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

“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

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?

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)

Source: Reddit

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.

Source

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.

Newell, who co-founded Valve in 1996 after his departure from giant tech firm Microsoft, was instrumental in creating the company’s first product, the critically acclaimed first-person shooter Half-Life, which brought sophisticated narrative and cut-scenes to the FPS for the first time, and has sold over 8 million copies. The company’s keen, unprecedented encouragement of modding and community based around the Half-Life engine also led to the creation of the Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 franchises.

Recent years have only buoyed Valve’s reputation, including 2004′s debut of the much-acclaimed Half-Life 2 episodes, the signing of the DigiPen team behind Narbacular Drop to create 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards Game of the Year Portal, and the Seattle-area firm’s work to support and co-originate the co-operative centric Left 4 Dead franchise.

Steam, Valve’s PC digital distribution platform, is another particular reason Newell is receiving this honor. Revealed at GDC in 2002 and made available to the public in 2003, the client has evolved from a method of seamlessly delivering game patches to a full community-based digital download ecosystem which regularly has more than 2 million concurrent users. Thus, it has become a key way for many smaller and larger PC game developers to gain fans and make money without requiring a physical retail publisher.

Valve’s Newell will be on stage to collect his Special Award at GDC 2010 in San Francisco this March. Over 3,000 of the industry’s top developers will be present at the Choice Awards ceremony to honor him and the other, to-be-revealed Special Award winners — alongside the top games of 2009 in multiple categories.

The Game Developers Choice Awards — open to any game, and with Main Competition winners being selected by the International Choice Awards Network, a new invitation-only group comprised of 500 leading game creators from all parts of the video game industry — prides itself on being the most open, transparent, and respected video game awards anywhere. Further Special Award winners and Main Competition finalists will be announced in the near future.

Presented by Think Services’ Game Developers Conference (GDC), this year’s awards ceremony, held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival Awards, will be hosted on Thursday, March 11th, during GDC 2010 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. For complete details, please visit http://www.gamechoiceawards.com.

Source: prnewswire.com

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Looks like they’re having a blast!

(click for info)

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.

Today in Sydney, the great meeting took place, and we were privileged to witness it.

Gabe spoke the value of a community before introducing Joe. Said Gabe, of Joe: “Joe understands more about the dynamic of the internet than 95% of the vice presidents.”

Joe then bravely spoke a bit about how it all came about and fielded a few questions. We are thrilled to report that Joe’s a top bloke. He launched this campaign not to draw attention to himself but to simply get Gabe in front of his mod. That’s all. The explosion of interest in his story has him overwhelmed, but not to the point where he lost focus of his mission.

Joe’s about to start a Game Design course at Melbourne RMIT, and we’d bet the farm that he’ll be snapped up quick smart by a smart dev. Probably Valve, for the fairytale to come full circle.

Would Joe do it again? “I’d like to get Peter Molyneaux down here. I’ve got a few things to say to him.”

Hats off, Joe. You’re a champ and an inspiration mate. Well done.

We now present the historic moment Gabe Newell and Joe W-A meet face to face!

Source: http://byteside.com/blog/2009/10/07/aussie-mod-hero-meets-valves-gabe-newell/

The creators of the Fly Gabe Newell Fund have raised over $3000 in order to fly Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson to Australia to show them their Left 4 Dead campaign. If you don’t know what the hell is this about go here first.

This is one of the latest replies from Gabe Newell:

The English language lacks the words to express the level of excitement Erik and I feel that you and your friends have pulled this off. Give us some time to organize our affairs, as we are trying to ship a product, and then we’ll let you know the time and date of our arrival. Give our best to Robin’s mother, as she is apparently a neighbor of yours.

Gabe & Erik

I believe we will have some pictures over here when that happens ;)

Update:

My last post, suggesting that perhaps Batman’s trusty sidekick Robin had donated to our cause, was made in error – for there can now be no doubt that the real Robin has contributed. The incredible Robin Walker of Valve Software, that is! He attached the following message:

This is Robin Walker, from Valve. The rest of us at Valve would sure appreciate a couple of days without Erik around, so thanks for organising this!

Quick question though: if I donated more, would you buy a one-way ticket for him?

Robin.

Thanks, Robin!

Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 3 talk.

Read the article here:

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/696431/Opening-The-Valve-The-Gabe-Newell-Interview.html

It’s funny how they talk about community and fans but none of them ever responded to even one e-mail about the 1€ ≠ 1$ case.

---

Newell: I want to make sure that I don’t sound like I’m dismissing user’s issues, right? I get a ton of email everyday saying why aren’t you talking about Episode 3? And there are very good reasons why we’re not talking about Episode 3, which I can’t talk about yet, but I will.

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I guess Gabe reads Half-Life related e-mails only.