Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell was live on Reddit today participating in an official AMA (Ask Me Anything) that was hosted to focus on a wide variety of topics. The AMA was announced earlier this week and confirmed yesterday, but it looks like it got started a bit earlier than originally planned.
“There are a bunch of other Valve people here so ask them, too,” Newell begins. “I’m in a conference room with VR, Dota, Steam, and other people happy to answer your questions,” he writes in a follow-up comment. When the AMA was announced, VR was certainly expected to be a huge topic of conversation, as are continued rumors and speculation about Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and Half-Life 3.
Newell has been passionate about VR as a whole for years and was one of the featured voices in Oculus’ original Kickstarter pitch video. As the head of Valve, he is now one of the core forces behind the HTC Vive and the Steam’s position as one of the leading destinations for VR content on the internet.
Last year Newell stated that he had been spending a lot of his time with the VR team at the company, alluding to potential hardware and software developments. As it stands, The Lab is the company’s only real VR release, with Destinations and a DOTA 2 viewing mode also included.
The first VR-specific answer we got from Newell in the thread is in regards to Valve’s plans to work on a large VR-specific title at some point. It sounds like something they’re interested in pursuing. Reddit user GoodCrossing asked, “Is Valve interested in making a full game experience for the Vive? The Lab was great but we’d all love to get a full Valve game.” Somewhat cryptically Newell responded, “Yes. We think VR is pretty important as a tool for interesting games.”
We’ll continue to update this story as news comes out of the AMA. Tune in to follow the thread on your own as well!
Updates: When asked by Reddit user Air_chandler how the team looked at the future outlook and trajectory of Valve as a company, Newell responded, “The big thing right now is broadening the range of options we have in creating experiences. We think investing in hardware will give us those options. The knuckles controller is being designed at the same time as we’re designing our own VR games.”
Newell also had some fun in the comments, providing lots of half-answers and pseudo-confirmations or denials. In one case, Reddit user Baldemoto asked about the status of Half-Life 3, to which Newell simply stated that “The number 3 must not be said.” Upon further probing regarding an anonymous source that reportedly confirmed the cancellation of the game, Newell humorously retorted that, “I personally believe all unidentified anonymous sources on the Internet.”
