I'm not sure there's any single figure in the games industry that people are more intrigued by than Gabe Newell. He has a fascinating air of mystery, which is weird, given you can sort of just email him and get a reply. But nevertheless, there's a bit of a cult of personality around the man, to the extent that he sometimes becomes a stand-in for Valve itself.
Sometimes it's a joke—the various Gabe memes around Steam sales, 'Praise Gaben,' that kind of thing—and sometimes it's more serious, like people's real fear that Steam might rapidly enshittify once Newell's no longer the boss.
