Gabe Newell's cult of personality is intense, but a Valve exec who worked with him says his superpower is how he 'delighted in people on the team just being really good at what they did'
I'm not sure there's any single figure in the games industry that people are more intrigued by than Gabe Newell. He has a fascinating air of mystery, which is weird, given you can sort of just email him and get a reply. But nevertheless, there's a bit of a cult of personality around the man, to the extent that he sometimes becomes a stand-in for Valve itself.
Sometimes it's a joke—the various Gabe memes around Steam sales, 'Praise Gaben,' that kind of thing—and sometimes it's more serious, like people's real fear that Steam might rapidly enshittify once Newell's no longer the boss.
But it turns out that, hey, maybe that kind of founder mythologisation is a little bit off, because in a recent GDC chat with PCG's Ted Litchfield, former Valve chief marketing officer Monica Harrington said that one of the key things she appreciated about Newell during her time working with him in the late '90s was the way he nurtured team talent: "He delighted in people on the team just being really good at what they did," said Harrington. "I think he liked being part of all of that."
Ol' Gabe has an eye for talent, in other words, and a capacity for nurturing it. Which makes sense, since a lot of Harrington's GDC talk on her time at Valve focused on how the company managed to locate and bring on-board skilled people from all over the country and from all manner of backgrounds. "You know, Gabe is the one who wanted me to join Valve," Harrington told PCG. "When we were having those discussions, we just got along really well."
So, you know, it sounds like rather than being the heroic Atlas who keeps Valve aloft on his back, a huge reason Valve has been so successful under his stewardship is that he's good at—and takes pleasure in—finding the right people who can help with the weight. You know, like the intern who saved the whole company that one time. You need people like that if you want to spend your time hanging out on your yacht with a potato phone.
Which isn't necessarily bombshell news: I don't think any organisation in history has ever truly been kept afloat by the energy and dynamism of literally a single person, but given the way we sometimes talk about Newell and Valve, it's perhaps a necessary corrective.
Anyway, that's not to say Newell isn't a remarkable guy unto himself. Harrington recalls that she "thought he was really, really smart and he had interesting takes on things," even to the extent that he stood out from all the other "really, really smart people" Harrington has worked with across the rest of her career.
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