00:05: The AMA is now over. Highlights included a possible Left 4 Dead 3, Half Life movie and free Source 2 engine for developers. You can check out the AMA for yourself here.
23:59: Steam flash sales are a thing of the past.
“We found that really short discounts made it difficult for many people to participate. By removing the flash sales, users can count on finding the best deals whenever they are able to visit the store during the sale.”
23:56: Gabe tackles the subject of the lack of communication with the community.
“The way we talk about this internally, is that we prefer to communicate through our products. We are all pretty devoted to reading and listening to the community – everyone here believes it is an integral part of their job to do so.”
23:53: More CS:GO servers to come online in the future.
“We’re adding servers all the time.”
23:46: Gabe confirms the development of a set of two movies taking place in the Half Life/Portal universe.
“Yep. They’re coming.”
23:43: Gabe tackles the subject of pornographic PC games.
“In principle, there are two problems to solve. The first is a completely uncurated distribution tool for developers. The second is a toolset for customers that allow them to find and filter content (and people are an instance of content most obviously in multiplayer) that is best for them.”
23:35: Gabe teases a possible Left 4 Dead 3, also mentions Half Life regrets.
“When we decided we needed to work on markets, free to play, and user generated content, Team Fortress seemed like the right place to do that. That work ended up informing everything we did in the multiplayer space. Left 4 Dead is a good place for creating shared narratives”
“The issue with Half-Life for me is that I was involved in a much higher percentage of the decisions about the games, so it’s hard for me to look at them as anything other than a series of things I regret.”
23:30: Gabe says Valve’s future lies in hardware development and that he wants us to play with our minds. Also pledges better support.
“The big thing right now is broadening the range of options we have in creating experiences. We think investing in hardware will give us those options.”
“Personally I’m looking at research in brain-computer interfaces.”
“We still need to further improve response times and we are continually working to improve the quality of our responses. We’re also working on adding more support staff in regions around the world to offer better native language support and improve response times in various regions.”
23:20: Source 2 is the engine of the future for Valve and free for developers. Also, Gabe says he still plays lots of Dota 2.
“I think Portal 2 is our best single-player game. I play Dota 2 the most of our multiplayer games.”
“We are continuing to use Source 2 as our primary game development environment. Aside from moving Dota 2 to the engine recently, we are are using it as the foundation of some unannounced products. We also intend to continue to make the Source 2 engine work available to the broad developer community as we go, and to make it available free of charge.”
23:05pm: The AMA is now live.
Update 17/01/2017: What you can and can’t ask the GabeN has been laid out in a Reddit post today.
The mods over at Gabe Newell’s subreddit have added a few rules and stipulations to his upcoming AMA (ask me anything) interview on Reddit. Some of them are obvious, some of them are a little silly. Either way, we’ve got you covered.
Valve have made a staggering five of our list of the best FPS games on PC.
First and foremost, let’s talk about the proverbial elephant in the room. Yes, you can ask about the current status of Half Life 3. And by you, I mean literally just one of you. One question will be allowed through and all others will be deleted. That doesn’t mean we can’t reference Half Life 3, but just one of us will get to ask where it’s at.
Gabe has also stated that there will be no announcements. So for those of you expecting Ricochet 2, it’s time to give up on your dreams.
Political, blaphemous or just crappy questions will be removed. This is especially true if they are not actually questions, such as simply posting the number three. Some of this is a bannable offense, so perhaps we should just steer clear of them altogether.
Other than that, it would appear that it’s all fair game. So tune in later for our live coverage of the AMA on this very page.
Original story 16/01/2017: Gabe Newell, the co-founder and president of Valve and PC gaming cult icon, has agreed to do an AMA on ‘The Gaben’ subreddit tomorrow, January 17, at 3pm Pacific time (that’s 11pm here in the UK).
This is not a drill, people, and has been confirmed by Jedi Burrell, moderator of The Gaben subreddit, and by R3TR1X, moderator of the Steam subreddit.
The announcement comes less than a week after Game Informer published an interview with a single anonymous source at Valve, who was very pessimistic with respect to the prospects for gaming’s white whale: Half-Life 3.
Perhaps Newell sees this as an opportunity to discuss that story, clarify where it is and isn’t accurate, and maybe settle the question of more Half-Life content for good. He has to know the question is coming, after all, and gamers’ hopes have clearly failed to suffocate in the vacuum of Valve’s silence. Maybe we’ll finally get a definitive answer tomorrow (our advice: don’t get your hopes up).
But it’s just as likely Newell will give the standard “no comment” and move things on, because there’s plenty more that could be discussed. Some Redditors in the associated thread are looking forward to quizzing him on Dota 2’s rocky 7.00 update, last year’s CS:GO skin gambling scandaland perceived failings in Valve’s response, comparisons between Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch, and whether Valve plans on ever developing single-player games again.