How Gabe built the fortune
Gabe Newell left Microsoft in 1996 with a fellow employee, Mike Harrington, to start Valve, funding the new studio largely with money they had earned at the software company. Their first game, Half-Life, came out in 1998 and was widely praised for telling its story through continuous gameplay rather than cut scenes. It sold millions of copies and attracted a community of players who built their own modifications, one of which, Counter-Strike, Valve hired the creators of and turned into a long running multiplayer franchise. The game's success established Valve as a serious studio within a few years of its founding.
The decisive step for Valve's business came in 2003 with the launch of Steam. It began as a way to deliver updates and anti cheating tools for Valve's own games, but Newell and his team expanded it into a store where other publishers could sell games digitally. Over the following years Steam became the dominant marketplace for PC games, earning a commission on sales from thousands of developers, along with revenue from in game items and community features. Steam's growth also changed how PC games were sold, with frequent sales, user reviews and community features becoming standard parts of the market.
Valve has remained privately held, and Newell owns a large share of it after buying out Harrington's stake in the early 2000s. The company is known for an unusually flat structure, with few formal managers and staff choosing their own projects. Its own titles, including Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead and Dota 2, have added to its income, and it has moved into hardware with the Valve Index virtual reality headset and the Steam Deck handheld gaming computer launched in 2022. The Steam Deck, in particular, extended Valve's reach into portable gaming and built on years of work to make PC games run on Linux based systems.
Companies and holdings
Most of Newell's wealth is tied to his ownership of Valve, whose value depends heavily on Steam. He has also started separate ventures that reflect his personal interests, including a company researching brain computer interfaces and a marine research organisation. Valve rarely discloses financial information, and estimates of its value rely on outside analysis of Steam's sales and the company's other activities.
- Valve Corporation, co-founder, president and principal owner
- Starfish Neuroscience, a brain computer interface venture
- Inkfish, an ocean research organisation that operates research vessels
- Heart of Racing, a motorsport team supporting a children's hospital charity
Early life and career
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He enrolled at Harvard University in the early 1980s but left before graduating to join Microsoft in 1983. He spent thirteen years there and worked on early versions of the Windows operating system, including as a producer, and later on efforts to make Windows a strong platform for games.
The success of id Software's Doom, which he noted had reached more computers than Windows itself at one point, helped persuade him that games would become a major software market. He and Harrington left Microsoft as wealthy employees from the company's stock gains and used that money to start Valve in Kirkland, Washington. The company later moved to Bellevue. Valve's early hiring of game modders and small teams from the community became a pattern the company repeated with several later titles.
Philanthropy and public life
Newell's public charitable work is linked closely to his own ventures. The Heart of Racing team raises money for heart care at Seattle Children's Hospital, and his ocean research work through Inkfish funds scientific expeditions and exploration of deep sea ecosystems. He has also funded medical research. Valve has also supported players and charities through in game events and promotions over the years.
He became a well known figure among gamers, often called Gabe or Lord GabeN online, and has given interviews and talks about game design and the future of computing. During the COVID-19 pandemic he spent long periods in New Zealand, where he has maintained ties since.