Gabe Logan Newell

Gabe Newell during one of the Dota Internationalhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/mellowynk/14760241412Gabe Logan Newell, or simply nicknamed Gaben by the gaming community, is also known as the man who saved PC gaming.

Gabe Newell was born on the 3rd of November in 1962 in Colorado, America. He's an American computer programmer and a businessman, and his current occupation is co-founder of the Valve Corporation.

Gabe Newell attended Harvard University for three years before dropping out to go work at Microsoft. He stated that during his first three months there, he learnt more than he ever did during his time at Harvard University, which he expressed is one of the main reasons he dropped out of Harvard.

During his time at Microsoft, he contributed as a producer of Windows 1.01, 1.02 and 1.03 operating systems.

After working 13 years at Microsoft, he eventually left the company with another Microsoft employee, Mike Harrington. Gabe Newell stated this decision was inspired by Michael Abrash - another Microsoft employee who left the company to work on Quake for Id Software.

Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington co-founded the Valve Corporation, funded with their own money. The Valve Corporation was a private company and started off as a video game company. 

Their first product was a first-person shooter game named "Half-Life" and was a commercial success. Mike left the company afterward, leaving Gabe as the sole person in charge of Valve.

During the production of Half-Life 2, Gabe Newell began developing the projects "Grid" and "Gazelle," which later released as "Steam." Steam is under DRM (Digital Rights Management) and was created as a platform with the primary means to solve the problem of pushing update patches to the games they made. Before Steam, most game developers gradually started shifting to make games on consoles from PC. They felt gaming on PCs was a mess, since they have no way of defending against software piracy as well as hackers, and it is very hard to update their games. At that time games from different companies were also all over the place, as there is no digital store for PCs.

Gabe Newell During Game Developer Choice Award 2010https://www.flickr.com/photos/officialgdc/4427575126The creation of Steam not only solved the problem of pushing update patches to the game, but it also made it easier to buy games, as they are united under one storefront. Steam also helped to defend against software piracy as well as the problems with hackers, and this gave developers confidence to make games on PC. Steam eventually became the biggest digital software distribution platform on PC, and as of early 2018, Steam has 150 million registered users with as much as 18.5 concurrent users.

Gabe Newell also introduced Steam Greenlight to give indies developers a chance at getting onto Steam without having a publisher.

To me personally, gaming was also my most passionate hobby. But as a student who couldn't afford a gaming console, my only place to game was on an old office PC.
I've had my Steam account for more than six years now. If not for Gabe Newell, I would probably never have had a chance to enjoy many games that had really good stories, game play, and many other joys that I've experienced. Steam also helped me keep in touch with my old friend, when we otherwise probably wouldn't talk or interact much.

Reference: Wikipedia page of Gabe Newell and Steam (Software)