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Gabe Newell's $5.5bn net worth puts him in US' top 100 wealthiest

Valve boss reaches No.97 on latest Forbes rich list, believed to own just over half his company

There's a video games billionaire among the 100 richest people in America now, with Gabe Newell placing highly in the Forbes 400.

The founder and CEO of Valve was valued at $5.5bn, up from the 4.1bn Forbes estimated in its March 2017 Billionaires list - not bad for a Harvard University drop-out. His net worth has increased fivefold from the $1.1bn it was reported as in March 2013.

Newell placed in joint 97th in the list, alongside eight other billionaires with the same network. He previously placed at No.43 in the site's Richest In Tech list earlier this year.

Naturally, his success can be attributed to the ongoing dominance of Valve and its Steam marketplace that Forbes reports "sells game licenses to 125m users".

Valve is not a publicly listed company and therefore doesn't share its financials, but Forbes estimates just over half the company is owned by Newell.

Newell's self-made score - a 1 to 10 ranking that indicates whether their fortune was entirely inherited (1) or built from the ground up (10) - is an impressive 8.

Forbes notes that the barrier to entry for its list of the 400 richest people in America is rising. A net worth of $2bn was required to rank this year, up from $1.7bn.

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James Batchelor avatar
James Batchelor: James is Editor-in-Chief at GamesIndustry.biz, and has been a B2B journalist since 2006. He is author of The Best Non-Violent Video Games
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