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'Gabe Newell'

Articles tagged with 'Gabe Newell'

Gabe Newell’s AMA Round-up!

Valve

A while back Gabe Newell stated that if The Heart of Racing charity reached $500,000+ in donations, he’d host an AMA session on Reddit. And a few days ago, they passed said stretch goal, and Gabe went on to announce that an AMA would be held on March 3rd at 1:00 PM PST.

17,000 users visited the IAmA subreddit, waiting for Gabe Newell to start the show. And they waited for a while, but nothing happened. Well, at least not for another 25 hours – then it started. Valve time, ladies and gentlemen.

Nevertheless, it happened. Erik Wolpaw, Erik Johnson, Ido Magal, Greg Coomer and Gabe Newell all sat down to answer the question that the fans might have. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting answers we got.

15 Years of Half-Life

Half-Life

15 Years ago, on November 19th 1998, Valve released Half-Life.

What followed was an entire revolution in the gaming industry.

Half-Life redefined the FPS genre, it implemented rich storytelling, introduced new technologies and catalysed an entire platform for user-created content, all in one package.

A new generation of gaming was born.

Steamcast: The podcast about all things Valve is back!

Steam

Over a year has passed since the community-founded Valve-centric podcast, Steamcast, closed down. However during August this year, a countdown clock appeared on a sub-directory of the website with the title ‘2013’.

Steamcast was originally founded back in 2009 with the aim of supporting the Valve community by offering frequent and direct participation with listeners, however in 2012 the podcast closed indefinitely.

Valve Loses Business Director And Reportedly Lays Off Over A Dozen Developers In “Great Cleansing”

Valve

UPDATE: Gabe Newell has released a statement responding to these reports (Engadget and Forbes were among those to receive a response):

We don’t usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I’d take the unusual step of addressing them.

No, we aren’t cancelling any projects. No, we aren’t changing any priorities or projects we’ve been discussing. No, this isn’t about Steam or Linux or hardware or [insert game name here]. We’re not going to discuss why anyone in particular is or isn’t working here.”

And that’s it. It’s a reassuring response, but it all but confirms that the reported layoffs have, in fact, taken place after all.

Valve has one of the highest employee retention rates in the entire video game industry – and just a few years ago, their Jobs page touted a 98% retention rate. But though we haven’t really heard of any significant layoffs from the company, ever since its inception, that doesn’t mean they don’t fire people at all. In fact, according to Gabe Newell (in his first talk at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin), due to Valve’s inherently flat structure and hierarchy, they have to be really aggressive about firing people, and he adds that they haven’t done a very good job with interims or new employees.

But again, we’ve never really seen that process in action. Well, until now.

The Shirt Heard ‘Round The World

Half-Life

This is an editorial piece written by Lilgreenman, longtime Half-Life obsessive and Valve community member. It summarizes and recapitulates the events of December 2011 – when it seemed like the whole Internet was aflame with rampant Half-Life speculation. Just in case you didn’t catch that little episode of community history, or maybe if you’re still wondering how the hell we fell for all that fake ARG gibberish.

Oh, and Happy Holidays!

To me, at least, it feels like it’s been much longer than a year since the anticipation for Valve’s Half-Life 3 really kicked off.

Gabe Newell On Valve’s “SOB”: “‘Stars of Blood’ Was An Internal Project That Never Saw The Light of Day”

Valve

Let it forever be known that the best way to get interesting information out of Gabe Newell is to buy him a hat on his birthday, surround him with fans, and ask daring questions like never before! After all, you saw how it helped us find out about Valve’s upcoming next-gen game engine!

But what if it can also help us find out more about Valve’s fabled space-centric game, known only as “SOB”? As you can tell from the title above… yes, it can! Read on.

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