Valve's Newell Honored With 2010 Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award

SAN FRANCISCO, January 15 - The 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards, the highest honors in video game
development, is beginning the announcement of its Special Awards for the
tenth annual ceremony, taking place at GDC 2010 this March, and has named
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell as the winner of this year's Pioneer Award.

The Pioneer Award — originated by the Game Developers Choice Awards
organizers at the 2008 Awards, and the first award to honor breakthrough
figures in the game industry — celebrates those individuals responsible for
developing a vital technology or game design at a crucial juncture in video
game history, paving the way for the many who followed them.

This year, the Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes notables
such as Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster
(Metaplace), John Vechey (PopCap), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), Clint Hocking
(Ubisoft), and others has voted to give the Pioneer Award to Valve's Newell.
He is being awarded for his work in co-creating the PC key digital download
service Steam, and helping to make possible some of the most important video
games of the past two decades — from the Half-Life series through Portal to
Team Fortress and beyond.

Newell, who co-founded Valve in 1996 after his departure from giant tech
firm Microsoft, was instrumental in creating the company's first product, the
critically acclaimed first-person shooter Half-Life, which brought
sophisticated narrative and cut-scenes to the FPS for the first time, and has
sold over 8 million copies. The company's keen, unprecedented encouragement
of modding and community based around the Half-Life engine also led to the
creation of the Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 franchises.

Recent years have only buoyed Valve's reputation, including 2004's debut
of the much-acclaimed Half-Life 2 episodes, the signing of the DigiPen team
behind Narbacular Drop to create 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards Game of
the Year Portal, and the Seattle-area firm's work to support and co-originate
the co-operative centric Left 4 Dead franchise.

Steam, Valve's PC digital distribution platform, is another particular
reason Newell is receiving this honor. Revealed at GDC in 2002 and made
available to the public in 2003, the client has evolved from a method of
seamlessly delivering game patches to a full community-based digital download
ecosystem which regularly has more than 2 million concurrent users. Thus, it
has become a key way for many smaller and larger PC game developers to gain
fans and make money without requiring a physical retail publisher.

Valve's Newell will be on stage to collect his Special Award at GDC 2010
in San Francisco this March. Over 3,000 of the industry's top developers will
be present at the Choice Awards ceremony to honor him and the other,
to-be-revealed Special Award winners — alongside the top games of 2009 in
multiple categories.

The Game Developers Choice Awards — open to any game, and with Main
Competition winners being selected by the International Choice Awards
Network, a new invitation-only group comprised of 500 leading game creators
from all parts of the video game industry — prides itself on being the most
open, transparent, and respected video game awards anywhere. Further Special
Award winners and Main Competition finalists will be announced in the near
future.

Presented by Think Services' Game Developers Conference (GDC), this
year's awards ceremony, held in conjunction with the Independent Games
Festival Awards, will be hosted on Thursday, March 11th, during GDC 2010 at
San Francisco's Moscone Center. For complete details, please visit
www.gamechoiceawards.com.

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    CONTACT:     Sibel Sunar / Brian Rubin
                 fortyseven communications
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                 Think Services Game Group
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Sibel Sunar, +1-323-658-1200, sibel at fortyseven.com, or Brian Rubin, +1-212-391-4707, brian at fortyseven.com, both of fortyseven communications, for Think Services Game Group; or Ben Veechai, +1-415-947-6280, bveechai at think-services.com, or Mellisa Andrade, +1-415-947-6232, mandrade at think-services.com, both of Think Services Game Group