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"What the f*** do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?" Gabe Newell reportedly once shouted at one of Valve's Lionel Hutzes during Steam porn debate - Rock Paper Shotgun

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5 minute min
Andrei Miroslavescu
Tell us how you really feel, yachtman who also doesn't reckon Steam has a monopoly Image credit: Valve News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on June 2, 2026 94 comments Valve boss Gabe Newell reportedly once yelled "What the f*** do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?" at the company's general counsel Karl Quackenbush during a debate over allowing pornographic media on Steam. Quackenbush is claimed to have been arguing in favour of more stringent content moderation on the platform. An anonymous ex-Valve staffer relayed this alleged exchange as part of a report from Bloomberg, which uses an ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed against Steam by Wolfire Games in 2021 to kick off a more general dive into Valve's corporate culture and modus operandi. There's no indication as to when Newell may have yelled the F word at Quackenbush, but Valve's stated stance on game moderation over the years - outlined in this 2018 post which notably acknowledges that online debates around the likes of sexual content on Steam "play out inside Valve as well" - has typically been to allow everything that isn't judged to be illegal or straight-up trolling. It's an approach that has its upsides (yay, creative expression) and downsides (boo, sometimes drowning in a tidal wave of off-putting smut with debatable artistic merit or quality). However, the waters were thoroughly muddied last year when pressure from payment processors shocked into action by protest groups began to influence what sorts of NSFW games made it onto the likes of Steam and Itch.io, or the form they took when they did so. Did Newell also yell swear-laden threats word at Mastercard and Visa from the deck of his 363-foot superyacht? We'll likely never know. What we do now know is some of what Newell said when he was called to testify in Wolfire Games' antitrust suit back in 2023. Unsurprisingly, the owner of Steam reckons his platform - the one that's being sued over allegedly unfair practices facilitated by an alleged monopoly over the PC gaming space - doesn't have a monopoly. "Customers have enormous choice," Newell testified, adding that people can choose "where they purchase their products, whether they buy the game on an Xbox, whether they buy it on Steam, whether they buy it on Epic Games Store or whether they buy it directly from software developers." Newell also denied Valve have any unwritten rules against developers offering their games at lower prices on storefronts other than Steam, despite being shown internal comms which appeared to show Valve employees enforcing such a policy. "Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms," the exec said. He went on to claim he was confused by the question when asked how Valve would react if a developer charged less money for a game on a competing storefront, adding: "Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we're providing." If the antitrust suit ends up being successful - there's no indication whether it will at this point - Valve would likely have to dish out a tonne of compensation. One would imagine that Gabe and co, who've denied the suit's accusations, would all yell some F words if that were to happen.
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