Gabe Newell Promises Valve has More Games In Development, Reacts To Cyberpunk 2077 Launch

Valve CEO and gamers’ darling Gabe Newell invited reporters from New Zealand’s TVNZ to his home this week for a wide-ranging interview about all things gaming, from the possibility of holding DOTA 2 and CS:GO eSports tournaments in the country to his sympathies for Cyperbunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red.

The gaming icon discussed the possibility of holding upcoming eSports tournaments organized by Valve in New Zealand, where Newell has recently also applied for permanent residency. The pandemic has mostly been under control in the Oceanic nation, and Newell noted that it was the only country he could think of where it might just be feasible to hold the upcoming DOTA2 and CS:GO tournaments, which were postponed last year due to the pandemic.

I literally could not, if I had to guess when it would be safe to do an in-person tournament anywhere [else] in the world, it would be very hard for me to say that — whereas I think, with a lot of confidence, we’d be able to plan for that in New Zealand. 

Perhaps far more interesting for gamers, though, was Newell’s promise that Half-Life: Alyx, Valve’s first game in 13 years, was not a one-off event and that the company’s engineers “definitely have games in development that we’re going to be announcing.”

“It’s fun to ship games,” he said, referring to Valve’s successful launch of Half-Life: Alyx. “Alyx was great — to be back doing single-player games, that created a lot of momentum inside of the company to do more of that.”

Newell also touched on the latest controversy gripping the gaming world: the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077. The billionaire game maker said he sympathized with the game’s developers: “I have a lot of sympathy with a situation that every game developer finds themselves in.”

He also voiced his admiration for the game’s ambitious design, noting that “There are aspects of the game that are just brilliant, and it shows a tremendous amount of work — it’s unfair to throw stones at any other developer, because just getting something as complex and ambitious as that out the door is pretty amazing.”

Newell noted that leaving the game’s console troubles aside, there are “a lot of very happy gamers in the PC space, which are the ones that are most visible to us.”