Gabe Newell

Valve has revealed they will now accept games that use AI on their Steam platform, under specific conditions.

The modern era of virtual reality as we know it started around June of 2012, when John Carmack brought the Oculus Rift to the Electronic Entertainment Expo and showed it off to attendees with Doom 3 BFG Edition.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called Valve «assholes» in an old email thread that's been dug up as part of a lawsuit against the Steam owner.

Ahead of the Epic Game Store’s launch in 2018, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney called Valve executives “assholes” in a heated email concerning platform fees.

Valve is currently in the middle of an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against small indie developer Wolfire, which was originally filed way back in 2021 due to Steam's control over game prices and attempts to such out rivals. Despite Valve's best efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed, it actually went ahead in 2022, and the whole situation is now getting spicy as internal documents and previously private email exchanges are making their way to the public eye.

Old emails uncovered in a lawsuit against Valve have revealed that Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was previously very disgruntled with the changes to Steam revenue splits announced in late 2018, and went as far as to call Valve "assholes" in a message to president Gabe Newell.

It's ten days to Christmas, and you know what that means: It's time for the world's most famous jolly, bearded man to draw up naughty and nice lists, handing out rewards to the latter and pitiless justice to the former. That's right, Gabe Newell is sticking it to Dota 2 cheats once again.

Many of you will be aware that Left 4 Dead began as a mod for Counter-Strike called “Terror Strike.” However, it looks as though Valve accidentally released an early version of the former via an update of the latter.

Here’s the very first of RockPaperShotgun’s new weekly news liveblogs. Read more about the thinking behind them in our announcement post, if you dare.

The CEO of PC games giant Valve, Gabe Newell, is set to appear in court in the near future.

Valve's founder Gabe Newell was recentlyordered to ensure his in-court presence to testify in person for the ongoing lawsuit between Wolfire Games and Valve.

Valve boss Gabe Newell has been ordered to appear in court as part of an antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games.

Valve boss Gabe Newell has been ordered to give an in-person deposition in regard to the ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games.

Valve's CEO, Gabe Newell, finds himself compelled to appear in person for a deposition in the antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games, developers of Overgrowth. Despite Newell's initial plea for a remote deposition due to COVID-19 concerns, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington deemed his evidence insufficient to establish a particularized risk of serious illness.

Valve boss Gabe Newell is headed to court. A court order filed on November 16 (via Gamesindustry.biz) says Newell is required to testify in person in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between Wolfire Games and Valve so the plaintiffs in the case can «adequately assess» his credibility.

Gabe Newell has been ordered to attend an in-person deposition relating to Overgrowth developer Wolfire Games' antitrust lawsuit against Valve despite his request to do it remotely.

Valve CEO Gabe Newell has been ordered to attend an in-person deposition regarding an antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games.

It’s such a shame Back 4 Blood couldn’t quite scratch that Left 4 Dead itch. It was, after all, supposed to be a spiritual successor to Valve’s iconic zombie co-op series. Sadly, ’twas not to be. However, with the original L4D turning 15 recently, one of the OG developers reflects on the game.

Left 4 Dead's co-lead, Chet Faliszek, reminisces about the early days of the co-op PvE (player vs. environment) zombie shooter and what it took to finally get it off the ground. 

Chet Faliszek, the writer behind the original Left 4 Dead, has revealed he was mistakenly appointed by Valve's Gabe Newell to lead the project in its early development and through launch.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has been delayed, and I'm sorry to say it's a big one. Instead of coming out near the end of this year as planned, Focus Entertainment said in an update that it's now slated for the second half of 2024. As usual, a reason for the delay wasn't provided, except that it will «provide the time needed to properly polish the game and to ensure the best possible experience.»

As he recounts his work producing and managing the original Left 4 Dead game launch, released 15 years ago this week, Chet Faliszek pauses our conversation at his Seattle home office to double-check an exact date. "September 7, 2005, at 1:10 p.m." This was the exact moment he was formally introduced (via e-mail) by his boss, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, to Turtle Rock Studios founder Mike Booth, to “consult” on a new, Valve-funded video game project. Its codename at the time was “Terror.”

Chet Faliszek, the lead on Left 4 Dead—who is now making his own retro sci-fi version called The Anacrusis—says that Gabe Newell had some pretty strong opinions on the game during its troubled development.

Newell didn't want to force the original Half-Life out the door before it was ready.

Valve founder Gabe Newell has shared his thoughts on realism in games, revealing that he's never thought of it as "fun."

Gabe Newell has defended game delays with his own version of that fake Miyamoto quote.

To celebrate its 25th birthday, Valve updated Half-Life and gave it away for free. At the same time, it released an hour-long documentary in which the original developers talked about making the influential FPS. In the documentary, Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell explained why game delays are OK, but also took some time to explain the theory of fun Valve came up with while developing the original Half-Life.

Famed Nintendo director Shigeru Miyamoto once said, so the story goes, «A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.» Did he really utter those words? Apparently not. But Valve founder Gabe Newell shares the sentiment: He said so, in very plain terms, in the new Half-Life 25th anniversary documentary that released today on YouTube.

For the 25th anniversary of the iconic Half-Life, developer/publisher Valve has released a documentary celebrating the monumental first-person shooter. In addition, the studio has released an update to the original “featuring quality of life fixes, restored content, and new multiplayer maps.” 

There was a time when Valve could do no wrong, releasing hit game after hit game. While better known these days as the developer behind Steam, Gabe Newell and his crew got their start with the iconic Half-Life. Now, an update has been sighted, and the timing is quite suspicious.

Half-Life is an iconic name at this point, forming the striking identity behind a defining '90s FPS game that would forever change the genre as we know it. But there was every possibility that, looking back 25 years later, we'd be calling it Fallout or Crysis. It's a strange thought given that those two names would go onto become iconic series from completely different developers.

By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer considered buying Nintendo at one point, a leaked 2020 email revealed. Multiple documents from Microsoft's trial with the US FTC were leaked Tuesday, with one showing a casual discussion about buying the Mario maker, where Spencer called it a “career moment” and implied that a collaboration would be a ‘good move' for either company. It's worth highlighting that this conversation happened in August 2020, before Microsoft acquired Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion (about Rs. 62,431 crore). The leaks also disclosed Bethesda's release schedule, alongside details for Microsoft's planned mid-generation console refresh.

The FTC and Microsoft are presently in court over the FTC's desire to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and as seems to happen every time a big gaming company goes to court, there's been an accidental leak of confidential documents. 

In the latest unredacted document oopsie stemming from the US Federal Trade Commission's efforts to stop Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard, an email from Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer has surfaced in which he discusses the idea of buying Nintendo.

The fine folks over at Noclip are currently undertaking a huge restoration project, digitising hours and hours of gaming-related footage from a forgotten archive of tapes. If you hit up the YouTube channel, where all of this stuff is free to watch, you'll see old video game trailers, footage of cancelled projects, and old E3 press conferences. Sony's memorable E3 2006 presser has already been restored, and now, its presentation from E3 2010 is now available to watch in the best quality possible.

Although not much into development these days, there was a time when Valve made some fantastic games. Right from the word “go” – with the release of Half-Life in 1998 – Gabe Newell and his team became an overnight success. As such, the first entry in the adventures of the silent scientist Gordon Freeman continues to be talked about a quarter of a century later.

Half-Life characters are still, to this day, hiding a lot of secrets. We know very little about Gordon Freeman. G-Man is a total mystery. And even with the latest entry in the Valve FPS game series, we’re still learning a lot about Alyx and her background before the events of Half-Life 2. One recent fan theory, however, involving Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and one of the iconic scientist NPCs from Black Mesa, has led us to an unexpected revelation. It turns out one of the most recognizable faces from Half-Life doesn’t belong to who we thought.

Half-Life's scientists might be endless clones of one another thanks to memory limitations of the time, but that hasn't stopped them from taking on personalities of their own. 'scientist01' became Isaac Kleiner in the sequel, but in the '90s, he was dubbed 'Walter' by the community, even spawning fan-fic called "Walter's World" on the Planet Half-Life website. 'scientist02' meanwhile became known as Einstein, thanks to the striking resemblance, but concept and 3D artist Chuck Jones, who designed Gordon Freeman, says he was actually inspired by President George Washington.

Blizzard Entertainment today announced that they’re finally planning on releasing some of their games on Steam starting with Overwatch 2.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that Overwatch 2 will release on August 10th for Steam. Currently exclusive to Battle.net on PC, the hero shooter is the first of several planned releases for Valve’s platform.

As Blizzard evolves as a studio, inside and out, one of the ideas pushing us forward is meeting players around the world where they are and making our games as easy as possible to access and play. We want to give everyone a chance to experience our universes with old friends while making new ones, no matter how they choose to play. 

Blizzard Entertainment has announced plans to make “a selection” of its PC games available on Steam.

Blizzard games will be available on PC outside of the company's Battle.Net launcher when Overwatch 2 releases on Valve's platform next month.

Blizzard has shared it is planning to branch away from the Battle.net launcher and is gearing up to bring games to Steam. The change will allow fans to keep all their favorite titles in their Steam libraries rather than splitting things up between multiple launchers.