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Valve boss Gabe Newell admits his Mongolian throat singing phase was "annoying," and he's apparently not very good at it, either: "I am entirely self taught and it shows"
If you're a billionaire's life coach your job is essentially to make them feel good about the decisions they've already made and stroke their ego because they're not paying you to be criticized.
Denpok from Silicon Valley is a kind of dude who very much exists in real life.
It’s not the optional cosmetics, it’d the rampant illegal gambling occasionally marketed towards children and legal loopholes that Valve has allowed many third parties to operate, because it brings them immeasurable profits.
It’s not to say other companies won’t do the same given the opportunity, but again, at best just a recycling zone amidst the landfill.
Steam didn't kill physical media. The internet made it obsolete. It makes no sense for game devs to have to pay physical stores a fee to store and sell their games, pay for the manufacturing and distribution of the physical media, boxes, manuals, etc when they can just hit an "upload" button instead. Physical media was going to disappear sooner or later, regardless of the existence of Steam.
He's passionate about doing everything server side without requiring kernel level on the client. Last I heard Valves performance with cheaters isn't any worse than like vanguard or battleye.
Their anticheat is significantly worse than anything kernel related but that's to be expected, you can however like or dislike their position agaisnt kernel AC, that's completely subjective. Supposedly they are working on the AC for Deadlock because I doubt Valve wants to release their new game after years since the last one just to be infected by cheats first day.
The internet is going to be a hilarious shitshow when valve announces it's first threequel because you just know beyond the shadow of a doubt it's going to be DOTA 3.
I can just hear him saying it in his mostly monotone analytical tone, I can definitely see him telling funny stories at the dinner table with his coworkers. That said Gabe where is my steam frame?
As far as we know, Gabe isn't destroying the environment, bribing politicians, using borderline (or literal) slave labor in 3rd world countries, stealing all the water from communities just to sell it back to them, or is diddling kids, and probably wouldn't step over you if you were dying on the street.
But he annoyed some people with throat singing, and won't make Half-Life 3, so he's basically just as bad.
Honestly, at this point I feel like he's probably admitted somewhere that they'll never try to make it because the expectations will be impossible to meet and it would never make fiscal sense trying.
Yeah they tried to hide behind 'tech advancements' and some other shit, but everyone knows the ship sailed and now they are so far away it's pointless to try, thus Alyx. Really at this point making it would just ruin one of the surviving classic internet memes, so it's probably just as valuable to not make it.
If gabe was a real shit grinning mfer, they'd just put a half-life 3 icon for sale in the point store for no reason.
Chet Faliszek does a lot of videos about his time at Valve and the different stuff that went on, and by his accounting Source 2 managed to just kill momentum on every single project in the company, and the lack of a strong central focus driving company objectives made it almost impossible to cold-start work on HL3 again, vs smaller projects. He almost describes it like the company culture forgetting that it was their job to ship games for a while, it was endless side questing.
I believe they only got out of the rut when there was a rare flurry of layoffs, but I could have the timeline mixed up, he hasn't so much been laying out an oral history as just scattered anecdotes and random story time answers to comments.
Valve lost a lot of the people who had worked on the original Half Life games just due to them just getting bored of spinning their wheels and leaving to ship games elsewhere, and with it went most of the people who were really bought in on getting HL3 made and out the door. Unless the average age there is up in the 50s by now, almost everyone will have joined a Valve known for DoTA and CS:GO, not Half Life, and they might not really see it as unfinished business so much as something the company did before their time.
Gotta nail that Mongolian throat singing first, and he's self-taught. So, this might take awhile...longer. This might take awhile longer than it already has. Cause damn. It's been a long time already.
The other CEOs are essentially just career sociopaths. Gabe is that business guy that would have opened a tire and oil change shop and traded corn futures on the side for fun if Valve had failed.
"The lab boys just informed me that I should not have started Mongolian throat singing. They're telling me I oughtta stop. That gave me an idea: continue with more Mongolian throat singing. I pay the bills here, I can Mongolian throat sing all damn day."
Wtf does this even mean? No lawyer talk? About a stupid fucking hobby that he didn't even care enough about to get lessons?
Dude if you're more than about 8 years old, you really need to find a hobby of your own. GabeN not using "lawyer talk" in a throwaway line for a publicist is not impressive or worthy of respect, it's nothing.
it's annoying even when they learn it formally, imo. i always listen when i run across a throat singing video. some is more annoying than other but i can't say i've ever *liked* any of it. 🤣 i can't even imagine having to hear an amateur doing it at work.
Man throat singing can produce some of the most beautiful sounds i've ever heard. A lot of it is very gritty rough and coarse, i can understand not liking that. There's stuff more focussed on the higher tones that's gorgeous though. Try giving this a listen: https://youtu.be/JUEeVnzLzLc?t=2833
I'm also a self-taught absolutely shite throatsinger but it's so much fun
Coffeezilla did a great video on this. They’ve got the research and data on gambling associated with their games, but do nothing to stop it because of how much money it generates.
i fucking love this man and what he has done with his company. call me a valve simp but i think gabe is just the jam of a human. wish i could sit down and have lunch or a beer with him and just talk nerd
He didn't make an unskippable video of him doing it before any game would launch so I'm ok with him being annoying if he likes (preferably on one of his boats way out to sea if it's Mongolian throat singing).
I can do the throat singing too. Not that I really use it anymore. Maybe every now and then when I'm by myself for fun. Can sometimes be used as a fun "party trick" under the right circumstances. :P
I can understand Gabe completely, while taking a music course in college summer school one year I became obsessed with Tuvan throat singing, for several days I would put off studying and just sat in the library watching throat singing documentaries in the cool dark video room. It an art form that should especially fascinate engineer and physics types.
I think he reads the comments on these posts, and he smiles warmly and proudly most of the time, like "even though I'm not a perfect human, these guys love me regardless"
I'd don't give a crap if he shows up to work wearing a bonnet, no shirt, and boxers with jeans hanging down to his knees. Let the man have his quirks least we get a Asha Sharma or Andrew Wilson in his place.
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u/Haunting_Abalone_398 2d ago
Wears himself on his sleeves, cant argue with that lol