For decades, his name was hidden in Windows. Today, Gabe Newell makes the names of thousands of people visible on his megayacht.
In 1985, Microsoft released Windows 1.0. Among the system files was a hidden credits screen with the names of 36 members of the development team. Gabe Newell was among them, but the list did not come to light until 2022, when a researcher examined the original files.
Newell had left Harvard to work at Microsoft, where he took part in developing Windows during its early years. There, he worked under Bill Gates and learned a lesson he would remember for decades. In an interview organized by Code.org, he said that his first three months at Microsoft taught him more than his entire time at Harvard.
Nearly four decades later, Newell, co-founder of Valve and a key figure behind Steam, is taking that story of collective work to another setting. On his 111-meter-long Leviathan megayacht, valued at around 500 million dollars, the names of around 3.000 people who took part in the project are engraved on a glass panel.
At Windows, the team members’ names remained hidden for decades. On the Leviathan, thousands of collaborators have their names on display. Two very different projects, united by the same question: who gets recognition for building something extraordinary?