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Valve's Gabe Newell

Valve's Gabe Newell hasn't said too much about the new digital retailer on the market, otherwise known as the Epic Games Store. In an upcoming interview with Edge magazine's Alex Spencer (issue 334), Newell opened up about a number of hot button subjects such as Half-Life: Alyx, the future of VR, and how he views "competition" from the Epic Games Store.

Spencer asked Newell whether or not the competition from the Epic Games Store has affected Valve's own approach to Steam and its own relationship with developers.

"Competition in game stores is awesome for everybody. It keeps us honest, it keeps everybody else honest," Newell says, "But it's ugly in the short term. You're like, 'Argh, they're yelling, they're making us look bad' - but in the long term, everybody benefits from the discipline and the thoughtfulness it means you have to have about your business by having people come in and challenge you."
This is undeniably true. Competition can be a great thing for everybody. It spurs on new innovations from creators and consumers often benefit by having more choices and lower prices. He continues on to say the following:

"We get a lot more freaked out not by competition, but by people trying to preclude competition. If you ask us which is scarier, it's people falling in love with Apple's model of controlling everything and having faceless bureaucrats who get to keep your product from entering the market if they don't want it to, or designing a store in a way that minimises software's value-add to experience and stuff like that."
The emphasis (ours) can easily be seen as one of the most professional jabs that many of us have probably ever seen. That's a statement that can clearly be read into, and you just know exactly what he's talking about with it. Perhaps the best part of it is that he didn't have to lie in order to make this point, like others in the industry have so often done.

In case you're wondering where the image of Gabe Newell came from, look no further than the video seen below. Newell recently sat down with IGN for a lengthy talk about Valve, Half-Life: Alyx, and what's still to come from the company.