IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Valve's Gabe Newell Wins Reader's Choice Person of the Year

Posted December 19, 2011 by James Brightman

Valve boss Gabe Newell is IndustryGamers' 2011 Reader's Choice for Person of the Year, as determined by a poll of nearly 12,000 readers, which we opened on Friday and just closed today.

Newell came on strong, garnering nearly 50% of all the votes. It was a tough battle between Newell and Bethesda's Todd Howard for a while, until Newell surged ahead and maintained the lead. Howard placed second with a very respectable 3,873 votes (almost a third of respondents).

With the exception of a database hack, Valve's Steam had a very solid year. And Valve itself produced a follow-up to the hit Portal. The game went on to sell more than 3 million copies. Newell has also been outspoken on the topic of piracy and DRM, and how he believes good service effectively eliminates the problem.

Once again, congratulations to Gabe Newell! Please stay tuned for IndustryGamers' own Persons of the Year choices, which we'll be unveiling all next week, between December 27-30.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.