Gabe Newell was diving once when a shark tried to bite him 'a couple of times' and, while all around panicked, he wasn't too bothered: 'I just think that's how I'm wired'

pcgamer.com:

In a recent documentary on the making of Half-Life 2, Gabe Newell has basically confirmed that he is the IRL Saxton Hale, and the kind of man that just isn't all that fussed when faced with a shark attack. Aren't we all?

One of the themes of the documentary is that, as Half-Life 2 was being developed, Valve was embroiled in what would become a huge and potentially existential legal fight with publisher Vivendi. Valve COO Scott Lynch explains that they'd filed a «narrow» suit over a dispute in their existing licensing terms, and won a few minor victories, before Vivendi decided to «go World War 3» in response.

Yes, we'll get to the shark soon, but the necessary context for this tale is that Vivendi was allegedly out for blood, soon targeting Lynch and Newell (and their wives!) personally in addition to suing Valve.

«It's not a legal strategy,» says Newell. «It's basically trying to intimidate you, they're saying 'not only are we going to take all this money from the company but we're going to bankrupt you as well.'

»Publishers in the industry at that time were used to being able to bully developers, right? And so this was as much about an assertion of power as much as it was optimizing for a financial outcome."

Lynch says there came a point where «if we want to keep going» Newell had to put his house on the market, and Newell himself says «I was pretty close to going personally bankrupt: ⁠We went all in, there was no money left.»

Now, it strikes me that trying to bully someone like Gabe Newell might be a bad idea. The man himself, telling the story from what looks like his $500 million superyacht, has another way of putting it.

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Asked whether this was an anxious time for him, Newell demurs. «I don't know, uh, there are certain things that I just… I'm kind of a weird person in a number of dimensions. I don't really think 'oh this is super scary', like I don't have an