Gabe Newell may be meeting with New Zealand leadership to discuss relocating Valve
Newell has been in New Zealand nearly since the start of the pandemic and work-from-home conditions in the US affecting production have been a major concern.
Gabe Newell kind of lucked out when the COVID-19 pandemic started. When the feces hit the fan worldwide, he happened to be on holiday in New Zealand and ended up sticking around there as the world began taking full notice of the disease. New Zealand has not only allowed Newell to stay in the time since, but also done well at combatting the virus and nearly snuffing it out entirely in the country. Now it seems Newell may be looking to bring more of the Valve team over to the country as he aims to talk to the Prime Minister of New Zealand about developers relocating there.
The discussion in question was revealed in a video on the Valve News Network YouTube channel, where it was noted that Gabe Newell, Geoff Keighley, and other major industry voices took part in a roundtable discussion. Though little of that discussion could be shared due to NDAs, Newell himself supposedly gave clearance to report that he would be talking to the Prime Minister of New Zealand about developers relocating to the country in order to avoid the limitation of work-from-home conditions.
Newell’s conversation with the New Zealand Prime Minister is part of an ongoing campaign supporting the country since he has lived there for six months and is now a legally taxed citizen, a condition for which he has worked to give back through charities and even a concert event in celebration of the country becoming nearly COVID-free.
“Because I've been going on a pro-New Zealand campaign lately, I'm probably going to be meeting with the Prime Minister," Newell said, "and one of the positions I'm going to be arguing for is that, given there is something super valuable that has been created here in New Zealand due to the hard work of the population of New Zealand, there is likely a large want to temporarily relocate production teams into the country.”
Though Newell doesn’t mention his own company by name, it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t mean to move parts of Valve to New Zealand. He would go on to mention elsewhere in quotes that production at his company has been hampered by around 50 to 75 percent due to work-from-home conditions in the US. This is even despite having successfully launched Half-Life: Alyx earlier this year. It’s also uncertain just how much of Valve he might be aiming to move. Whether it’s the whole company or just opening up a new office in New Zealand and bringing some key people over is uncertain.
Regardless, if the above information is to be believed, Gabe Newell seems certain that the future of his particular company and the growth of the gaming industry may lay in New Zealand. Expect more on this story as new information becomes available.
-
Shacknews
replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Gabe Newell may be meeting with New Zealand leadership to discuss relocating Valve
-
-
Don't see why it would. The time is chosen based on when the fewest users are online:
https://store.steampowered.com/stats/ -
-
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
Mmm, valve are not really famed for giving a crap about deadlines tbh.
-
True. But why bother complaining about WFH efficiency and personally lobbying a head of state to import short term teams for anything else? Gabe’s not particularly known for being a hands-on production manager either, so it’s not like he needs them in NZ to work face to face.
If his claim their efficiency was down 50-75% while WFH is even true, that’s an industry embarrassment. Lots of studios big and small out there, including plenty with fewer resources, who didn’t take that kind of hit switching to WFH. No way that’s not a misdirection for why he is pumping a bizarre plan like this.
Perhaps since he’s now paying taxes in NZ, he’s trying to establish his work income as being based in NZ just enough to be able to claim write offs. Point is, I hope Ardour laughs him out of her office.-
-
[deleted]
-
-
Valve's non-Steam performance the past 8-10ish years have largely made that case
-
-
Well to be fair I never actually read the article 😬
-
I can believe the decrease in productivity, since the company is run like a college, where people select the initiatives they want to work on. In practice, it means hanging out with the cool kids and doing a lot of experiments and prototyping. These opportunities would be more difficult to come around without face to face interactions and the social pecking order would wane through text
-
-
-
-
Fucker.
-
[deleted]
-
"Gabe Newell kind of lucked out when the COVID-19 pandemic started. When the feces hit the fan worldwide, he happened to be on holiday in New Zealand"
Ok putting out there that this is kind of sus. Gabe left for New Zealand right when neighboring Kirkland was getting hit very hard. My family is mostly doctors and we'd been talking about how bad COVID-19 was going to be since late January.
I can't imagine that Gabe Newell, billionaire, like most other billionaires who are pretty plugged in and have panic rooms in New Zealand, didn't have an inkling of how bad COVD-19 was going to be and bailed right when Washington was getting hit.
Idk, timing is weird!-
-
It was a racecar driver buddy of his and his partner. Maybe he was like "hey come hang out", idk, but it wasn't a good sized group of people.
Either way I don't believe for a second that Gabe just happened to take a trip to New Zealand when a plague that people who were paying attention knew was going to be extremely bad hit his neighboring town.
Gabe's a smart guy, he knows what's going on and he has resources and capital. Bailing to New Zealand right before lockdown hit the US despite his company right about to ship a new Half Life game? :|-
-
-
He's actually looking a little healthier in the latest footage I've seen of him. New Zealand will do that to you probably
-
-
-
I don't think it's an important distinction to make.
-
[deleted]
-
He left for NZ as the outbreak was blowing up in Kirkland. Almost 20 people died there just in the first week of March. People in the Seattle area were locking down and even put under curfew in certain areas, he left the country.
Pretty understandable choice if you're a multi-billionaire with insane capital and resources as well as the common understanding of the medical community that this was very severe. Entire countries like Vietnam had the foresight to lock down all the way back in January. This is all actionable knowledge-
[deleted]
-
I forgot to note that Valve did WFH for the last couple of weeks of Half Life Alyx's production while Gabe was out of the country, again because of coronavirus.
If you want to believe "oh hey let's just go on some random vacation to New Zealand, land of panic bunkers for the ultra-wealthy, while this megavirus sweeps through the surrounding areas and forced my entire company to lock down under mandatory curfew", be my guest.
If you have the means and the foresight then leaving for New Zealand is a reasonable choice!-
[deleted]
-
He got divorced about four years ago, so yeah...
He left under extraordinary local and global circumstances weeks after entire countries had completely locked down. Again, if you want to think it was just a coincidence, be my guest.
"Yeah, totally no other reason people would go to NZ. It's not like it's a massive tourist hub or anything."
It is literally where millionaires and billionaires from have been scooping up property over the last decade, specifically because it is isolated from calamities that scientists and think tanks have been projecting over the last decade.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doomsday-preppers/
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/peter-thiel-new-zealand-estate.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/business/bunkers-new-zealand-intl-hnk/index.html
You see a happy coincidence that he blundered into, I see deliberation and foresight-
[deleted]
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
I mean nothing would have predicted NZ would do so well on this thing.
Hell everyone expected the US/China situation to be the inverse of what happened.
If he truly had inside information I think there would be a much bigger cabal of tech bros / billionnaire elites doing the same thing at the same time.-
There's a difference between inside information and actionable information. Not every rich person is going to leave the country to ride out a pandemic but some certainly are.
Re: New Zealand, they've been having their land bought up by the mega-wealthy for years for "just in case of emergency apocalypse bunker" type situations, the "bunkers" being vacation homes. I just checked and over a dozen private jets had arrived in and around Auckland in February and March, specifically from mega-wealthy who went there to ride out the pandemic.
Gabe is an incredibly smart guy and it stands to reason that he'd done his research. If normal doctors knew it was going to be bad in January (again, this was a main topic among my family of doctors since late January) then it stands to reason that Gabe would have also known around the same time and then made the call right when it slammed into Kirkland.
-
-
-
that really sucks for his family.
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
WETA has developed infrastructure over time there, I could see that being a part of it
-
-
-
