Gabe Newell: The game developer’s billion dollar fortune

How rich is Gabe Newell?

Gabe Newell is an American billionaire who made his fortune playing other people’s entertainment. After all, the clever businessman was able to make a name for himself as a game developer. Like many other successful countrymen, Gabe Newell dropped out of the prestigious Harvard University. Instead of concentrating on his degree, from 1983 Gabe Newell preferred to work for the world-famous Bill Gates company, Microsoft. The cherished Gabe Newell’s net worth is $ 3.41 billion.

Valve Corporation

From then on, it would be a while before he co-founded the valve corporation. This was the case in 1996 when the entrepreneur also married his wife Lisa. The father of two continues to serve as CEO and President of Valve Corporation. The Computer game “Half-Life” is now considered to be the developer’s best-known work. His keen intellect made this man one of the richest people in the world. In 2010, the US magazine Forbes had already reported that the American was one of the “Names You Need to Know”.

Anyone who doesn’t know what to do with the name Newell should know that the Gaming platform Steam was also developed by Newell’s company. This widespread platform offers various PC games from a wide variety of developers again and again at heavily discounted prices. This not only pleases all price-conscious gamers, but has also earned the entrepreneur a nickname: He is often called “Lord Gaben”. The fact that Steam regularly organizes promotional weeks with attractive special prices has meant that the buying behavior of many players has changed forever.

An insight into Gabe Newell’s life

The multibillionaire is by no means behind the scenes with his views. Until 2010, the developer repeatedly spoke out against the PlayStation 3 in public, because EA ported the Valve games for the console and not Valve itself. While Valve primarily develops games for Linux, Mac and Windows users, the company has tried its luck in the past with games for the Xbox 360 console. Sony criticized Gabe Newell, however, because the entrepreneur was meanwhile of the opinion that the group would no longer focus on the interests of gamers and developers.

At the E3 trade fair, however, Gabe Newell withdrew. The game developer was there at a Sony press conference and even apologized for his earlier statements. In 2011 it became known, dace Super Mario 64 is one of the entrepreneur’s favorite games. This game showed him that games are a form of art, Newell said. The game Doom also has a very special meaning for the extremely wealthy entrepreneur. This made it clear to him that PC games are trend-setting when it comes to entertainment. In 2013, the visionary entrepreneur even made it into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. This in turn shows how much the American has already been able to achieve with his games.

Image sources:
Cover picture: Official GDC [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Eric Iles / Flickr [CC-BY 2.0]