Valve’s Gabe Newell talks on worthwhile topics, trashes Windows 8

There isn’t a name in gaming as known right now as Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of Valve Corporation. And if you’re a gamer and own a PC, Mac, or as of recently, Linux, you know there’s no better way of getting games cheap and quickly than the online distributor Steam. So when Gabe Newell says something, people listen.

On July 24th, Gabe Newell attended a dinner hosted by Covert & Co., Google Ventures and Perkins Coie, interviewed onstage by Ed Fries, former VP of game publishing at Microsoft. There was much discussion about what he knew about best, online distribution. He talked about how “value” is created from “people’s actions” and that they are trying to create a “platform for productivity”. The example he gave for this was “a kid from Kansas making $150,000 dollars a year making virtual hats”. He even mentioned how he was in talks with Adobe about getting them to adopt an approach much like a free-to-play game, which garnered a less than positive response from Adobe, basically saying that it was a terrible idea. But could you imagine how much it’d help so many people to have a ‘free-to-play’ version of Adobe Photoshop? Then buy DLC for much more advanced or simply premium content. That’d be something to talk about.

Another couple things Newell discussed was open versus closed platforms and Linux. His talk about open versus closed platforms consisted of him basically saying that companies such as Epic and Zynga and Valve made it through on the waves of open platforms and now that they know of what can be done with that platform, they want to close it and keep it to themselves. Well, not Valve. As he mentioned, he wants to figure how they can continue riding those open platforms for a bright future of growth. And as for Linux, he points out a very strong point, that being that the biggest issue with Linux is games. Or rather the lack of, really. As he states,”People don’t realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior.” Which, if you think about it, is completely true. To keep it more open, people want entertainment of some kind. Games are one thing. If people see that entertainment can also be experienced through Linux’s open source fields, maybe it’d open up a whole new thing to work with. That and well..

He also talked about Windows 8. Not so kindly.

“I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.” He went on to talk about how it’s entirely possible that someday, there will be top-tier PC companies and manufacturers that will end up leaving the market, thinning out choice and cornering the consumer. If Linux can rise to be a worthy alternative as a solid platform, then people will at least have that.

Honestly, as he mentioned, Valve isn’t a public company so he isn’t up to snuff on public speaking and presentations, but whenever he does say something, Gabe Newell is certainly someone to look out for and listen to.

Source: AllThingsD