Gabe Newell wins GDC Pioneer Award

By Tom Bramwell Published 18 January, 2010

For work on Steam and influential games.

The organisers of the Game Developers Conference have announced that Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is to receive the event's Pioneer Award this March.

Newell is being recognised for his work on Steam, Valve's digital distribution platform, and "helping to make possible some of the most important videogames of the past two decades", including Half-Life, Portal and Team Fortress 2.

The GDC Awards Advisory Committee, which selected Newell for the award, consists of noted developers including DICE's Ben Cousins, Ubisoft's Clint Hocking, Metaplace's Raph Koster, BioWare's Ray Muzyka and Arkane's Harvey Smith.

Newell established Valve in 1996 after a profitable stint at Microsoft. He has previously attributed the studio's ongoing success to a number of factors, including staff continuity.

"I've been working with everybody here for a long time, and we get better," he told Eurogamer in 2007.

"It's one of those things that when you ship a product you learn a bunch of stuff about how to do that better, and it would be a tragedy to lose that. So that's another thing that contributes to our ability to do this is just the longevity of our shared experience. People change roles a lot inside of the company."

Valve's last game was Left 4 Dead 2, and along with its ongoing support for the zombie shooter series and Team Fortress 2, the studio is known to be working on a sequel to Portal and the third and final instalment in its series of Half-Life 2 episodes.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Lusterpurge #1 2 years ago

    In other news, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell trades GDC Pioneer Award for giant cheeseburger.

  • Murton #2 2 years ago

    As much as I dislike the man and his overly arrogant nature, I can't disagree with the decision behind this award. And as much as I dislike Steam it was arguably the first service to prove that digital distribution can work, so much so that we now have an entire sector of digital retailers and with that in mind it's only right that we recognise both Steam and Gabe.

    Not that it will change my opinion of him or Steam of course.

  • kangarootoo #3 2 years ago

    @Lusterpurge

    Oh, you did a fat joke in relation to Gabe Newell. How amusing of you and how unexpected. And how clever to choose such a well crafted fat joke too, as not everybody would have the rapier wit or sense of originality required to surgically insert the words "giant cheeseburger" into an otherwise fun free sentence.

    Well done you.

  • General_Zod #4 2 years ago

    Gabe Newell is fat.

  • kinky_mong #5 2 years ago

    How many posts until someone makes a comment about wanting to hear something about Half Life: Episode 3?

    A: 5?
    B: 10?
    C: This one right here?

  • Ninja_Tino #6 2 years ago

    Not gonna lie, I giggled. It's an old joke but never gets old. Anyway, good on him but.............where's Episode 3?

  • oceanclub #7 2 years ago

    Well deserved award for someone who has done more for PC gaming than any 10,000 Microsoft employees.

  • oreillymj #8 2 years ago

    The Peter Griffin (Family guy) lookalike award.

  • Shinetop #9 2 years ago

    "For work on Steam and influential games. Not for work on Episode 3."

  • metalmike25 #10 2 years ago

    In fairness it was funny. Also you never see him smile, i thought fat guys were jolly

  • markyHD #11 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    Offended by a fat joke? Oh I get it, your fat too. That about right?

    Jokes aside, still think half-life 1 was one of the best games i've played, so beyond anything else at it's time. Thing for me is, aside from steam, nothing in terms of technology or major innovation has come from valve since.

  • ignatiusjreilly #12 2 years ago

    The only thing offensive about the joke was its tedium and entire lack of originality.

  • Murton #13 2 years ago

    Kinda agree with Marky, the original Half Life was awesome and surpassed only by Gearbox's Opposing Force spin off for some time afterwards, Half Life 2 on the other hand as a result of the delays during development didn't seem quite as special. There's really only Steam that's been original, even the much touted Left4Dead is mostly derivative of several user-made modifications to Unreal and Half Life such as Killing Floor and Zombie Panic.

  • webcider #14 2 years ago

    There is nothing original about making a name and then taking others ideas...

    Okay they had Half-life which is cool.
    They recognised Counter-strike being a success yes you had to be donkey not to recognise that though.
    although with Portal they did made a wise choice.

    Still Half-life 2 is no reason to get a pioneer award. Half-life 1 but not 2. it was not really that special compared to the first one.
    For instance i didn't complete Half-life 2 i was that bored but i do look forward to the Black Mesa Mod which looks very nice ^^

    And im not liking this trend that because you have a downloadable service which can be turned off anyday and the users then lose their stuff is a good way to award.

    Steam means a lot of good things for the pc gaming and in the same time i can't but having this feeling that Steam is creepy in a few ways too.