YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH
Trying hard not to make an "Ito Square-Enix janitor" joke.Nice, Erik's a fantastic writer. Hopefully they put him on some projects where he can shine.
What is an Artifact?
It's true, for tech-oriented or more creative jobs it's generally expected that people will hop around from company to company a lot. It can be easy for people to get stuck at one company with no advancement opportunities or creative chances, leave, then come back with more knowledge and greater options.The comings and goings of Valve don't merit the drama people often like to impose on them. Valve seems to be very accepting of people leaving for a while to then come back. This is also pretty common in a lot of large tech companies.
They're working on three VR titles, one which is strongly rumored to be Half-Life VR. It's likely we'll see a lot more comings and goings as these develop.
Unless Laidlaw also comes back I don't think there is anything worth getting excited about.
I imagine that his first task might be lending a hand on In The Valley of the Gods,
Narratively Portal doesn't need another sequel at all, but I'd still take it obviously.