Recently, the creator of the original Counter-Strike, Minh «Gooseman» Le, in an interview with the author of the Indie Game Joe YouTube channel, spoke about Gabe Newell's peculiar hobby. According to him, for several months he practiced Mongolian throat singing. His daily and very loud rehearsals were not very popular with employees, so at a certain point they started closing the doors:
Gabe watched a documentary about Mongolian singers and became very interested in the topic, started singing — and sang all over the office. And I remember many people were annoyed by it because he sang quite loudly. And so he sang every day, so people started closing the doors.
This story went viral in the gaming community, and a user under the nickname tbaszt decided to verify its authenticity — he sent a letter to the Valve boss:
I wrote an email to Gabe Newell asking if it was true that he had practiced Mongolian throat singing for months in the Valve office. And he replied to me.
Gabe Newell confirmed that he did practice throat singing, and he continues to practice it occasionally. In his response, he mentioned «kargyraa» and «sygyt» — these are Tuvan-Altai styles:
Yes, I discussed this with Paul Pena after trying to learn it myself. I am completely self-taught — and it shows. I practiced sygyt, kargyraa, and other styles and got to the point where I started to truly… annoy those around me. From time to time, I return to it again. It takes a couple of weeks to prepare the throat — kargyraa comes easily, but pure sygyt takes more time.