Gabe Newell
American computer programmer and businessman · United States · Developers · Born 1962 · age 63
Gabe Newell is read about 3,827 times a day, in 57 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He dropped out of Harvard to build Windows at Microsoft, then walked away to make Half-Life - and the platform that now moves most PC games sold on earth.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 3
In their own words 10
, The original Half-Life took two years to create and Half-Life 2 took six years. That means Half-Life 3 would ship in approximately 2022. By which time we'll all be retired.
James is an ass, and we won't be working with him again.
The real world will feel dull, flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experiences you'll be able to create in people's brains.
Awards
About this person
Gabe Logan Newell was born November 3, 1962, in Aspen, Colorado, and raised in Davis, California. He left Harvard in the early 1980s to join Microsoft, where he worked on the first versions of Windows and later led the port of Doom to Windows 95. In 1996, Newell and Mike Harrington left to found Valve and fund Half-Life, which arrived in 1998. Harrington sold his stake and departed in 2000. Newell then steered development of Steam, the digital distribution service that launched in 2003 and commanded most of the downloaded PC game market by 2011. As of 2025, Forbes estimated he owned at least half of Valve, plus stakes in the marine research organization Inkfish, the neuroscience firm Starfish Neuroscience, and yacht builder Oceanco. His net worth stood near $11 billion, making him the wealthiest figure in the video game industry.
In common with Gabe
Developers from the United States 5
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