Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve Corporation, is the winner of this year’s Pioneer Award, which will be presented at the Game Developers Conference Awards ceremony in San Francisco in March 2010. This is the tenth annual awards celebration, but only the second presentation of the Pioneer Award, which is given to individuals credited with a major breakthrough in technology or game design that will clearly lead the way for future developers and designers.

This year’s panel included gaming greats such as Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster (Metaplace), John Vechey (PopCap), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), and Clint Hocking (Ubisoft). Newell was selected for the award for his work in co-creating the PC download service Steam, as well as helping to make some of the best games of the past decade (think everything included in The Orange Box) possible.

Over 3,000 of the industry’s top developers will be present at the awards ceremony, which will honor Newell, recipients of other special awards, and the top games of 2009.

Newell co-founded Valve in 1996 after leaving megacorporation Microsoft, and was instrumental in the creation of the groundbreaking PC FPS Half-Life. This title brought actual narrative and story to the first-person shooter genre unlike anything that came before it, and has inspired thousands of games (and spawned its own fantastic sequels) in the decade since its release. Valve is one of the few companies (maybe the only company?) that openly embrace the modding community, and legions of gamers continue to play these titles just for the modding capabilities alone. (Search YouTube for “Garry’s Mod” and see what I’m talking about.)

Valve has only gotten better with age, and titles like Portal and Left 4 Dead have done nothing but bring much-deserved critical acclaim to their doorstep.

Congratulations, Gabe. GamingAngels salutes you and wishes you the best in the years to come — it’s in our best interests for you to keep doing excellent work, after all!