According to Forbes, Valve‘s co-founder is easily one of the one hundred wealthiest Americans.

Forbes has published its latest chart naming the top 400 richest people in the United States. Gabe Newell didn’t just barely reach the list – he instantly got into the top 100, despite the barrier to reach the list being increased by 18% since 2016! (In 2016, the requirement to reach the top 400 was 1.7 billion dollars, in 2017, it’s now 2 billion.)

By October 19, Gaben is worth no less than 5.5 billion dollars. Most of it was earned in the past roughly two decades (as Valve was founded in 1998, and he’s still leading the company), and we don’t know how much of Valve is his property, but Forbes’ guess is roughly over half of it.

According to the site, the initial success was due to Half-Life and Portal (and we’d like to add Team Fortress as well), but recently, Steam has taken over that mantle. (No wonder: there are about 6000 (!) games to be launched this year on the store…)

A Redditor says that Newell is in the 97th place. Three from 100th. Half-Life 3 confirmed…?

Source: PC Gamer