Valve boss Gabe Newell said not too long ago that his company’s preparing to “start shipping games again”, and a smaller indie developer has now joined them.
Over the weekend, it was announced that Valve has acquired Campo Santo, the studio behind the acclaimed adventure title, Firewatch. If you’re wondering what will happen to its current work-in-progress, Valley Of Gods, fear not – it’s still going ahead.
“In Valve we found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do (this, you may be surprised to learn, doesn’t happen every day),” Campo Santo wrote in an announcement on its blog. “In us, they found a group with unique experience and valuable, diverse perspectives. It quickly became an obvious match.”
Campo Santo’s history is relatively brief, given that it was founded in 2013 and Firewatch, released in 2016, was its debut title. The strength of storytelling in that first effort, however, lad to all sorts of accolades, and with over a million copies sold, there’s even talk of a movie adaptation. The studio’s next game, Valley Of Gods, isn’t due out until next year, and understandably, nobody’s making it clear what exactly Campo Santo will be working on in their new partnership with Valve.
For now, the indie developer’s core of 12 will be making themselves at home at Valve’s offices in Bellevue. We’ll have to wait and see what the results of their deal will be.