GameSpy.com interviews Gabe Newell talking with the Valve Software managing director about how the impact of the user community on the success of present and future games. The quote that begins the piece makes it clear that Gabe feels this is going to be even more of a factor in the future:

The user community is going to be more and more important going forward. Companies that don't rethink how they do business as a result of the opportunities represented by the Internet will go away. When I worked on Windows, the user community was incredibly far away. [Newell spent 13 years at Microsoft in the Systems, Applications, and Advanced Technology divisions -ed.] We had no idea what they thought, we had no way to talk to them, and we didn't have any way of enlisting them in making Windows better. I'd say it wasn't until pretty late in the 80's that even 1% of our consumer customers had email.