Gabe Newell reportedly snapped 'What the f*** do I pay you for if that's your opinion?' at Valve lawyer pushing for more content moderation on Steam

Valve is a relatively small company that punches well above its weight. Perhaps it's the low staff numbers—or maybe just a general libertarian lilt—that makes its approach to content moderation on Steam a hearty "Can't someone else do it?"

Its freewheeling approach has drawn criticism for what it allows to proliferate and, of course, has its hard limits: Valve delisted all manner of adult content from the platform last year following pressure from payment processors.

But it's clearly an approach Valve co-founder and big boss Gabe Newell is personally keen on. In a recent report from Bloomberg, we got an anecdote from an anonymous former Valve employee of a time when Newell downright bit the head off Valve general counsel Karl Quackenbush. The lawyer was advocating for a more hands-on approach to content moderation on Steam as it pondered embracing outright pornographic content.

Newell's response to that proposal was, ah, forthright: "What the fuck do I pay you for if that's your opinion?" the Valve boss reportedly snapped at Quackenbush and—while we don't have further details on the story—we sure know who won the debate in the end: Steam very much did open the floodgates on NSFW content, and its approach to content moderation is as laissez-faire as ever, barring the odd payment processor contretemps.

It's an interesting but brief glimpse into the Valve black box. The studio's public image is A) taciturn and B) democratic, with the memetic image of Valve devs' wheeled desks serving as a bit of a metonym for its willingness to let its employees work on whatever they're interested in. Newell himself barely registers in that picture—the perception is he's a hands-off boss who spends most of his time literally at sea.

Clearly, though, Newell does stick his oar in from time to time, and is willing to throw his weight around on topics he deems important enough. You've gotta feel a bit sorry for Quackenbush—getting yelled at by Gabe Newell ranks high on my personal listings of things that would make me cry.

And hey, Valve owes him: it was Quackenbush who enlisted the aid of a Korean-speaking intern named Andrew to help the studio sift through a ream of Korean-language docs from Vivendi in a legal case where Valve's future hung in the balance: a move that pretty much saved Valve.

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