Latest articles by Rich Stanton
Valve CEO Gabe Newell says success isn't about following your passion: 'Sounds like a great idea, but lots of people follow their passions right into a crater, you know?'
News He's very much a people person.
The first 'real videogame' Gabe Newell played was Star Trek, where you made your choices via punch cards before running over to the printer: 'It usually takes about 15 minutes to do a move'
News "This was just a complete distraction or a waste of time versus what I was supposed to be doing."
The young Gabe Newell thought he'd be a doctor until he ended up visiting his brother at Microsoft, where 'Steve Ballmer got mad and said 'If you're going to be hanging out here, why don't you do something useful?''
News We might not have Steam if Ballmer hadn't blown his top.
The UK government gets into bed with OpenAI as heroic professor decries 'policymakers and idiots around the world getting sucked into this hype-fest… terrible, terrible companies, just crazy'
News "It's just utter, utter drivel and neoliberal nonsense."
Capcom smashes the emergency glass with a MH: Wilds update that puts the hot blacksmith in a bikini
News Is that a gunlance in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?
Ubisoft CEO says Star Wars Outlaws tanked because people are bored of Star Wars: 'The brand it belonged to was in a bit of choppy waters'
News Correct, he is.
Gabe Newell says AI is a 'significant technology transition' on a par with the emergence of computers or the internet, and will be 'a cheat code for people who want to take advantage of it'
News "If I had to point to a technology transition to get in front of, it's to figure out how to use AI to do anything better."
The brainbox behind Valve's Steam Labs says the number of Steam releases featuring GenAI in 2025 is 1 in 5, with 7% of all games on there now incorporating it: 'We’ve octupled last year’s figure'
News But there's still "a vocal anti-AI sentiment among artists and gamers who simply won’t buy games with this stuff in."
Gabe Newell thinks AI tools will result in a 'funny situation' where people who don't know how to program become 'more effective developers of value' than those who've been at it for a decade
News "Even if you're just a pure tool user you're going to find that the gains to utilising those tools are very, very high."
Multi-billionaire Gabe Newell says the whole startup culture of pitching VCs makes no business sense: 'A great way of destroying money and wasting peoples' time'
News "The key is to ignore all the distractions."
Gabe Newell's daily routine is 'get up, work, go scuba diving,' says he's been 'retired for a long time' but works 7 days a week: 'The things I get to do every day are super-awesome'
News "I'm working from my bedroom as you can tell."
'Father of Elder Scrolls' steps back from game development because of cancer: 'We are preparing to say goodbye to a true legend of the industry'
News Julian LeFay was Bethesda's chief engineer and the driving force behind the earliest Elder Scrolls titles.
Escape from Tarkov begins to quietly U-turn after last week's hardcore wipe left players penniless and bored to tears with the grind
News All locations are now available again.
US Defense Department awards $200 million contract to Elon Musk's Grok aka 'MechaHitler' and is looking forward to deploying it 'in our warfighting domain'
News Actual decision-making will remain in the hands of humans, probably.
One problem with making an Assassin's Creed game in Ancient Greece, says Ubisoft, is that there just weren't enough tall buildings for a 'climbing frame game'
"That's kind of where some of the ideation came from when it came to building some of the big statues that we put around Greece."
Elon Musk claims Grok was 'manipulated' into praising Hitler, then makes wild claims about it discovering 'new technologies' and 'new physics' within the next year: 'Just let that sink in'
News I did Nazi that coming!
'Knowing Steam players are hoarders explains why you give Valve that 30%,' analyst tells devs: 'You get access to a bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly'
News "More than likely the person buying your game is not going to play it."
Capcom's financials show that embracing Steam has paid off handsomely: It now accounts for a third of all the publisher's revenue
News What're ya buying?
OpenAI execs whine about the New York Times lawsuit and user privacy during live NYT event, get roasted by NYT journalist: 'It must be really hard when someone does something with your data you don't want them to'
News You love to see it.
Hideo Kojima goes in hard on AI and is worried we'll all 'be unknowingly led into a predetermined lifestyle'
News Hard to disagree.
Valve announces Team Fortress 2 is getting 'a much-needed update' focused on Mann vs. Machine: 'A chilling cautionary tale where an artificial consciousness tried to take all our jobs'
News The king of ancient Greece also turns up at one point.
Steam adds more accessibility features and Valve says it's just the start, wants players with disabilities to provide more feedback and suggestions
News Part of a wider push that began earlier this year.
Hideo Kojima's got a new game out soon, which you can tell because he keeps banging on about death and legacy: 'I am not going to pass the baton to anyone—I will rather crush the baton'
News "If I pass the baton to my staff and tell them to make things the same way I do, the company will not succeed and will go out of business."
