and Harrington funded development of the first Valve game, the first-person shooter Half-Life (1998), which was a critical and commercial success. Harrington left in 2000, leaving Newell as the sole owner. Newell gave Valve no deadline and a "virtually unlimited" budget to develop Half-Life 2 (2004), promising to fund it himself if necessary. Meanwhile, he spent several months developing Steam, a digital distribution service for games. By 2011, Steam controlled between 50% and 70% of the market for downloaded PC games and generated most of Valve's revenue. In December 2010, Forbes named Newell "A Name You Should Know", primarily for his work on Steam having partnerships with multiple major developers. In 2007, Newell expressed his displeasure over developing software for game consoles, saying that developing processes for Sony's PlayStation 3 was a "waste of everybody's time" He appeared on stage at Sony's keynote at E3 2010; while acknowledging his criticism of console development, he discussed the open nature of the PlayStation 3 and announced Portal 2 for the console, remarking that with Steamworks support it would be the best version for any console. Newell also criticized the Xbox Live service, referring to it as a "train wreck", and was also critical of Windows 8, calling it a threat to the open nature of PC gaming. At the 2013 LinuxCon, Newell said that the Linux operating system and open source development were "the future of gaming". He accused the proprietary systems of companies such as Microsoft and Apple of stifling innovation through sluggish certification processes. In 2013, Newell was added to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. That March, he received the BAFTA Fellowship award for his contributions to the video game industry. In October 2017, Forbes listed Newell among the 100 wealthiest people in the United States, with an estimated net worth of 5.5billion. In December 2021, Forbes estimated that Newell had a net worth of US$3.9 billion and owned at least one quarter of Valve. According to Charlie Fish, author of The History of Video Games, as of 2021 Newell was the richest person in the video game industry. Personal life Newell formerly suffered from Fuchs' dystrophy, a congenital disease which affects the cornea, but was cured by two cornea transplants in 2006 and 2007. He married Lisa Mennet on the same day he founded Valve with Harrington. They have two sons. The birth of