November 3, 1962: Happy birthday Gabe Newell! 
The ubiquitous presence with the games industry of Valve CEO Gabe Newell wasn’t always so ubiquitous. Newell, however, got a very fortuitous start with Microsoft, where he worked on at least a few Windows releases. Newell raked in some serious cash at Microsoft, so is wasn’t as if he started Valve on mere pennies. He and one if his co-workers, Thomas Harrington, did, however invest what they could into Valve in 1996 and its first release, a little game you might have heard of called Half-Life.

Newell is also responsible for the digital distribution service Steam. He came up with the idea for Steam while working on the Half-Life games. Since Half-Life, Valve has released a number of successful and critically acclaimed games such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal, Portal 2, and Left 4 Dead. Most recently, Valve released Dota 2, a sequel to Defense of the Ancients. Newell is an outspoken supporter of PC games, and, comparatively speaking, only a handful of Valve’s games are available on consoles.

Newell has been tight-lipped about what Valve has been up to in recent months, possibly because of the announcement of the Steam Machine that’s due out in 2014. We here are United We Game still wish him a very happy birthday!