Valve’s Gabe Newell is flying to Australia to visit modder

Brian Ambrozy 1 Oct, 2009 at 2:03pm ET Article published in Gaming

Here’s the summary:

Left 4 Dead boycott group gains popularity.
Valve offers to fly the founders up to Washington to play Left 4 Dead 2.
A prolific Australian Left 4 Dead modder name Joe W-A gets sad and emails Gabe, asks “Why haven’t I been flown to Valve? You guys need to preview my campaign.”
Gabe responds “I’m boycotting your campaign.”
Joe W-A offers to fly Gabe to Brisbane. Gabe probably thinks this is a joke.
Joe W-A raises $3000 to fly Gabe to Australia.

Today, Valve announced that Gabe Newell is indeed going to take up Joe W-A on his offer, and visit him down under, on October 7th. Valve employee Erik Johnson will be travelling with Gabe, and will be blogging about it on the L4D.com blog.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the $3000 that was raised; Valve will be paying their own way, and Joe W-A donated the entirety of the money collected to the Child’s Play charity.

There you have it. A happy story for a sunny Thursday.

Comments

1 Oct 2009 ~ 2:27pm UPSLynx Sunny Thursday? Not in my neck of the woods!

Erik Johnson is awesome. He's part of the collective Valve body that I hope to meet some day. Him, Gabe, Marc L, /Doug Lombardi, Robin Walker... oh that company, how good they are.

I love how they actively practice shens in business matters. The insides jokes snuck into games like L4D, the email swap with Quady, going to Australia.

Valve are the balls.
1 Oct 2009 ~ 2:48pm QCH Valve for Congress...
1 Oct 2009 ~ 5:23pm Gate28 I love you, Valve. You're so dirty and unprofessional.
2 Oct 2009 ~ 8:15pm chrisWhite Heroes.