We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

That’s not quite accurate. Gearbox was founded by fans, sure, but they were experienced game developers, mostly ex-employees of a company that was shut down because they were developing a game that (probably) couldn’t compete with Half-Life; they ran Opposing Force by Valve, who thought it sounded cool and told them to pitch it to Sierra, who thought it sounded cool. Opposing Force was “produced”, so to speak, under the traditional publisher–developer model. They did such a bang-up job that they got to do more add-ons and the console ports.