Gabe Newell is perhaps more meme now than man, serving as the punchline to at least half of all the internet’s bad Half-Life 3 jokes. But while we’re all laughing it up, Newell is quietly taking home more money than most of us could ever possibly imagine. How much? His net worth is currently rated at $5.5 billion.
There’s one Valve game we haven’t given up hope on seeing a third iteration of – here’s what we want from Left 4 Dead 3.
That puts him a number 97 on Forbes’ list of the richest people in America, but it’s worth noting that their rounding puts him in a seven-way tie with various heirs and business people. It is possible he’s only the 106th richest person in America. “Only.”
Valve are a private company, meaning that their financials are not publicly disclosed, but Forbes estimates that Newell owns just over half of the organization. I assume that means he takes half of every dollar spent on Dota 2 treasures. That’s how business works, right?
To put Newell’s $5.5 billion in perspective, Bill Gates is still #1 on Forbes’ Top 400 with $89 billion. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is closing in with $84.1 billion, investment magnate Warren Buffett is #3 at $78 billion, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rounds out the top four with $72.6 billion. Gabe’s got a long way to go before Steam truly takes over the world.
In the meantime, I’m sure he’ll be polishing his knife collection and offering only the most occasional, most cryptic public comments on Reddit.