Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games

An interview on The PA Report talks with Valve's Gabe Newell, discussing some general topics with Valve's Managing Director, whose beard is growing in nicely (though not to the magnificent degree mine has at this point). The discussion covers things like his work schedule, his fascination with wearable computers, the possibility Valve might someday sell hardware, pricing games on Steamand more (thanks nin). He also offers responses to questions about to what degree customers won games purchased on Steam:
But even from kind of a more general point of view, you have services like Steam or Origin where these many purchases and micro-transactions and all these transactions we’re making through multiple companies are kind of tied to this overreaching account. Do you have lawyers who kind of look at the legal implication of where exactly you fit into that relationship?

Yeah, we have lawyers who look at stuff all the time, I’m not sure I’m answering your question directly. It’s sort of like this kind of messy issue, and it doesn’t really matter a whole lot what the legal issues are, the real thing is that you have to make your customers happy at the end of the day and if you’re not doing that it doesn’t really matter what you think about various supreme court decisions or EU decisions. If you’re not making your customers happy you’re doing something stupid and we certainly always want to make our customers happy. And I think we have a track record of having done that.
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Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games
Feb 20, 2012, 18:21
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Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games Feb 20, 2012, 18:21
Feb 20, 2012, 18:21
 
Kastagir wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 17:31:

I'm guessing that you're referring to the Half-Life franchise here. This situation seems pretty clear to someone who has followed it: the core writer for the HL2 storyline became seriously ill and had to leave Valve on an indefinite leave of absence. His importance was made clear by Newell's assurance that he would always be a valuable asset to Valve, no matter how long his recovery would take. Newell and his PR masters don't want to admit that the HL story hinges on one person and that they've written themselves into a corner with Episodes 1 and 2 and they have a history of missing any milestones related to the HL franchise. Talking about HL is a no-win situation for them.

Or is there something else we can hold Gabe Newell's "feet to the fire" for?

Nice and neat and so forth--except for one thing--it's you saying it instead of Gabe...;) It's *interesting* if Gabe says it...otoh, anyone can speculate, right? If you take a look at the hundreds of credits in the HL2 manual, or even just the ones that roll on screen, it is very clear that HL2 being a "one man show" is anything *but* what Valve thinks about the game. But, if this is true, Newell should state it directly instead of letting speculation like this run rampant (again, he has difficulty being direct it seems to me.) As opposed to the idea of HL3 discussion being a "no win" situation for Valve--I would rather speculate myself that Valve has got some fantastic HL3 software in the works but in the spirit of not wanting to spoil the impact, Gabe would rather maintain silence instead of trying to hype it--which can breed a lot of misunderstanding. HL2 seemed as if it came out of the woodwork--advance publicity was so sparse that there wasn't time for anyone to be "disappointed" in HL2...! I *hope* this is what Gabe is doing. And I also hope they are off the "episode" venue for HL3 going forward. I think the episodic approach for HL in general did little except to cheapen the franchise and lower expectations.

"Feet to the fire" could mean anything, really--even just intelligent, interesting follow ups--like for instance, Ben might have asked what Newell thought was wrong and in need of fixing in the iPad2 when it comes to the topic of gaming. I can think of several things, myself--'course, after that point is reached there'd be a question as to whether the iPad2 would be (or look like) a tablet anymore. Stuff like that.

I also wish Ben had gone into a bit of detail as to what it is Gabe sees in consoles--after all, he can afford the PC configuration of his choice--so why dumb it all down into the console space? Steam is a PC store, etc.
It is well known that I cannot err--and so, if you should happen across an error in anything I have written you can be absolutely sure that *I* did not write it!...;)
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