Throat Singing And Medieval Weaponry - Counter-Strike Creator Sheds Light On Gabe Newell's Unusual Hobbies

Gabe Newell is a name revered far and wide in PC gaming and beyond. The founder of Valve has been in the spotlight many times throughout his long career, but this time is slightly different, with some of Gabe's (ahem) "talents" and hobbies being revealed to the public in an interview with Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Lee.

In a video from Indie Game Joe (thanks, PC Gamer), Lee claimed that the Valve founder and CEO tended to "venture off into interesting hobbies," with one very prominent one being a fascination with Mongolian throat singing:

"He started to practice that. He started to do Mongolian throat singing, and he was doing it throughout the office. You would hear him try to sing with his throat as he's walking down the halls. I remember a lot of people in the office were kind of annoyed, because, you know, it's kind of loud. And he would just walk along the halls just doing this throat singing. And he would do it daily."

Lee states that Gabe was a "very eccentric" person and would often roam the halls of Valve's offices daily, trying to "sing with his throat" – to many of the employees' dismay. However, Lee claims that this didn't last long, and by five months into the fixation, Gabe had mercifully stopped.

On a slightly less disruptive note, Lee also claimed that Gabe "got into knives" and other medieval weaponry, such as axes and swords, to the point where he had a "room full of knives and blades" and reportedly procured quite the collection, even getting into knife-making further down the line.

These revelations have predictably caused quite a stir online, and it does make me giggle inside knowing that, at one point, the creator of the world's biggest digital storefront was practising Mongolian throat singing and collecting medieval weaponry; facts I was expecting to discover in 2026, but I am very glad I have.