With all the issues that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been having like an indistinct roadmap for the future (which the developer recently sorted out), bugs, performance issues, cheaters and dealing with Fortnite: Battle Royale, you’d think the game is on the down-trend. Nevertheless, despite not even being out for a year, it’s the third best selling game of all time on Steam.

This is according to Valve boss Gabe Newell himself in a recent presentation (via IGN). Newell noted that PUBG came out of “pretty much nowhere” and succeeded despite being relatively new.

“You can have a relatively new game like PUBG, and […] they can capitalize on all the other multiplayer games, and all of the technology, [and] the fact that China is now a huge market for anybody who does PC game development. So PUBG can come out of pretty much nowhere and become the third largest selling game on Steam’s history. Their gross revenue over all-time is already number three in fairly short order.”

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is still notching up impressive concurrent player numbers. It recently peaked at 2,464,229 players in the last 24 hours and has over 1 million players currently online. Fortnite: Battle Royale, however, has been making its own strides with over 3 million peak concurrent players and more than 40 million downloads. With how much market share both games occupy, it remains to be seen if titles like Paladins Battlegrounds can possibly succeed. Time will tell though so stay tuned.

During a recent briefing for Artifact, Valve’s upcoming not-free to play card game, president Gabe Newell announced that the company was going to be releasing several more games in the coming months.

As per PC Gamer, Newell said that Artifact was the first of several of new releases. “Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us. So that’s sort of good news. Hooray! Valve’s going to start shipping games again.”

Newell expressed interest in Nintendo’s approach of creating games and the hardware together, as seen with the Nintendo Switch. He then confessed that the company has “always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo.”

“When Miyamoto is sitting down and thinking about the next version of Zelda or Mario, he’s thinking what is the controller going to look like, what sort of graphics and other capabilities. He can introduce new capabilities like motion input because he controls both of those things.

“And he can make the hardware look as good as possible because he’s designing the software at the same time that’s really going to take advantage of it. So that is something we’ve been jealous of, and that’s something that you’ll see us taking advantage of subsequently.”

While we’re not sure if that means Valve will try creating its own console eventually, the company has seen rather mixed success in the field with its Steam Machines, Steam Controllers and even the HTC Vive. That being said, the company is focusing on releasing new games so that’s good news. Whether that means follow-ups to Portal and Left 4 Dead will be coming remains to be seen. It’s possible the developer will simply introduce new IPs as it goes along.

And no, Half-Life 3 is not one of those games. Let the meme die already.

Following a report from an alleged source close to Valve about Half-Life never existing, Gabe Newell recently hosted an AMA on Reddit to speak to his legions of fans. Naturally, questions about Half-Life 3 were asked but Newell hinted at some unannounced projects powered by Source 2.

“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 would like to have everyone working on games here at Valve to eventually be using the same engine. 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.”

Newell also talked about the future of Left 4 Dead, first noting that Valve’s focus goes to projects based on “technology that we think has traction, a group of people who want to work on that, and one of the game properties that feels like a natural playground for that set of technology and design challenges.

“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.”

That fuels speculation for Left 4 Dead possibly receiving a sequel but it is Gabe Newell. When it happens, it’ll be known. What are your thoughts on Newell’s opinions otherwise? Let us know in the comments.

Remember that in-depth interview with an anonymous Valve source that said Half-Life 3 doesn’t exist? It seems you’ll have the opportunity to confirm it with Valve CEO Gabe Newell himself in good time. The man will be hosting an AMA session on Reddit on January 17th, 3 PM PST and there are presumably no limits.

The AMA’s nature was verified by mods on r/The_Gaben and then further verified by the moderation team at r/Steam so it appears very much to be happening.

Aside from Half-Life 3, it should be interesting to hear Newell speak especially with the range of activities currently on-going at Valve. This includes the latest update to Dota 2, controversies with Counter-Strike, the future of Team Fortress 2, what’s happening with HTC Vive, whether those Steam Machines are ever going to take off and so on.

But really, we should probably just expect lots of Half-Life 3 talk and nothing more. What do you hope to ask Newell? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for some of the classier responses in due time.

That being said, what are a few things that many may not know about Newell? We highlighted five facts about Lord GabeN which may peak your interest.

Harvard Dropout and Microsoft Millionaire

Like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Gabe Newell spent a good amount of time studying at Harvard University. Of course, Newell would drop out after three years once he spoke to Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, in charge of sales at the time, and decided to join the company. Newell would go on to work for 13 years at the company before finally founding Valve Corporation with Mike Harrington, who worked on the Windows NT OS at the time. He later revealed in 2011 that on a per-employee basis, Valve was actually more profitable than Google and Apple.

Ported Doom to Windows

It’s incredible how much of an influence Newell would have at Microsoft. He served as producer on the first three versions of Windows, becoming a “Microsoft millionaire” due to his work . Also, at a time when id Software’s Doom was more popular than even Windows, Microsoft put Gabe Newell in charge of porting the first person shooter to the OS. Would it be fate then that Newell’s first ever game would be an FPS that revolutionized the industry like Doom? Probably. Newell even cited that he was inspired by Mike Abrash who left Microsoft to work at id Software on Quake. Really, the coincidences just keep piling up.

Work on Steam During Half-Life 2

Development these days isn’t like the old days where a studio would completely commit itself to a single entity and release a few patches after launch. Every studio, from the biggest developers under the biggest publishers to the smaller “indie” level developer, has multiple things going on at any given time. Valve was no different but it’s amazing that during the production of Half Life 2 – which itself came six years after the first game – Newell was busy working on Steam. Actual development on the platform began in 2002 and it was actually officially released in 2003. However, its first publisher partnership wasn’t until 2005. The Steam Community wasn’t established until 2007 and it’s been rolling ever since. On the whole, it’s interesting to see that Newell had a hand in not one but two revolutionary properties at the time.

Brony

Here’s something that may or may not taint your love for Lord GabeN. In an interview with Geek A Week, Newell was asked about what he secretly geeks out about. Action figures? Professional wrestling? No, the man noted he watched My Little Pony and even confirmed that he was a brony. Now, this was back in 2012, probably before the term meant less of “enjoys the show” and more of “why are all these people creepily obsessed over these cartoon horses?” And really, the show itself is something meant to be enjoyed by people of all ages. We don’t know the extent of Newell’s interest. That being said, we’re not quite sure we want to find out.

Knife Collector

Let’s get to the reasons why you should fear Gabe Newell with every fiber of your being. On top of being one of the top billionaires in the world and basically controlling most of your gaming library, Newell has a rather impressive knife collection. Reports claim that that he has over 600 knives, with pictures indicating instruments like a wakazashi and sai, and really, when confronted with that many knives, we’re not exactly going to dispute that number. Is it weird for anyone to collect knives? Perhaps no weirder than sword or gun collectors the world over. Is it weird to have over 600 of them? Probably. Should you fear/rejoice for your life if a knife wielding Gabe Newell is nearby? Most definitely.

Forbes has detailed its annual 500 richest people in the United States list and it boasts two new names from the video game industry. Gabe Newell, who co-founded Valve Software and has been the brains behind classic titles like Half Life and digital distribution platform Steam, is one with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. This is largely due to Valve’s success but Newell is also a majority shareholder in the company.

The second entrant is Markus “Notch” Persson better known as the man who created Minecraft and one of the youngest billionaires on the list. After founding Mojang, Perrson created Minecraft which caused a sensation like no other indie game before it. Persson sold Minecraft and Mojang to Microsoft last year and earned $1.75 billion from the deal due to owning a 70 percent stake in the company.

Who’s on top? Why, Bill Gates with an estimated market value of $79.2 billion of course. What are your thoughts on Newell and Persson making it in though? Let us know below.

Destructive Creations’ Hatred is now back on Steam Greenlight after Valve’s Doug Lombardi confirmed its removal yesterday.  As it turns out, the removal was a mistake. Valve head honcho Gabe Newell recently addressed the removal in a statement to Destructive Creations (seen on their official Facebook page).

“Hi, Jaroslaw. Yesterday I heard that we were taking Hatred down from Greenlight. Since I wasn’t up to speed, I asked around internally to find out why we had done that.

“It turns out that it wasn’t a good decision, and we’ll be putting Hatred back up. My apologies to you and your team. Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers. Good luck with your game.”

What are your thoughts on Hatred being back up on Steam Greenlight? Let us know below.

Gabe Newell’s AMA has come and gone. We’ve come to know about Valve’s plans for new IPs and budget Steam Machines. But something was missing and we all knew it. Yes, yet again, Valve Software failed to provide any information about Half Life 3.

It’s to be expected at this point. Valve is too focused on trying to get SteamOS and it’s Steam Machines off the ground to really pay attention to Half Life 3. Even if Newell was interested in providing answers on the same, it would probably be the same old song and dance – that they are working on it, that it has to be perfect and that it will be ready when it’s ready.

But to not even provide even that feels kind of odd. A conspiracy theorist could take Newell’s lack of information on the same to mean that Half Life 3 could actually be out there. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Linux users: In case you thought Valve had abandoned you – which is hilarious, considering their Linux-based SteamOS – then take reprieve because Counter Strike: Global Offensive will be heading to the OS.

This was confirmed by Valve Software boss Gabe Newell in his recent Reddit AMA – the same AMA where he pretty much removed all doubt of us ever seeing a new IP from the developer any time soon.

Concerning Global Offensive for Linux, Newell, “It’s being worked on but we don’t have an ETA.”

Which is pretty much par the course for a Valve title.

Counter Strike: Global Offensive of CS:GO for short is still very much alive with constant updates by the development team and availability on PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PS3. A Linux version feels over-due at this point, but it’s never too late for Valve, right? Let us know what you think of CS:GO on Linux in the comments below.

Gabe Newell recently posted his AMA on Reddit and took to answering questions about everything under the sun. One key aspect Newell spoke about were the micro-transactions inherent in Dota 2, and to a small extent Team Fortress 2, and how Valve wants to cater to every possible segment.

“We still think we have a long way to go to get to the point where all of the different people that are contributing value to competitive play get everything out of it that they should. Feels like we are making pretty good progress though.

“Giving the consumers of content a direct relationship with the creators of content is something we think about a lot. That is what drove our thinking about how the community could be more involved in the tournaments that mattered to them.”

Newell also reported that “some progress” is being made towards offering budget Steam Machines. “We see Steam Machines (along with SteamOS and the Steam Controller) as a service update to Steam, porting the experience to a new room in the house. As we’ve been working on it, we’ve focused first on the customers who already love Steam and its games.

“They’ve told us they’re tired of giving up all the stuff they love when they sit in the living room, so it seemed valuable to fix that.”

As for Valve creating some new intellectual properties, Newell responded, “An IP is really a tool for a development team more than anything else. The key is to have clarity around what is uniquely of value in what you are trying to do and not waste your effort on things that don’t directly contribute to that.”

So no Half Life 3 – or any new franchises – any time soon? Seems like it. Check out the full AMA for many more details.