Head of Steam shop says iPad maker's values more in line with Nintendo than Valve, teases DOTA 2 as free-to-play with "some twists."

Reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Steam developer Valve at the company's Bellevue, Washington, headquarters last week were false, according to Valve co-founder Gabe Newell.

Speaking with the Seven Day Cooldown podcast for its forthcoming inaugural episode, Newell squashed the rumors, saying, "Nobody here was meeting with Tim Cook or with anybody at Apple that day. I wish we were. We have a long list of things we'd love to see Apple do to support games and gaming better, but no, we didn't meet with Tim Cook."

Newell doesn't share the same values as Nintendo and Apple.

When asked if he felt Apple and Valve had similar corporate values, Newell diplomatically answered to the contrary.

"We think that our business interests are served best long term by operating in a way that's consistent with open, collaborative approaches with both our customers and our partners," Newell said. "I'd say Nintendo and Apple are a lot closer together than Valve and Apple are. They both have such a strong, clear design ethic, and if you want to go along for the ride, you can. But it'd be hard to see the Steam Workshop coming out in the context of something that Apple does."

While that clip of the podcast is already on the show's site, another teaser of the interview was provided to Polygon. That bit dealt with Valve's upcoming DOTA 2, and a new wrinkle it might add to the free-to-play business model.

"The issue that we're struggling with quite a bit is something I've kind of talked about before, which is how do you properly value people's contributions to a community," Newell said. "We're trying to figure out ways so that people who are more valuable to everybody else [are] recognized and accommodated. We all know people where if they're playing we want to play, and there are other people where if they're playing we would [rather] be on the other side of the planet. It's just a question of coming up with mechanisms that recognize and reward people who are doing things that are valuable to other groups of people."

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