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Happy Birthday to Gabe Newell!
After having dropped out of Harvard University Newell spent thirteen years working for Microsoft Corporation, ultimately becoming a "Microsoft Millionaire". Newell has described himself as "producer on the first three releases of Windows". Inspired by Michael Abrash, who left Microsoft to work on the computer game Quake at id Software, Newell and another Microsoft employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft to found Valve in 1996. He and Harrington used their money to fund Valve through the development of Half-Life.
During production on Half-Life 2, he spent several months focusing on the Steam project.
In 2007, Newell openly expressed his displeasure over developing his software for gaming consoles, particularly the PlayStation 3. In regard to the system, Newell was once quoted as claiming that developing processes for the console in general was "a waste of everybody’s time" and "a disaster on many levels … I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it’." Nevertheless, at E3 in 2010, Newell appeared on stage at Sony’s keynote; while acknowledging his past outspoken comments on console development, he discussed the open nature of Sony’s PlayStation 3 platform, and announced Portal 2 for the console, remarking that with Steamworks support it would be the best version for any console. Newell has also criticized the Xbox Live service, referring to it as "a train wreck".
In December 2010, Forbes named Newell as "A Name You Should Know" mainly for his work on Steam having partnerships with multiple major developers.
His favorite games are Super Mario 64, Doom, and Star Trek played on a Burroughs mainframe computer. Doom convinced him that video games were the future of entertainment, and Super Mario 64 convinced him video games were art.
Also today is Gabe’s 49 birthday and he decided to send out DOTA 2 keys. Cake is a lie…
Source: Wikipedia
Gabe Newell on piracy and DRM
“Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market,” Newell was quoted as saying on Geekwire. Presumably this also means the UK is Valve’s largest continental European market. But Newell’s statement also indicates that Russia eclipses France, Spain and Scandinavian countries in terms of profits.
It seems other games companies who had tried to penetrate Russia hadn’t done so due to a the infamous levels of piracy.
“The people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia,” said Newell. “It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.”
“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work,” Newell said. “It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
Source: PC Gamer
Gabe Newell promises 3 big surprises in next 12 months!
In the latest issue of PC Gamer Magazine, Gabe has given his word that 3 big announcements are going to be made by Valve within the next 12 months. Here’s what Gabe said exactly:
I can guarantee you people are going to be surprised at stuff we do. That isn’t going to stop any time soon. I’m just laughing because… people will be shocked again. We have three pretty big surprises in the next 12 months at least.
What do you guys think?
VAC does make mistakes – Gabe Newell apologizes!
Here’s an official letter from Gabe Newell! Please read it.
Hello,
Recently, your Steam account was erroneously banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you.
The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game. This wasn’t a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks).
We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game. In addition, we have given you a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 to give as a gift on Steam, plus a free copy for yourself if you didn’t already own the game.
To share your extra copy of Left 4 Dead 2 with a friend, you can ‘Manage Gifts and Guest Passes’ from the ‘Games’ Menu in Steam, or visit this article on the Steam Support site for detailed instructions: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4502-TPJL-2656.
To access your own copy of Left 4 Dead 2, visit your library of games in Steam. If you didn’t already own the game, it will now be listed among your others there, and is available for download immediately.
Regards,
Gabe Newell
President, Valve
Source: Steam Forums (or if it’s not enough for you Kotaku)
Steam grows by 205% in 2009
Steam keeps growing even though the prices are very high in Europe – people are still paying for the digital downloads (although we can’t really say if Steam is more popular in USA or Europe).
Steam, now has over 25 million active users. Those 25 million users managed a peak concurrency of 2.5 million games players, racking up more than 13 billion player minutes per month.
But of course, the proof is in the profits: there are now over 1,000 games available on Steam, distributed by over 100 developers and publishers — big-boys and independents alike. All told, Steam sold 205% more units in 2009 than the previous year.
Gabe Newell added that Steam has grown immensely each and ever year of its existence. Steam’s only been around for five years, but in that time there have been numerous improvements and additions to the range of products provided by Valve, resulting in a greater-than-100-percent increase in sales year-over-year since its creation.
Gabe Newell receives GDC Pioneer Award
The 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards, the highest honors in video game development, is beginning the announcement of its Special Awards for the tenth annual ceremony, taking place at GDC 2010 this March, and has named Valve co-founder Gabe Newell as the winner of this year’s Pioneer Award.
The Pioneer Award — originated by the Game Developers Choice Awards organizers at the 2008 Awards, and the first award to honor breakthrough figures in the game industry — celebrates those individuals responsible for developing a vital technology or game design at a crucial juncture in video game history, paving the way for the many who followed them.
This year, the Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes notables such as Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster (Metaplace), John Vechey (PopCap), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), Clint Hocking (Ubisoft), and others has voted to give the Pioneer Award to Valve’s Newell. He is being awarded for his work in co-creating the PC key digital download service Steam, and helping to make possible some of the most important video games of the past two decades – from the Half-Life series through Portal to Team Fortress and beyond.
Left 4 Dead 2: PC demo delayed once more!
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Looks like they’re having a blast!
Left 4 Dead 2: Demo delayed around 10 hours
(click for info)
Gabe Newell in Australia
Sorry I’m posting this so late but I didn’t have much time. Here’s the presentation from Australia – with Joe (the creator of Fly Gabe Newell campaign) and Gabe Newell. Unfortunately Joe did not ask a question from our group (at least not on the video) which simply was “why do Europeans have to pay twice on Steam?” but I don’t blame him… I mean he met Gabe Newell, good job :)
Watch the video right here:
And here’s the original article from byteside.com
Joe W-A was miffed when the L4D campaign mod he’d been working on wasn’t deemed awesome enough to warrant him being flown to Valve HQ to preview L4D2. Other modders were, mostly to get them onside as peer-leaders to counter the odd anti-L4D2 community uprising happening at the time.
Anyway, Joe managed to get Gabe Newell to agree to fly to Brisbane, Australia to check out the mod-in-progress — provided Joe paid the airfare. “I was just joking”, said Gabe today. With pure internet inventiveness, Joe got the community rallied and raised the fare in a couple of days.
Latest on Sat, 04:44 pm
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: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2521400
: http://login.ign.com/prime/promos/rochard/?display=notAuth
: new indie gala bundle later this week at www.indiegala.com/
: money money money
: can anyone explain what's the friggin' deal with Age of Empires III, a 5 years old game being sold as new @40$/€ on almost every DD platform?
: Facebook is archiving the old Facebook group of ours, here's new one https://www.facebook.com/pages/SteamUnpoweredeu/260963810615450?v=wall
: 
: Checkout Crytek's GFACE, a new social platform for gaming http://www.gface.com/closed-beta
: 
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jnk8n3WrXU
: new humble bundle live
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMWW92UhpZs&feature=player_embedded
: 
: http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/epic4chan/15893009078/1/tumblr_lxkmq8V94p1r9t8yb
: http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?tta
: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/oxzje/official_steam_app_for_android_and_ios/c3l34d2
: there's still hope, first ratification of ACTA in polish parliament and even if it passes european parliament has to vote on it then
: yep, another protest today in Warsaw, and next one during National Stadium opening on Sunday
: So PL actually did sign ACTA? :( Is it right that those guy said sth like "i'll not be extorted by those inhabitants"? o.O
: the next indie royale bundle is live (serious sam indie bundle)
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: 
: http://mygaming.co.za/news/news/31078-valve-developing-steam-for-linux.html
Loading ...Cool shirts and shit
