Valve honcho Gabe Newell recorded a video to kick off The International 2026, the latest edition of Valve’s annual Dota 2 championship tournament, and as noticed by GamesRadar, the reaction to it is pleasingly wholesome.
Plenty of esports fans are thrilled to see the return of one of the world’s premiere tourneys, naturally, but in this case it’s not just the excitement of elite competition that has everyone would up: An awful lot of folks seem to be more impressed by how good Gabe is looking these days.
Newell’s video message was pretty standard fare for this sort of thing: Reminiscing about past Internationals, gazing into the future, and thanking the fans, players, and host city of Shanghai for making it all possible. But the reaction?
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Well, this is the internet, after all.
“I’m so happy he lost all that weight,” redditor TheMilkman1811 wrote in response to Newell’s “Chad Gabe” look. “Probably bought another 10 to 15 years of life with us.”
“Right? I’m just happy he looks healthy! More time among us,” another replied. A third cut more directly to the point, referring to the Valve founder as “Babe Newell.”
The cause of Newell’s new svelte style came up for debate: Some believe his life-on-a-yacht lifestyle is the reason, others surmise it’s medical intervention , redditor rice_goblin theorized that “he’s slowly absorbing australian genes through osmosis due to living in new zealand for so long.”
That theory is surprisingly popular, at least to the extent that people think (perhaps not entirely seriously) that Newell is becoming genetically Australian: No fewer than six redditors, and possibly more by the time you read this, say he’s looking like Hugh Jackman (or, in one case, “Hugh Jackman’s cool dad,” although Jackman is only six years younger than Newell.)
Similar sentiments are being expressed in comments on YouTube, where pochix2 wrote, “Live long enough to see Lord Gaben turn to Russell Crowe, while real Russell Crowe becomes Gabe.” But again, others are just happy to see Newell doing so well: “Lord Gaben is getting healthier, love to see it,” NighthawK1911 wrote. “He looks slimmer than last year’s announcement video.”
Newell’s lighter look is clearly a surprise for some Dota 2 fans, but the transformation has been underway for a while. He was, putting it gently, not a small man back in the potato phone days of 2022, but he’s shed a lot of that poundage in more recent years—he was looking comparatively trim in his International 2025 appearance, although even there I don’t think he looked quite as lean as he does here. And yeah, let’s just put it out there, trimming the beard and getting a proper haircut sure didn’t hurt either.
It is, admittedly, a bit weird to see this kind of adoration for a distant billionaire, especially given that the whole billionaire class isn’t held in very high esteem these days (and rightly so). But Newell is somewhat unusual in that regard: He did something cool and lucrative, didn’t sell it to the highest bidder at the first opportunity, and then quietly took his money and toddled off to the other side of the world to indulge a relatively harmless rich-guy passion. As billionaire outcomes go, that’s not a bad one.