Programmer and businessman Gabe Logan Newell is one of the co-founders and CEO of Valve, which, among other things, owns the Steam service. In the fall of 2017, Newell was included by Forbes magazine in the hundred of the richest people in the United States.
The early years and work at Microsoft
Gabe Newell was born in November 1962 in Seattle. He began to create computer programs as a child, at the age of 13, and for this he used the programming language ALGOL.
In the early 1980s, Gabe Newell was educated at Harvard University, but was eventually expelled and did not receive a diploma.
Newell then became one of the developers and shareholder at Microsoft. For more than ten years he worked in this company and was able to earn several million dollars during this time. Newell made a very big contribution to the first three releases of Windows.
Gabe Newell and Valve
In 1996, Newell quit Microsoft and, together with his partner Mike Harrington, founded Valve Studios. At the initial stage, they used their personal funds to finance the company. In particular, Gabe and Mike purchased the source code of the engine from the game Quake, after which Valve specialists began to process and improve it.
In 1998, an ambitious studio released the famous Half-Life shooter. He quickly won a large number of fans among gamers and subsequently became the basis for games such as Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike.
In 2000, Harrington decided to leave Valve, and Newell completely redeemed his share in the business.
In 2003, Valve announced the launch of the digital distribution and sale of Steam games. Today, this service is considered a leader in its segment and is very popular among gamers.
And in 2004, the game Half-Life II was released. At that time, in many ways it was a real breakthrough in the gaming industry.
In addition, in two thousandth Valve released several more singles, which became hits, for example, Portal and Team Fortress 2.
Since 2008, the company switched to creating multiplayer games, in particular, Valve developed such products as Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2.
In 2011, experts estimated the value of Valve Corporation in the range from 2 to 4 billion dollars, while the company had only 250 people. According to Newell himself, a company per person is more profitable than Apple or Google. By the end of 2012, the number of Valve employees has grown to 400.
In the same 2012, Newell entered the list of the richest people on the planet according to the Forbes publication (he was placed in 854 place). His personal fortune at that time was equal to 1.5 billion US dollars.
In March 2013, Newell was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship Award for his contribution to the development of the video game industry and was added to the Academy of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.
In October 2017, the same Forbes estimated Newell’s fortune at 5.5 billion US dollars.
