BAFTA to honour Valve's Newell

Valve boss Gabe Newell is set to be honoured by BAFTA with the Academy Fellowship at this years Games Awards ceremony on March 5th.

The annual award is considered "the highest accolade" that BAFTA bestows on an individual , with the group saying that the Half-Life and Steam creator with more than three decades of work in the games industry more than qualifies.

"Gabe's contribution to the industry is unique, and he is very different to many others that BAFTA could recognise," commented Harvey Elliott, Chair of BAFTA's Games Committee.

"As well as enjoying great critical and commercial success with phenomenally popular franchises such as Portal and Half-Life, his work in giving back to the games industry through developing and showcasing other games makers has been outstanding. He is an inspirational developer and truly deserving of our Fellow recognition."

Newell will be joining other Fellowship winners such as Peter Molyneux, Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright.

Valve itself has raked in awards and nominations from BAFTA in the past, including Left 4 Dead and its sequel claiming Best Multiplayer in 2009 and 2010, while Portal 2 won Best Game, Story and Design last year.

Newell commented: "It is an honour for myself and everyone at Valve to be presented such an award by one of the world's most respected and recognised organisations.

"Valve owes a tremendous thanks to many in the UK – to those who have played our games, to the great support of the UK press, and to UK-based creative contributors such as Garry Newman. I look forward to accepting this prestigious honour on behalf of everyone in our community."

James Lee

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James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.