The American game developer and multi-billionaire Gabe Newell is the new owner of yacht builder Oceanco. The company from Alblasserdam was owned by the Omani Barwani family for fifteen years, but has now been sold to Newell, who was already a customer of the company.
Oceanco was founded in 1987 and specializes in the construction of luxury yachts between 80 and 120 meters. It is, according to its own statement, one of the leading yacht builders in the world.
New owner Newell is co-founder of game developer Valve. The American achieved successes with game platform Steam and the games Portal and Half-Life, among others.
In the past, Oceanco built a ship for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others. In order to get the vessel to the open sea, the company wanted parts of the Rotterdam bridge De Hef to be dismantled.
The intention caused a lot of consternation three years ago. For example, an online action was started to throw eggs at the ship. Oceanco eventually decided to bring Bezos’ yacht to sea via a different route.