Wed, May 18, 2011 | 15:17 BST

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Newell: Valve “late” looking at social games

Valve boss Gabe Newell has said that the company could be late in possibly looking at the social games market.

Newell told Develop that the popularity of things like Facebook, as well as iOS and Android, makes the prospect for the company hard to ignore.

“We tend to think of things in terms of our customers, so if our customer is a heavy Facebook user, we have to think about how Team Fortress 2 or Portal 2 can be better for that customer,” he said.

“So when we look at Facebook we see a collection of services, and a lot of our customers there, so what’s the useful thing we could do for them.

“The point is, too many of our customers use Facebook for us to ignore it. The same way too many of our customers have iPhones and Android phones for us to ignore it.”

Newell said that there was worry it could be “late” in coming to the social party, admitting that he felt the same way when it launched its PC platform Steam.

“We honestly felt, with Steam, we were actually really late in responding to the way our customers were using the internet. Now that I look at mobile and social, I think we’re late again.”

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