Gabe Newell’s new yacht enables him to host LAN parties on the set of an immersive sim

In my life I have attended perhaps five LAN parties in total, and one of those doesn’t really count because it was just lugging my 486 over to a friend’s house so we could play Quake deathmatch. Two people is not enough for a LAN party, in the same way that it’s not enough for an orgy: you need enough people for it to feel like a crowd, and coincidentally they also have to be OK with being sweaty and very close to people in a domestic setting that wasn’t really designed for it. (Also, everybody brought something alarmingly large and brightly coloured from home.)

Nowadays LAN parties feel somewhat anachronistic, replaced by the internet: there are still larger-scale events like Epic.Lan or bring-your-own corners of PAX, but bringing PCs together in one place feels like a dated relic of a former age. I was delighted, therefore, to belatedly discover that Gabe Newell has included LAN parties in the spec for his latest $500m megayacht, built by the firm he recently purchased and kitted out to serve his marine research enterprise. 

The facilities of the 364ft/111-metre Leviathan, as reported in the plutocrat trade magazine Boat International, include a dedicated “gaming lounge” which is pictured full of people playing Counter-Strike. The prospect of setting up a 20-person game of Arms Race from international waters en route to the Bahamas fills me with delight: the old ways do still endure, and Gabe’s still enough of a nerd to spec it out in his unimaginably expensive literal flagship.  

Unfortunately further inspection reveals the rest of the vessel is less relatable, becoming more sinister the more I look at it. I’d describe it as resembling a Hitman level except I genuinely don’t think that IO’s engine can handle a single level of this size and complexity. The very over-produced trailer highlights the gaming lounge alongside the fully-specced racing sim pod, the basketball court, the automated massage chairs and an indeterminate number of swimming pools and dining areas, all populated by laughing white people in beachwear. 

The relentless positivity and slightly amateurish CGI makes it feel like a video you’d find in the ruins of an immersive sim like Prey, showing what all this was like before they discovered The Specimen, or possibly something put out by Umbrella Corporation. Closer inspection suggests that the laughing people are employees of Inkfish, Newell’s deep-sea research firm, which is the origin of the sinister octopus logo that’s shown both connecting all the Counter-Strike PC’s and spreading its tendrils throughout the ship. Surely cheerier branding was available?

Further not defeating the Resident Evil vibes, the accompanying blurb frames Leviathan as a vessel built to support “scientific research and discovery” (supported by its recently-refitted predecessor) which I struggle to square with the five-star luxury. On reflection I don’t have a practical reason why research scientists don’t deserve a LAN lounge, two fully-equipped gyms or a "dedicated 'chef’s lab' for intimate dining experiences," it’s just that most research enterprises either don’t have this sort of money, or don’t spend it on things that aren’t research. The only ones I can think of that do were fronts for 1970s Bond villains. 

This is of course a mean-spirited reading. Newell has a vast fortune continually topped up by Steam’s 30% cut of every game sold on the platform; spending some of that on a luxury scientist habitat is not the worst use he could put it to. Poking around his aquatic enterprises reveals his companies are building up a fleet of vessels dedicated to deep-sea research, with the stated aim of open-sourcing the data they uncover, which sounds like a more plausible philanthropic vision than, say, ketamine-addled pledges to populate Mars. 

It also aligns with Newell’s, and Valve’s, reputation for broadly doing the right thing - store policy decisions aside - a good-guy image that generally earns them an easier ride for doing things like sharply increasing the price of the Steam Deck: people trust them when they say it’s because of component prices, rather than assuming sinister corporate motives. 

Maybe this is somebody who’s decided to spend his unfathomable wealth on doing useful research, and concluded he might as well lay on deluxe accommodation for the people doing it, rather than cramped and evil-smelling bedrooms and a communal area with a PS4 chained up in the corner. Maybe I’ve just played too many video games filled with stagey narrative storytelling of corporate utopia, and I should just shake it off and see some good in the world. 

Then I discover that one of Oceanco’s other recent projects is a superyacht called SHODAN. C’mon, man.