Newell is the co-founder of Valve, a closely held video game developer that's created titles such as Half Life, Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike. It also operates Steam, an entertainment platform that enables millions of gamers to play online concurrently and had about 30,000 games available on it in July 2020.
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Newell co-founded Valve, the closely held video game developer that operates gaming platform Steam and game Counter-Strike. Steam can support millions of gamers playing concurrently and about 30,000 games were available on it as of July 2020, according to its website.
Valve was valued at $10 billion as of March 14, 2019, based on discussions with Michael Pachter, a Los Angeles-based analyst at Wedbush Securities. This value has been adjusted for the performance of the Russell 1000 Electronic Entertainment Index since then.
Newell's ownership stake isn't disclosed and he's assumed to hold 50.1 percent of Valve to reflect his control of the company and status as co-founder.
No response was received to e-mail and telephone queries to Valve requesting comment.
Gabe Newell was born Nov. 3, 1962. He began working at working at Microsoft in 1983 after dropping out of Harvard University, according to a February 2013 press release by the British Academy Games Awards. At Microsoft he worked on early versions of Windows before leaving in 1996 to found gamemaker Valve with fellow Microsoft coder Mike Harrington.
The studio's debut title, Half-Life, was released in 1998 and won more than 50 game-of-the-year awards. More hits, including Portal and Left 4 Dead followed. The company also developed online gaming platform Steam, which has 35 million active users, according to Valve's website.
Newell, known as Gaben to his fans, lives in Bellevue, Washington.