Posted on Friday, March 09 2012 @ 3:50 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Forbes reports privately-held game developer Valve
is estimated to be worth more than $3 billion. Valve co-founder Gabe Newell owns more than 50 percent of the company, giving him an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion. The magazine puts him 854th on the list of 1,226 global dollar billionaires.
Privately-held Valve Corporation is tight-lipped about revenues, and Newell doesn’t comment on his personal finances. So in order to estimate his net worth, Forbes consulted with video game industry insiders, equity analysts, investment bankers, and technology analysts to figure out what the company is worth. Even the most conservative estimates put Valve’s enterprise value at more than $3 billion, and since Newell owns more than 50% of the company, that means he’s worth at least $1.5 billion.
Valve is unlike any company in the video game business. More than half of their revenues come from selling downloadable games over Steam, which has dominated the digital sales channel since 2003, when it started as a platform for the company’s own games. In the years since, lack of competition allowed it to seize as much as 70% of the market: Today, Steam features in excess of 1,800 games from more than 50 different publishers.
