As an update to the story, this was confirmed by Gabe himself: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/gabe-newell-responds-to-fan-asking-about-bizarre-valve-throat-singing-story-3412684/

A fan then went straight to the source, emailing Newell to ask whether the story was real. In a reply shared online, sent from Newell’s Valve address, he provided more detail.

“Yeah, I had chatted with Paul Pena about it after I tried learning on my own,” he wrote. “I am entirely self taught and it shows.”

He added that he worked on the sygyt and kargyraa styles “and got to the point where I was really… annoying.”

Newell says he still hasn’t given it up entirely. “Every once in a while, I’ll pick it back up,” he wrote, adding that it takes a couple of weeks to condition his throat.

Pena was an American blues musician who taught himself Tuvan throat singing, later becoming the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Genghis Blues.

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[–] 84 points 1 month ago (10 children)

Honestly went to a concert for "the hu" Mongolian metal band... amazing

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Totally a great band, I can emulate the singing if I'm drunk enough lol

    Also, apparently I've been in Mongolia when I was a child.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    They are awesome!

    Were you there when you were young?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    South of Ulan Ude from what I'm told.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Sorry, I meant to ask "very young"

    But yes I was also curious about the area.

    Apparently I saw the Grand Canyon in the US when I was 1 year old. I don't think that counts. (:

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I can see that, unfortunately I have that curse of remembering pretty much everything. The almost 40 years I've been alive have been... very long.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    That's useful though! Do you have the ability to chronologically recall things?

    I can remember distinct details, but I have almost no ability to remember when they happened without context clues.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I do and it actually gets annoying because as you get older you start to notice cognitive decline in friends and family. One day, they don't remember what happened and then you realize there's no point in making an argument over it.

    Recently, my mom traveled where I lived for a bit with grandma. And this was over thirty years ago, the caveat is that I was roughly 3-4 years old when I lived there and I knew exactly where I was and how things changed over time.

    I will say it was probably a weird conversation for my aunt because I could describe everything in the area and bring up old memories--some of which she didn't remember.

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  • [–] 184 points 1 month ago* (22 children)

    Other billionaires setting up cults and trying to bring a new age to techno fascism.

    Gabe's colleagues: " sometimes he sings in his office and it's a little annoying and distracting."

    Other billionaires response: buy media companies and government lobby, manipulate the narratives. Make a mockery of the legal system while hiding behind corporate entity.

    Gabe: "yeah I asked a trusted colleague for honest feedback and feel a little bad about that.".

    It's really not hard to not piss everyone in the world off or high effort.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    Still a ridiculously and insanely wasteful person who's significantly greedy.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    he's not diddling kids or sexually harrassing his employees, as far as we know. It's a low bar but I'll take it.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Can we please transfer wealth from Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to Linus Torwalds and Richard Stallman. Unless, of course, you all want to distribute it all back

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    I'm not that sure about a guy who eats his own toe jam in public...

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I'll take it over a guy who throws nazi salutes. I mean, the real answer is that nobody should have so much money, it can't do any good to anyone. But if the only controversy we can find about him is that he did that one gross thing to his foot that one time 20 years ago, I'll take it, oh how much I'll take it

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  • [+] -9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Other billionaires setting up cults and trying to bring a new age to techno fascism.

    Musk's colleagues: " sometimes he makes us eat mustard and it’s a little annoying and distracting."

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I'm sorry, are you willfully or accidentally profoundly ignorant of the reports of what working for Musk is like?

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  • [–] 51 points 1 month ago*

    Mongolian throat singing is amazing.

    You know, where I live, they have these guys coming out with leaf blowers in late April, making a racket in my neighborhood, and they just move street by street like a roving gang of crazed leaf blowers, and getting rid of all the crap that was accumulated under the snow when it thaws.

    Every year, if I'm home at that time, I bring my big speakers to the window, open it wide, and blast Mongolian throat singing for them.

    It mixes with the sound of leaf blowers extremely well. Whenever one of them starts wondering what the hell is going on and removes their hearing protection, I instantly mute it, and as soon as they put them back on I start blasting again.

    It's a spring ritual for me.

    AUUUUUUuuuuUuUUUUUuUuUuuuuurrrrrRrRrRRRRRRrrrRrrRrrRrrrrrarrrrRrRR-iaaaaaaaAAAaaaAaaaaAawwawRrrRRrRrrrRrrrrrrrrreyooooOoOOooOooOOOoOo

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  • [–] 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

    Sygyt is the style that sounds nasal-y but with a high pitched overtone.

    Kargyraa is the really growly sounding one.

    Source: im gabe newell

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  • [–] 142 points 1 month ago (35 children)

    Remember when valve made games?

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  • [–] 89 points 1 month ago (20 children)

    Who has made more games in the last decade: Rockstar or Valve?

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  • [–] 112 points 1 month ago (18 children)

    Apparently the answer is Valve. Which says more about rockstar than anything about valve.

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  • [–] 43 points 1 month ago (17 children)

    Valve have made games. It's just not the same type of games that people that love them for their most famous titles.

    Also, even though they made a blockbuster, single player, half life game recently, the majority of the HL fans were not able to play it, so we are still disappointed...

    Jesus fucking christ, the last game that valve made with me as the audience in mind was fucking 15 years ago (Portal 2). (Half life 1 was releaed 13 years before that. )

    Everything else is multiplayer or hardware bound.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (16 children)

    Alyx ils amazing ans the Lab ils also great i really wish they added levels to those games. Especialy the archer and thé slingshot games.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago (15 children)

    I fucking bet they're amazing but I don't have a spare $1500 nor a spare room to use as a holosuite, since I need that $1500 as part of a down payment on a mortgage.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (14 children)

    I'm not saying it's easily accessible by any means, but you can definitely get a headset for a good deal less than $1500, and many (if not most) games can be played sitting at your desk in the same position you'd be in if holding a traditional game controller.

    I agree it sucks that there's no non-VR version. I just wanted to say that it isn't exclusive to the obscenely wealthy or anything, if you already have a PC capable of running it you're likely in a position to be able to swing getting the gear for it.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    if you already have a PC capable of running it you’re likely in a position to be able to swing getting the gear for it.

    I have an 8 year old laptop with a muxing problem that can barely handle android studio.

    I'm fucking cooked.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Well it's a good thing PC parts are so cheap right now.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    Please take me to your alternate reality. What happened to the world after Bernie Sanders' second presidency?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I am pretty sure it was sarcasm, but it is crazy to realize how even things like this would be different if we had government that actually followed its laws.

    Trump invested a lot in AI companies and removed all obstacles and made sure that regulators look the other way, creating this craze.

    Now, once this collapses they will use our tax money to bail them out. It is fucking lose-lose situation for us no matter what happens.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    To be fair a brand new desktop tower can also barely handle android studio, I've never had a good experience in it not once

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago*

    Shitposts aside, this laptop is only recently beginning to show its age, and because I'm demanding more and more of it. I can hardly expect it to run CUDA AI shit or not expected it to work as a fullstack server and have 2 copies of VS code and Pulsar (another Electron based editor) , play YT videos with its fucking muxing issues AND run KDE at the same time.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    I thought there was a mod to play Half Life Alyx without a VR headset.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    I wouldn't be surprised is someone recreated in the Source 1/2 engine, but is there much gameplay if you remove the VR stuff?

    Replaying the original Half Life 1 and 2 games, I realized there's that HL2 onward got crippled by the devs making it too much about the Gravity gun. The fan community have made much more interesting combat engagements without the Gravity gun and adding a more varied weapon set.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (5 children)

    but is there much gameplay if you remove the VR stuff?

    Good question. The gameplay blends very smoothly with the Index and doesn't feel gimmicky, it's hard to say how much would feel "missing" playing on mouse and keyboard.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (4 children)

    Guess what motherfuckers, we missed out a shitload more by watching HLA as a lets play instead of playing it as an FPS.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Valve: We need a way to sell our high end VR headset. Let's release it with a long time fan favorite title; we can use Half Life to get people otherwise not interested in VR games into the ecosystem, and maybe they'll get other games too!

    Half Life fans: watch someone else play the game for free without buying Half Life or an Index

    Valve: surprised Pikachu

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I saw people drawing penis in glass. I read a plot summary and wasn't impressed enough to watch a playthough. Also, I already know I'll be in the minority because I think HL2 is gimmicky gameplay because if you remove the gravity gun and chores associated with it, the combat is weaker the HL1. Try Singularity if you want to see what combat that actually integrates a Gravity Guy into the combat.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Drawing a penis on the glass in the opening scene is like dropping the baby penguin off the map in Mario 64. It's a compulsion. The thought enters your head and, once it does, must be executed for the simple goal of seeing if you can.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    And what about reconning the ending to episode 2? I already explained that I didn't fine the gameplay of HL2 to be very good, so if I played it through for the story, why would I be happy about that? I stopped expecting to get what I want out of a Half Life game when Marc Laidlaw explained the circumstance of why he left.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago* (8 children)

    They make way more money managing a game store. Why would they ever need to make another game? /s

    But in all seriousness, Steam makes them a ridiculous amount of money. If I was Gabe, I'd slow down game production as well.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    I figure they don't want to make a game and it not be at least a 7/10. So they keep one or two working on something while everyone else keeps the servers up, builds compatibility with Linux, and whatever hardware they are working on.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    They have a flat structure so employees self-assign work. If a game idea interests them they work on it. If not, no worries there’s plenty to do on Steam.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    Deadlock is awesome. It combines some of the things I love most about playing boomer shooters--the movement tech and fast-paced gunplay--with the stuff I love about DOTA2--the build flexibility, character variety, and ability to coordinate timing spikes throughout the match. Unfortunately it also includes some of the stuff everyone hates about DOTA2, like inconsistent matchmaking and rude bigots with microphones.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 month ago

    Honestly, based.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 month ago

    Huh throat goat

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago

    That's hilarious. It was a niche viral trend online, but this guy really ran with it lol

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Was it annoying because it was loud and out of place for an office, or did he sound like a cat being strangled? 🤔

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  • [–] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    gotta be both.

    as cool as throat singing is, it's gotta be a hell of a thing to witness the immense amount of practice that has to happen before good throat singing is achieved

    or really, any singing now that I think about it

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago

    Once you learn how to do it , it's very addictive

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago*

    Gabe-is Khan

    lol

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  • [–] 40 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    At least it wasn't doing unspeakable things to kids.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago (5 children)
  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago

    I dream about being the kind of rich that allows me the mental space to get hyper fixated on stuff like that.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    Never heard it until I watched a video just now. Sounds like a jaw harp. I can see why people trying to concentrate would be a little peeved, though if someone were paying me good money to do something cool like make games, I’d probably happily put on some headphones and ignore it.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago*
    [–] 9 points 1 month ago

    Genghis Blues was a great documentary. Cool to see Paul Pena popping up again. Didn't expect GabeN to be obsessed with throat singing.

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