Biography

Gabe Newell

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Gabe held a number of positions in the Systems, Applications, and Advanced Technology divisions during his 13 years at Microsoft. His responsibilities included running program management for the first two releases of Windows, starting the company's multimedia division, and leading efforts on the Information Highway PC. Then he started Valve. His most significant contribution to Half-Life, the company's debut title, was his statement: "C'mon, people, you can't show the player a really big bomb and not let them blow it up."
- IMDb mini biography by: Valve official site bio

Harvard Dropout: Like Bill Gates, Newell dropped out of Harvard University after three years. He was famously convinced to leave and join Microsoft by Steve Ballmer, then Microsoft's head of sales.
His Favorite Games: He has cited Super Mario 64 as the game that convinced him video games were art. He also loves the original Doom and a text-based version of Star Trek played via punch cards.
Massive Knife Collection: Newell is an avid knife collector and reportedly owns more than 600 knives. He is also known to enjoy blacksmithing and has forged his own blades, including a custom knife to celebrate the release of Counter-Strike 2.
Space Gnome: In 2020, he worked with Rocket Lab to launch a titanium gnome (a reference to Half-Life 2) into space to raise money for a children's hospital in New Zealand.
Dota 2 Daily: Despite his busy schedule, Newell has mentioned that he still plays Dota 2 nearly every single day.

The PC is successful because we're all benefiting from the competition with each other. If Twitter comes along, our games benefit. If Nvidia makes better graphics technology, all the games are going to shine. If we come out with a better game, people are going to buy more PCs.
We tend to think of Steam as tools for content developers and tools for producers. We're just always thinking: how do we want to make content developers' lives better and users' lives a lot better? With Big Picture Mode, we're trying to answer the question: 'How can we maximize a content developers' investment?'
Growing up in the Sacramento Valley in the '70s, we were all pretty big into cars. Of course, I had to nerd out and be a fan of Bob Tullius' Group 44 Jaguars instead of Corvettes/Camaros.
When I worked at Microsoft, I got to go and visit a bunch of different companies. Probably a hundred different companies a year. You'd see all the different ways they'd work. The guys who did Ventura Publisher one day, and then United Airlines the next. You'd see the 12 guys in Texas doing Doom, and then you'd go see Aetna life insurance.
Traditional credentialing really doesn't have a lot of predictive value to if people will be successful.

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