Gamers love Gabe Newell not only for creating the Steam service, without which it is now hard to imagine PC gaming. Throughout his career, the Valve boss made decisions that inspire respect.
Recently, a story from the early 2000s went viral in the gaming community: back then, Gabe supported a developer in a difficult situation:
In 2004, Valve writer Erik Wolpaw was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and was preparing to leave the company. However, Gabe Newell told him that his new "job responsibility" was to "get better," and granted him an extended leave while keeping his full salary. Wolpaw later wrote for Half-Life 2: Episode One and Two, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and served as the lead writer of Portal 2.
This story comes from the book The Final Hours of Portal 2, written by journalist and The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley. It includes additional details.
By Christmas, Wolpaw felt so bad that "he thought he might die." He barely made it to the emergency room and spent the holidays in the hospital recovering from ulcerative colitis. Keighley wrote at the time that Wolpaw had lost a lot of blood "and urgently needed a transfusion to stabilize his condition".
Then, in a conversation with a colleague, Wolpaw said that he would have to speak with Newell and resign. However, as Keighley writes, Newell "didn't even want to hear about [resignation]." Instead, he told Wolpaw: "Your job is to get better. That is your job responsibility at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you feel better".
A user with the nickname Then_Meringue7671 summed it up:
Take care of your employees, and they will take care of you.
