Valve Chief Gabe Newell Will Sic Ninjas and Hounds on You if You Email Him Twice

Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell is known for his good humor and for his unusual transparency as the chief of a major gaming company: His email address is available to all on Valve’s website, and he regularly responds to emails from customers, often wittily. Those traits were on display when he responded to one Redditor’s query about what would happen if someone emailed him twice, which was made in reference to an AT&T rep’s recent inexplicable threat to file a cease and desist order if one dissatisfied customer dared to email AT&T’s CEO twice.

Here’s Gabe Newell’s exchange with Redditor sockpuppets. Randall Stephenson, eat your heart out:

(note: while Newell’s email address is easily findable if you search for it, we are going to stick with sockpuppets’ practice of Xing out the last three characters of the address.)

sockpuppet wrote:

Hey Gabe when people email the AT&T CEO more than once they’re sent a cease and desist letter. What happens if I email you more than once?

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Gabe Newell gaXXX@valvesoftware.com wrote:

Don’t know. Let’s find out.

My response:

I should warn you my attorney is Saul Goodman. I will vigorously defend myself against your legal threats if required, I hope it doesn’t come to that.

His response:

from Gabe Newell gaXXX@valvesoftware.com

to sockpuppet date Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:27 PM

I am looking out the windows of my 10th floor office (the office is the entire 10th floor, if that wasn’t clear, as it needs to be large enough to contain all of my awesomeness). It appears that the hounds have been released, as well as the ninjas (with some of the smaller and more agile ninjas riding on hounds), but no cease and desist letters, so you’re good on that front.

Gabe

(via Reddit. Title image via Wikipedia)

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Robert Quigley