The perfect starter kit to take a chance and move to the dark side - to game dev.

24 August 1996: The wedding day, the day of Valve

On 24 August 1996, Gabe Newell took two major steps at once: he married Lisa Mennet and founded a company that would change the history of video games. This was the birth of Valve L.L.C., an idea he implemented together with another Microsoft veteran, Mike Harrington.

Leaving a stable job at Microsoft was not just a decision - it was a leap into the void, but with their own parachute: their start-up capital was the millions they had earned from Microsoft options. It was this money that became the trigger for Valve. Together with Harrington, Gabe decides not to look for investors, not to depend on other people's decisions, and not to pitch to venture capitalists. They simply set up a company with their own money. And this decision became Valve's strategic foundation:

complete freedom, no other people's conditions, and absolute control over everything from games to ideas.

Thanks to this, Valve was able to make large, risky projects like Half-Life and Steam without looking back at investors. And most importantly, it retained the rights to its products, which in the future allowed it to dictate its rules to the entire gaming industry.

The inspiration was the era itself: Doom and Quake showed that games are more than just entertainment. It is an environment in which you can experiment, influence, and delight. And it's not just about the code anymore - it's about the team. Newell wanted to work with smart, energetic, socially relevant people who wanted to create things that would impact millions. For him, it was not just a job, but "the most fun I could have," as he said later.

By the way, they didn't choose the name Valve right away. Newell didn't want the company's name to hint at "testosterone-fuelled muscles and the 'extreme' of anything". Among the options were Fruitfly Ensemble, Hollow Box, and even Rhino Scar, which sounded more like the name of an art house band than a tech company. But a simple and functional image won out: a valve as a point of pressure control between the player and the game. And this pressure was about to explode.

From the very beginning, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington thought not only about what kind of game they wanted to make, but also about what kind of company they wanted to work for. They knew exactly what a corporate machine looked like from the inside - and they wanted something completely different. Therefore, in parallel with the development of Half-Life, they were also building a structure that would give people freedom and not eat them up in the process.

But at the start, everything was very shaky. Valve were newcomers with no portfolio, no brand, no reputation. And finding a publisher for Half-Life turned out to be a difficult quest. The industry was sceptical. Newell himself later admitted that there were moments when he seriously thought that he would have to "go back to Microsoft with his head down".

The saving grace was a competent move, not technical, but strategic. Her name is Monica Harrington, Mike's wife. She became the studio's first marketing strategist and spotted the problem in time: Sierra On-Line wanted too much - in fact, all the rights to the game. Together with Gabe, they managed to renegotiate the deal. Their argument was simple: if we take risks, work hard, invest, then the result should remain ours. Valve defended the rights to Half-Life, and this decision determined the company's future. It allowed us to create Steam and remain independent forever.

When Half-Life exploded, the future seemed limitless. But not for everyone. In 2000, Mike Harrington sold his stake to Newell and left Valve without scandal or drama. He just didn't want to go through the years of stress again. From that moment on, Gabe became the sole leader and chief architect of the company that was about to change the gaming industry. Again.

Half-Life (1998): the game that changed everything

Valve entered the world of gaming not modestly, but with an earthquake. On 19 November 1998, they released Half-Life - and that day, shooters were no longer just "shoot and go".

The game was created for a long time and in a complicated way, based on the GoldSrc engine, a highly modified version of the Quake engine. But the technical base was only part of the magic. Valve wanted not just an action game, but a game that tells a story without distracting from the game. There shouldn't be cutscenes that you skip, but a world that you fly into and never leave.

To do this, they called in Marc Laidlaw, a science fiction writer who helped build the story, atmosphere, and world of Black Mesa. He contributed to the "visual grammar" of the level design and focused on "storytelling through architecture". As he later said, "Thestory had to be woven into the corridors. And most importantly, all this was presented without a single cutscene. Everything that was happening was happening right around you, without any "getting out of character". You are Gordon Freeman. You have no voice, but the whole world reacts to your actions. And this is the unique magic of Half-Life.

Valve created a shooter that changed the way the story could be told in a game.

There were no cutscenes that interrupted the action. Everything happened in real time, right around you. You are Gordon Freeman, and even though the character doesn't say a word, the events immerse you deeper than any in-game monologue.

This approach has become a new standard. For the first time, the story was not glued on top of the gameplay, but embedded in it directly. From that moment on, games began to speak to the player not with words, but with space, events, and atmosphere. And the shooter genre - and the entire industry - went in a completely different direction.

But Half-Life didn't just work because of its story. Valve did something that very few people did at the time - it made the game think. The artificial intelligence of the enemies, especially the marines from the HECU, was unforgivably smart for 1998. They hid, circled, threw grenades, worked as a team - and forced the player to act outside the box. It was no longer a shooting range for bots, but a dynamic confrontation that kept you in suspense.

Half-Life also taught shooters to be more than just shooting. The game had puzzles, exploration, and interaction with the environment. You had to think. And this world - Black Mesa - was not a background. It looked alive, connected, logical. Minimum downloads, maximum feeling that you are really inside the events.

Half-Life immediately collected more than 50 Game of the Year awards, became a commercial hit, and instantly turned into a gaming legend. And, as many people said later, there is a pre-Half-Life and a post-Half-Life in the history of FPS. Valve set the bar, and the entire industry was forced to follow. But the main thing is that they didn't just make a game. They gave people the tools. Valve released the SDK for GoldSrc, and players started creating.

Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and Day of Defeat were born from mods. What was fan-made creativity later became the basis of the next major Valve franchises. And it was then that Newell's signature style appeared: not to control the community, but to support it and integrate it into the ecosystem.

This not only extended the life of Half-Life. It shaped Valve's philosophy: listen, share, and grow ideas with those who play. A symbiosis that turned players into collaborators. And made Valve an incubator of market-changing ideas.

Steam (2003): the platform that everyone hated at first - and then couldn't live without

While Valve was receiving rave reviews for Half-Life and growing community moderators, Gabe Newell was already thinking not about a new game but about a new infrastructure. Everything was simple - and at the same time completely unsolved. Releasing patches for Counter-Strike was painful. Versions were confused, players couldn't connect, and cheaters and pirates were everywhere.

Valve started looking for a solution. They approached Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks with the idea of a platform that would automatically update games, check licences, and fight fraud. The response was a polite (and sometimes not so polite) "no, thank you".

Well, that's fine. If no one wants to create a convenient game delivery system, we'll do it ourselves. That's how the idea of Steam was born.

Newell personally got involved in the work. While Half-Life 2 was being developed at the same time, he spent several months making Steam possible. It was supposed to be not just a game launcher, but a tool that removed the barriers between the game and the player. No discs. No manual updates. No questions like "what version do you have?".

And although Steam was hated by players at the start (because it was impossible to launch Half-Life 2 without it), it quickly became the main portal for PC gaming. And Valve went from being a developer of cool shooters to the owner of the entire gaming ecosystem.

Steam was officially launched on 12 September 2003. Initially, it was supposed to be a purely technical solution: game updates, fighting pirates, and convenient delivery of content directly to the computer. But the fairy tale did not begin immediately. Players took the novelty coolly: it lags, it slows down, no one wants it.

And then Valve made a move that is still remembered today: Half-Life 2 was not launched without Steam in 2004. Just imagine - you bought a box with the game, put in the disc... and the game says: "Go to Steam". And now you're online, waiting for updates, cursing the launcher. The community was bombarded, but Gabe stuck with it. And he was right.

Valve did not stop. Steam gradually acquired new features, and in 2005, a real breakthrough occurred: third-party publishers came to the platform. That is, Steam stopped being just an update for Counter-Strike and turned into a full-fledged digital store for the entire industry.

And then it was an avalanche: auto-saving in the cloud (Steam Cloud, 2008), chat and achievements right in the game (Steam Overlay, 2007), support for mods through Steam Workshop, and adaptation of controllers for all living things. Valve was constantly adding new things, and the more features there were, the more players there were, which meant more developers. This is how the platform became an ecosystem.

Steam earns money simply by taking a percentage of game sales. At first, it was 30%, which was the standard for the market. But when the Epic Games Store appeared with lower commissions, Valve had to move. In 2018, they introduced a flexible profit model - the more you sell, the lower the percentage you give away. This gradation looked like this:

• sales from $0 to $10 million - 30% commission
• sales from $10 to $50 million - 25% commission
• sales over $50 million - 20% commission

Thus, Steam not only survived, but became the main digital platform for PC games. And even if other platforms are nipping at its heels, in the eyes of players, "launch Steam" still means "start playing".

And although Valve does not take any commission from keys sold outside Steam, the main money comes not only from game sales.

Microtransactions are a real goldmine.

Players buy and resell skins in Counter-Strike and Dota 2, and Valve takes a commission from each transaction. It's like a stock exchange, but with knives and magic.

And all of this is part of a giant ecosystem that shot into full force in the early 2010s. Even then, Steam controlled between 50% and 75% of the digital PC gaming market. By 2019, the platform had amassed more than a billion accounts, and by 2025, the monthly audience had surpassed 132 million, with peak figures of 40 million online at any one time.

Games were sold for billions of dollars every year. And thanks to projects such as Steam Greenlight (and later Steam Direct), the entry threshold for independent developers has been significantly reduced. Steam became the place where you could download everything from The Witcher 3 to a borscht simulator.

The platform, which in 2004 was sworn at by everyone for not allowing Half-Life 2 to launch without it, has become the main digital portal in the world of gaming.

Steam's dominance did not go unnoticed. The 30% commission - a classic of the digital distribution genre - has long been a topic of controversy, especially for small studios that don't earn enough to easily pay a third.

In addition, the relatively free entry to the platform has a downside - the dominance of garbage. There are plenty of games made on the knee in an evening on the platform. Steam tries to fight this with recommendation systems and filters, but finding something new among a pile of template games is sometimes a quest.

Valve also fights piracy and cheaters with its own VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) system and DRM technologies such as Custom Executable Generation. But Gabe's main principle remains the same: it's easier to make than to steal. And Steam is doing a pretty good job with this. What started as an update for Counter-Strike has turned into an ecosystem that has changed the industry.

Valve was solving its own technical problems - updates, piracy, cheating - and the result was a monster that swallowed up digital distribution on PC.

Ironic, perhaps. Because Steam's success changed the landscape so much that Valve itself started releasing fewer games. While in the noughties the company was associated with Half-Life, Portal, and Team Fortress 2, in the 2010s it increasingly resembled a tech platform with several billion in revenue per year.

Game development faded into the background. The focus was on Steam support, its extensions, and attempts to get into hardware (such as Steam Machine or Steam Deck). Steam has become not a separate service in Valve's lineup of projects, but the centre of gravity for everything it does. It determines its priorities, strategies, and scale. The company, once associated with breakthrough games, has evolved into a platform that controls the digital marketplace of the gaming world.

How mods, fans, and students helped Valve build its own multiverse

Valve took off not only thanks to Half-Life and Steam. The company created franchises that are still alive today, and it did it in a very special way: it didn't invent everything from scratch - it knew how to see the potential in what had already been created, take the best and turn it into the gold standard.

Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Dota 2, Portal - all these games either started as mods or as projects from the academic environment. Valve was looking for talented developers who had already done something, saw what worked, and... either hired them or bought the rights to the game. And then it was up to them to tweak, improve, and launch the game to the world.

This approach was ingeniously simple: you take an idea that already has a community, is already tested, and is already being played. And instead of making long RD and marketing bets blindly, Valve had real prototypes that were already working. And, more importantly, the people who created them.

Thus, Valve was not limited to creating its own projects - it built a system in which new ideas could grow naturally. The company knew how to spot potential, give it resources, bring it to the level of a hit, and at the same time retain the soul of the original. Valve's role was not only in production, but also in being a catalyst for talent and launching it at the right time.

Counter-Strike: from fashion to millions of players

Counter-Strike is one of the most influential games in the history of Valve and gaming. It started as a mod for Half-Life, created in 1999 by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe. The realistic team-based gameplay quickly gathered a huge audience. It was completely different: short rounds, one shot, and you're a spectator. There was no mercy.

Valve noticed the potential and in 2000 bought the rights and hired mod authors. This is how CS 1.0 was born, and a little later - the iconic version 1.6, released along with the launch of Steam.

The evolution continued: Counter-Strike: Source on a new engine in 2004, Global Offensive in 2012, which became the basis of the world's eSports, and Counter-Strike 2 in 2023 - already on Source 2, with improved physics, smoke, and favourite mechanics that no one has been able to replace in 20 years.

CS not only created the "no-frills online shooter" genre, it also made Steam work - precisely because of the need for easy updates and version synchronisation.

From a mod based on enthusiasm to a game where skins are sold on the stock exchange for thousands of dollars, Counter-Strike has gone from strength to strength, and now it sounds like a legend. But for millions of players, it's just... another round.

Team Fortress: caps, rockets, and the perennial "we'll do it later"

The history of Team Fortress began even before Half-Life. Back in 1996, three enthusiasts - Robin Walker, John Cook, and Ian Caughley - created a mod for Quake that featured more team tactics than any other in the industry at the time. Players were instantly hooked. Valve, knowing how to smell talent, invited the entire team to join them in 1998. This is how Team Fortress Classic was born - a version of the mod ported to the Half-Life engine.

And then the saga called "TF2 development" began. Initially, it was supposed to be a serious, almost simulation-based shooter about military teamwork. But years passed, concepts changed, and somewhere along the way, the project decided: "To hell with it, let's make something absurdly stylish, cartoonish, and fun."

And in 2007, as part of The Orange Box, Team Fortress 2 was finally released. Classic 9th grade, Pixar-style graphics with three Red Bulls, rockets underfoot, "Medic!", "Spy!", and an atmosphere that can't be confused with anything else.

TF2 eventually became one of the first large free-to-play games where microtransactions did not give an advantage in battle, but gave caps. A lot of caps. It was this game that launched trends: visual customisation, cosmetics, loot boxes, and item exchanges. What now seems to be a standard, Valve worked out here before it became mainstream.

TF2 is still alive today. The patches are slow, the servers are crazy, but the community is alive - because when a game has a soul, it can't be closed so easily.

Dota 2: how a mod from Warcraft III turned into a million-dollar e-sport

Valve entered the MOBA genre (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena is a genre of team-based online games where two teams of players compete on a symmetrical map, trying to destroy the opponent's base by controlling unique characters with different skills) through the front door. Straight out of the Defence of the Ancients (DotA) fan mod, which was once the most popular expansion pack for Warcraft III. In 2009, the company hired a mysterious designer named IceFrog, who was already the chief curator of DotA at the time. Together with him and key people from the community, they started working on Dota 2 - not as a rebrand, but as a complete rethinking of the mod, keeping the gameplay core, but on a new engine and for a new era.

After a long beta, the game was officially launched in 2013. It quickly became one of the main MOBAs on the planet and a staple of the eSports scene, primarily thanks to The International Dota 2 Championships, an annual tournament with a prize pool of tens of millions of dollars, which is funded by the community through the purchase of in-game battle passes.

Portal: students, portals, and sarcastic artificial intelligence

Portal was not born out of a fad, but from a student project. In 2005, a team from DigiPen created Narbacular Drop, a simple game with a brilliant idea: the player could move through portals that he or she created. At a job fair, the game was seen by Valve representatives, including Robin Walker, and a few weeks later, Gabe Newell offered the entire team a job at Valve.

This is how Portal was born, released in 2007 as part of The Orange Box. The team retained the basic mechanics but added a new world - Aperture Science, black humour, a sarcastic AI called GLaDOS, and the immortal meme about the cake that doesn't exist.

The game became a hit: intelligent puzzles, unique mechanics, and a storyline that developed through the environment put Portal in a league of its own. In 2011, the sequel, Portal 2, was released, with another group of students joining the team with the Tag project: The Power of Paint project, which is thanks to them that gels that change the physics of surfaces appeared in the game.

Left 4 Dead and the Valve formula: see, support, scale

The Left 4 Dead series is another example of how Valve works with talent. Initially, the game was developed by Turtle Rock Studios, a studio that has already created several maps and AI systems for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. In 2008, Valve acquired Turtle Rock, called it Valve South, and brought the first Left 4 Dead, a co-op shooter for four against zombies, to release. The success was instantaneous, and a year later, L4D2 was released, which consolidated the genre as a separate niche.

But the alliance did not last long: in 2010, Turtle Rock became independent again. The story is short but very revealing. Valve once again worked according to its favourite scheme: it found a cool idea, supported people, gave them tools, and the world got a new series that has been remembered for years.

This is not an exception, but a way of working. Valve is not an idea factory, but a powerful filter and amplifier of other people's ideas that already have a lively community or a working game cycle. This allows us not to spend years reinventing the wheel, but to immediately take concepts with a proven audience and turn them into a global product.

And it has always been about tools. From the SDKs for GoldSrc and Source to Steam Workshop, Valve has given players and developers the tools to create on their own. And it just watched and carefully added fuel to the fire.

This is how the loop effect was born: players create content, Valve provides a platform, players gather around it, and Valve gets a new pool of ideas, people, and trends. Steam doesn't just sell games - it lives with its community, and Valve listens closely.

Welcome to Flatland: how Valve has no bosses but everything else

Valve's organisational structure is so unique that even those who have not played Half-Life know about it. The company has no bosses, positions, or usual departments - and this is not marketing, but a real scheme that employees themselves call Flatland. Its essence is officially recorded in an internal "beginner's guide" that was accidentally (!) leaked online in 2012. It says in black and white:

"No one reports to anyone. Not even Gabe Newell.

The idea is this: everyone decides what to do, where there will be the most benefit, and who to invite to the team. The table is on wheels, so "voting with your feet" is literally happening. There is also an informal rule: for an idea to take off, at least three people have to support it.

It all sounds like a dream: freedom, trust, no Excel manager. And supporters of the model say that this is how the best projects are born: without bureaucracy, but with initiative, speed, and engagement. In addition, it attracts the most talented people - people who don't need instructions from above.

But Flatland is not a utopia. Many former employees say that the lack of structure creates its own - a shadow structure. Whoever works longer, whoever has more influence, whoever is closer to the top has the power, albeit unofficially. This is how office clans, competition, subjectivity in assessments appear, and - surprise - sometimes everything turns into an IT school with a social rating.

Plus, when there is no line management, large or risky projects can get stuck. You don't always know what's going on. And if your initiatives are not interesting to the old-timers, they will most likely not take off. And this is directly related to the phenomenon that fans have called Valve Time - when the release of something can last... well, longer than you live in one rented apartment.

And this model is also possible because Steam gives the company a huge financial margin of safety.

Valve doesn't depend on quarterly reports, ventures, or shareholders.

They can afford slow processes, unreleased games, and ten years of experimentation with VR.

That is, Flatland is not the reason for Valve's success, but the consequence of the fact that they can work like this. It is an organisational experiment that almost no one else can afford. And although it looks like anarchy on the surface, it is actually a very shaky ecosystem that is based on trust, internal respect, and billions from Steam.

In search of hardware: how Valve decided to go into hardware and hit a wall

In the 2010s, Valve realised that it would not be satisfied with software alone and started to go into hardware. Not to make another mouse or keyboard, but to take control of the entire environment where its ecosystem lives. Steam had to live not only on desktops, but also in the living room, in a VR helmet, and even in your hands.

The first major step was Steam Machines (2015). It was an attempt to bring PC gaming to the sofa, right into the war with Xbox and PlayStation. Valve did not produce the console itself, but gave the specification to partners who produced "console-like" computers on SteamOS, the company's own Linux-like operating system.

But the idea did not take off. Steam Machines have become a classic case of everything seemingly being right, but no one is buying. There were many reasons for this, from incompatibilities between configurations to the fact that there were few games on Linux at the time, and the machines themselves offered no real advantage over conventional PCs or consoles. Sales were sluggish, the hype wore off, and the project quickly faded away.

The press said "failure". Valve said "experience".

And, as always, it quietly drew conclusions and moved on to other formats. After the Steam Machines fiasco, Valve developers did not give up - they simply changed their direction. A new focus: virtual reality, which Gabe Newell had a personal weakness for.

It all started with a partnership with HTC: in 2016, the world saw the HTC Vive, one of the first consumer VR helmets with room tracking and motion controllers. But this was only the beginning. In 2019, Valve released its own flagship, Valve Index, and it was already serious: top-notch graphics, spatial sound, and futuristic "knuckle" controllers that track each finger.

And then - the main shot. In 2020, Half-Life: Alyx was released, and the world saw what VR looks like when a studio that knows what design is all about. Alyx was called the first real "killer app" for VR, a project that not only demonstrates the technology but also makes you buy a helmet for it. According to eyewitnesses, Gabe himself actively worked with the VR team, which only emphasises the importance of this direction.

And then Valve changed its focus again and turned its attention to portable gaming. In 2022, the company released Steam Deck, a compact Linux device that allows you to play most of the Steam library anywhere. This time, everything came together: a clear meaning ("take your games with you"), stable support thanks to Proton technology (runs Windows games on Linux), and powerful stuffing for a competitive price.

The result. Steam Deck has become a successful Valve product that not only found its niche but also made the company a player in the portable market alongside Nintendo.

The story of Valve's hardware projects is not about competing with Apple or producing glossy devices. All the "hardware" Newell's hardware is a way to bring Steam even closer to the player. Steam Machines didn't take off, but Vive, Index, and Steam Deck are already successful game carriers, not separate platforms. Valve is not building a new ecosystem, it is expanding its own.

But then it goes deeper. Next up is the brain.

Gabe Newell co-founded Starfish Neuroscience, a company that works on brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Together with a former Valve engineer and a team of scientists, Starfish is looking for ways to connect the brain and computer - through implants, or contactlessly, using TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation). And, of course, the company works... according to the Flatland scheme. Because why not?

Newell believes that BCI is not about VR with a new scope. It's the next computing platform that will replace keyboards, mice, and even eyes with ears (which he jokingly calls "meat peripherals"). Imagine a game that adapts to your attention span or anxiety. Or an app that regulates your sleep.

Valve is not standing aside either - the company is developing open tools for working with BCI so that any developer can play with brain signals. Of course, there are a lot of ethical issues. Newell is blunt: yes, BCI is "weird stuff" and you have to be careful with it. But he adds: "It's like telephones or laser vision correction - it sounds like science fiction at first, then it becomes the norm."

This is not about Steam anymore, or even about games. It's a new field of play. And if Newell is right again (and he often is), then we are on the verge of a world where gaming is something that happens not only on the screen, but also in the head. Literally.

Gaben: man, meme, myth

Gabe Newell has a name, a job title, and a fortune of several billion dollars. But very few people on the Internet know about him. Here, he's just Gaben - a meme, a cult character, a digital god of Steam sales, and a half-joking symbol of what Valve is doing... or not doing.

This nickname originated from Newell's old work address, but has become a living legend. Partly because of his humanity - Gabe is known for sometimes responding briefly to fan mail. Partly, it's thanks to Valve: games, Steam, the absence of Half-Life 3, and the company's internal culture have spawned an army of memes, fan videos, and "what if he's already released the game and no one noticed?" theories.

According to estimates, Newell is among the richest people in the United States and consistently tops the ranking of the richest in the gaming industry. His stake in Valve is at least 25%, possibly more than 50%. The company is closed, so the exact figures are a matter of hypothesis, but we are talking about billions. Forbes estimated his fortune in December 2024 at $9.5 billion and indicated that he owns approximately 50.1% of Valve shares.

Despite this, Gabe is not very keen on social events or charity PR. His philanthropy is spotty, but interesting: he co-founded The Heart of Racing, a racing team that raises money for children's hospitals in the US and New Zealand. He also owns Inkfish, a research organisation that studies the ocean and marine life.

And yes, he is a billionaire. But in the hearts of players, Newell remains the same Gaben - a zombie with a fomo in Half-Life, a wizard of sales, and the memorable "man on the start screen" who can't count to three.

Gabe Newell has not only billions and memes, but also formal industry recognition. In 2013, he was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts Sciences Hall of Fame and awarded an honorary BAFTA fellowship, which is a kind of gaming Oscar, but without evening gowns and with a little less hypocrisy. Publications like Forbes and IGN have called him one of those who reshaped everything from game design to digital distribution itself.

In recent years, Newell has been keeping a low profile, but occasionally appears in the news. For example, he moved to New Zealand during the pandemic - he accidentally arrived before the lockdown and stayed. I applied for residency, organised a free concert, thanked the country for its hospitality, and even considered moving some of Valve's operations there. In the end, everything remained as it was, but the legend remained.

Gabe's public comments are rare but always direct. Metaverse. "Total nonsense from people who don't understand what an MMO is." NFTs and crypto? "Fraud, instability, and toxic characters." Because of this, Valve even banned blockchain games on Steam. And this position is not new. Even before that, Newell called Windows 8 a "disaster" and calmly criticised even giants if they lost touch with reality.

Despite this, he hasn't become a lone guru or a "gaming messiah". He plays Stalker 2, voices Dota 2, and... yes, he still hasn't released Half-Life 3. This project has become a sacred artefact of meme culture, a symbol of Valve Time, hopes, and jokes. Gabe himself admits that making a sequel just to close a plot hole is a betrayal of himself. He says that if there is no breakthrough, it is better to do nothing.

Newell's personal life is - as you might expect - a little strange, a little charming. He has undergone two eye surgeries, has a huge collection of knives, loves the animated children's series My Little Pony (and doesn't hide it), is divorced, has two sons and - if necessary - can answer your email in one sentence.

Gabe is a paradox. He is a meme and a billionaire, a geek and a strategist, the head of an empire that has no bosses. He doesn't build a cult of himself, but he has an army of fans. He does not often appear in public space, but his every phrase turns into headlines. He is not like Musk, he is not like Jobs, and that is why he is like Newell.

The most famous quotes by Gabe Newell are.

• "I learned more in three months at Microsoft than I did in three years at Harvard".
• "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti-piracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates".
• "Steam is really about giving customers access to their games, wherever they are, on whatever device they choose to use".
• "We think there is a fundamental misperception of Valve as a game company. We think of ourselves as an organization that is, at its core, trying to improve customer experiences in software".
• "Windows 8 was a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space".
• "There’s no such thing as a game being late. A game is either good or it’s not".
• "Metaverse? Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about".
• "NFTs are a complete scam. 50% of the transactions are fraudulent. And that’s why we don’t allow them on Steam".
• "The customer is always right… but not always rational".
• "Half-Life 3 will be out when it’s ready… or never".

The bottom line: the Gabe Newell trail

Gabe Newell is one of the most influential people in the history of the gaming industry. From the development of Windows to the founding of Valve, from Half-Life to Steam, he has not only created products, but also changed the very infrastructure of the gaming industry. It was Steam that turned him from a developer into a platform creator - with millions of users and enormous power of influence.

His company works according to its own logic: no bosses, no deadlines, but with cult games that grow out of mods - Dota, CS, Portal, L4D. In the 2020s, Valve entered hardware: Steam Deck, Valve Index, Alyx - all about controlling the experience. And then - the brain: Newell invests in BCI to rewrite the very interaction between humans and machines.

Today, Gabe is a billionaire, a meme, a legend, and a voice in Dota 2. He's not chasing the show, the hype, or the headlines, but is confidently pursuing long-term value and sustainability. And although Half-Life 3 is still in the shadows, Newell has already written himself into the history of digital entertainment as the architect of a game world that has found a new form - a platform, a community, a culture.

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