Valve managing director Gabe Newell is doing like the Miami Heat and getting three of the best in the industry together on the same team. Word broke on Friday that Newell has hired Michael Abrash, Scott Ludwig and Mike Sartain to work at Valve.
Newell knows Abrash from their days working together at Microsoft and has coveted the Quake developer’s services for quite some time. “About once a quarter we go for dinner and I say ‘are you ready to work here yet?'” Newell says.
Sartain is well known for his work on the original Halo at Bungie, and later worked at RAD Game Tools with Abrash.
Ludwig is the least famous member of the trio (kind of like Chris Bosh), but Newell knows him from their Microsoft days and is very confident in the software engineer’s abilities. “He’s one of those people… that makes everyone around them work better,” said Newell of Ludwig.
