Gabe Newell has accumulated plenty of unusual hobbies during his decades running Valve, but one of them apparently became difficult for his own employees to ignore.
According to Counter-Strike co-creator Minh “Gooseman” Le, Newell once spent roughly five months practising Mongolian throat singing around Valve’s offices, frequently walking through the hallways while experimenting with the unusually loud vocal technique.
The fascination lasted long enough that some Valve employees reportedly began closing their office doors to escape the sound. Le remembers the episode with considerably more amusement today, describing it as one example of Newell’s tendency to become intensely interested in subjects far removed from video games. And throat singing was hardly the strangest thing Le encountered during his time at Valve. Newell’s interests also extended to knives, bladesmithing and medieval weapons, with Le recalling a room at the company that became filled with swords and axes.
Gabe Newell’s unusual obsession lasted around five months
Le shared the story during a recent interview with Indie Game Joe about the creation of Counter-Strike, his years at Valve and what it was like working alongside one of the gaming industry’s most recognisable executives. Newell’s interest apparently began after he encountered Mongolian throat singing and decided that he wanted to learn how to perform the technique himself. He did not restrict the practice sessions to his home. Le recalled Newell walking through Valve’s offices while throat singing, something that became a regular occurrence rather than a brief experiment.
“A lot of people in the office, they were kind of annoyed with this because it’s kind of loud,” Le recalled, adding that employees would close their doors while Newell practised.
Le estimated that the phase continued for approximately five months and said Newell was practising virtually every day during that period. The recollection has since been independently picked up by GamesRadar following Le’s new interview, while Newell’s interest in throat singing has also appeared in earlier accounts of the Valve co-founder’s many hobbies.
Valve also had a room filled with medieval weapons
Throat singing was only one of the interests that apparently followed Newell into the workplace. Le recalled Newell developing a fascination with knives that gradually expanded into larger weapons. The Valve boss began acquiring medieval-style swords and axes, with some of the pieces being delivered directly to the company’s offices.
The collection eventually became substantial enough that, according to Le, Valve effectively had an entire room filled with the weapons. Newell subsequently became interested in bladesmithing itself rather than simply collecting finished pieces. Those stories fit an established pattern around Newell. Over the years, the Valve co-founder has pursued interests ranging from knives and race cars to scuba diving, marine research and brain-computer interfaces, often approaching subjects with the same intense curiosity Le remembers from his years at the company.
Minh Le remembers a very different kind of boss
Le’s recollections of Newell extend beyond his hobbies and offer an unusually personal picture of Valve during Counter-Strike’s formative years.
During one of Le’s early company lunches, Newell unexpectedly asked the young developer what he thought made a game great. Le was still in his early twenties, had only recently entered professional game development and suddenly found himself being asked a surprisingly fundamental question by the person running Valve. Looking back, Le interpreted the exchange as part of Newell’s personality rather than an attempt to put him under pressure. He remembers the Valve co-founder as intensely curious and unusually willing to skip conventional small talk in favour of discussing ideas directly.
That reputation remains relevant to Valve today. The company continues to take unconventional approaches to some of the industry’s largest problems, including Counter-Strike’s long-running battle against cheating. TalkEsport recently reported that a CS2 dataminer believes Valve is working on an unprecedented change to VAC, although Valve itself has not publicly detailed the underlying technology.
Early Valve felt like getting paid to attend university
For all the eccentricities Le remembers, his broader description of working at early Valve is overwhelmingly positive. Counter-Strike began in 1999 as a Half-Life mod developed primarily by Le and Jess Cliffe. What started as a community project rapidly became a phenomenon, eventually leading Valve to acquire Counter-Strike and bring its creators into the company.
For Le, the transition meant suddenly working alongside experienced professional developers after years of creating mods. He has compared the environment to attending university, except that he was being paid while learning from people building some of the most important PC games and technology of the era. It was also a formative period for Valve itself. Half-Life had established the studio internationally, Counter-Strike was rapidly becoming one of PC gaming’s defining multiplayer titles, and Valve would subsequently launch Steam before releasing Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source.
More than two decades later, Valve remains unusually secretive about much of its internal development. Even apparently significant projects can first emerge through datamining rather than announcements; TalkEsport reported earlier this year on references to a mysterious “SteamGPT” system discovered inside Steam code, potentially connected to Steam Support and CS2’s anti-cheat infrastructure.
Why Counter-Strike’s creator eventually left Valve
Le eventually left Valve in 2006, although his departure had nothing to do with Newell’s unconventional office habits.
Counter-Strike’s enormous success had created a different problem for its co-creator. Le wanted greater freedom to experiment with the game, while changing a formula already being played by millions of people naturally carried considerably greater consequences than it had during Counter-Strike’s days as a mod.
Le has described his eventual departure as amicable and went on to pursue other projects, including Tactical Intervention. His original creation, meanwhile, continued through Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and eventually Counter-Strike 2.
That makes his memories of early Valve particularly fascinating today. They come from someone who witnessed both Counter-Strike’s transformation from a free Half-Life mod into a Valve franchise and the growth of Valve itself from a comparatively young studio into the company behind the world’s dominant PC game storefront.
And apparently, for about five months of that history, working there also meant knowing that if a strange low-pitched sound started travelling down the hallway, Gabe Newell was probably on his way.
