Valve CEO Gabe Newell at the 2014 International CES.
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CEO Gabe Newell explains why Valve created Steam Machines

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

LAS VEGAS — Gabe Newell has been the de facto face of PC gaming for years. But now the Valve CEO is the face of one of the greatest threats Microsoft is facing to its Windows PC business.

Valve chief Gabe Newell built up a full head of steam over how Microsoft was running the Windows gaming ecosystem. So his company, the maker of the Steam digital game distribution service (with 65 million in its community), decided to make its own Linux-based Steam Machines.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.