Valve's Gabe Newell joins the prestigious company of Ralph Baer, Alex Rigopulos, and Eran Egozy as the 2010 winner of the Game Developers Choice Awards Pioneer Award, honoring breakthrough figures in the game industry.

Ralph Baer, winner of the 2008 Pioneer award, is widely considered to be the father of video games. Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy founded Harmonix, scoring them the 2009 Pioneer. What did Gabe Newell do to earn the accolade in 2010? Gabe scores the award for not only having a hand in creating some of the most influential video games of all time (Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress), but also for his work in co-creating Steam, the service that revolutionized digital distribution.

Newell will be on stage at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC in March to accept this honor, and Kotaku will be there, passing a tissue box back and forth as we weep with joy. We always get emotional at these things.

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My opinion: A very well deserved award for an astounding dev....wonder why he didnt get it earlier though?

O.o the internet trolls won't like this

Even trolls have their limits osman.....not even they can deny how incredible gabe is and as such will be happy when he receives his award at the GDC.

no, they will come in out in force, coolbeans already started the bs. Just because he developers dont like the PS3 does not mean he doesnt have some very talented game developers around him people. Valve is a PC developer, deal with it. The 360 is closer to a PC then the PS3.

You sir earn my respect.

God bless him for the creation of valve and the half-life universe, but if I wanted a pompous windbag who doesn't keep his mouth shut to win I would pick peter molyneux or ken kutaragi.

Gabe newell is awesome though. I have the ps3 orange box and it isn't that bad. I do think that tim schaefer deserves an honorable mention at least despite the fact that brutal legend was a touch dissapointing.

Can I pretty please with a marshmallow banana ice cream Sunday waffle surprise on a pizza combo chicken a la chocolate steak muffin cake make a fat joke?

Proceed. Be sure to include laxatives.

Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead were all great games and I've still never played the Half Life games (I know I know -_-)

Well deserved.