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In the Valley of Gods (Campo Santo's next game) is officially on-hold
- Thread starter Deleted member 5322
- Start date
Reading about how valve works, it's seems safe to think there will be no Steam Controller 2. More focus on VR hardware wise. Steam Input was the successful byproduct of the Steam Machines/Link thing, but it doesn't need the Steam Controller to continue, may not even need more work until PS5 and Xbox next. Oh my gosh. They may have gotten all modern console controllers supported in Steam Input to take SC's place. Ah well.
Campo showed a beautiful trailer for their new game and it got a very positive response, and then they decided to shelve the project? Can you think of a similar situation where a team showed a game, people reacted positively to it, and then they canned it?
It has to do with the opportunities being owned by Valve affords them. It's not because of the bad-guy-Valve narrative I think you're fishing for.
Well that's fine, if there's one thing we know about Valve, it's that on-hold games eventually oh wait
Ya, getting to work on Half Life. I can't imagine a PC game dev not shitting their pants at that chance.
If it will never get made, then that is the reality of people choosing what they want to do and not what economical realities there are or executives decide to do.
There are 3 scenarios I can see for why Campo Santo decided to make Valley of the gods:
- a passion project from a handful of people within Campo Santo ---> low chance of it getting completed if those passionate people don't find enough talent within Valve that wants to work on the game. good chance of Valve giving away the IP and the passionate people leaving Valve to make that game
- the necessity to make a new game so that you survive the next years ---> very very low chance this gets completed because the reason for it existing, is gone. Unless it was 90% done or so.
- a passion project from dozens of people within Campo Santo ---> good chance of it getting completed.
The reality is: 90 to 95% of people within a Studio don't care on what project they work, especially if it is a new IP with no emotional history whatsoever.
If the fine people at Campo Santo want to produce Half Life Alyx, or DotA and CSGO skins, or anything at all, it ain't for me to tell them they have to make me ItVotG instead.
Yeah. For folks like us that find a fuck ton of Value in a lot of what comes out of Valve, this isn't really "news" other than confirmation of what we've already guessed. Of course, there are products that some of us will care for and others won't, but as always seeing so many unexpected excellent things coming out of Valve year on year - with such a small amount of folks is great.
Hope they go back to it eventually, but outside of Steam, Underlords and HL:A, so curious what other projects have captured their interests
This announcement is bit of a crushing disappointment, but at least the devs get to work on something else and not be, you know, defunct.
"On Hold" lol
It's dead, Jake. Don't even bother trying to put a positive spin on it. If the people who created In the Valley of Gods aren't interested in working on it, how can you even begin to hope that they will recruit a staff of other employees to come together and finish the game at some later date? With Valve's hierarchy and management structure being what it is, I don't think there's any chance the game gets resuscitated. Valve had more than a decade to make Half Life Episode 3 or Left 4 Dead 3 and couldn't be bothered to do so. What interest or ambition will there be in returning to a lesser IP like In the Valley of Gods?
I mostly feel annoyed that they spent the last couple years acting like everything was full steam ahead, and didn't announce this until their hand was basically forced by the promised "2019" release date coming due. They yanked the trailer down off YouTube months ago and said it was just a music licensing issue.
It's dead, Jake. Don't even bother trying to put a positive spin on it. If the people who created In the Valley of Gods aren't interested in working on it, how can you even begin to hope that they will recruit a staff of other employees to come together and finish the game at some later date? With Valve's hierarchy and management structure being what it is, I don't think there's any chance the game gets resuscitated. Valve had more than a decade to make Half Life Episode 3 or Left 4 Dead 3 and couldn't be bothered to do so. What interest or ambition will there be in returning to a lesser IP like In the Valley of Gods?
I mostly feel annoyed that they spent the last couple years acting like everything was full steam ahead, and didn't announce this until their hand was basically forced by the promised "2019" release date coming due. They yanked the trailer down off YouTube months ago and said it was just a music licensing issue.
Nono, they should make what #Forum User 256 wants them to make, and not what the individual dev wants to do.
According to some posters here:
Devs working at Campo Santo before Valve: They were all passionate about making the game, every one of them, there was no executive telling them what to work on all of them 100% wanted to make that game.
Devs working at Valve: The devs are shackled to their desks and they have no free will on what to do within Valve.
Depends on who "they" are. Campo no longer exists. They're all individual Valve employees now.
Could a few leave and start their own studio? Possibly, that's not uncommon in that business.
Chris Remo went into this before HL:A announcement. There's no pressure, but people recognise how valuable it is to work on projects that need the help, and they have the expertise and experience to contribute massively to. The whole interview is worth watching, not that it will help the incessant knee jerking
I'm talking about the core team members for In the Valley of the Gods. Or maybe once they are full of Valve money and tired of the company culture they'll buy themselves back.
From a kickstarter video of a thing that never came out.
This whole deal sounds awful.
What was the point of them joining Valve with their game if they just worked on other stuff? Fucking dota? Oof.
I guess it's what they feel like doing and it's cool to have that option but I'd be lying if I said I'm at all interested now.
What was the point of them joining Valve with their game if they just worked on other stuff? Fucking dota? Oof.
I guess it's what they feel like doing and it's cool to have that option but I'd be lying if I said I'm at all interested now.
Piles of money and massive support for their further creative endeavours, even if those endeavours became different things?
"Why even take a cushy job with one of the most important developers in PC gaming today?"
Like, if your question is, "Why did Valve buy them", that's fair. I think. That was the question I had when Valve bought them. Not that they didn't have value, it just seemed a curious match and an unxpected move on Valve's part, and I'm still interested to know what the thinking was. But the question "Why did they sell" just seems bizarre. It seems somewhat likely what many of them were offered was something of a dream job.
Were I in their shoes, I'd probably jump at making the next Half-Life given what it has meant and continues to mean to me. I can only see them making it better, given how much I've enjoyed their work on other games, and we'll see what becomes of ITVOG in the future.
I'm so mad since we're never getting to see this. :(
Only one black woman lead/supporting character at a time, I'm afraid
How many other times do people get to work on one of the most influential fps's of all time? Which probably inspired most of the team there
Definitely leaning towards the former question. It was indeed a weird pick and I thought maybe someone at Valve was maybe blown away by their game, but if even the team who created it have bailed on it, it just seems weirder. It's not like Valve was short on developers who know their way around FPS games.
Like I said though, definitely works out cool for them because they can do things like this in that environment; I don't think that would be an option anywhere else.
rip valley.
I can totally see the Idle Thumbs guys look at what is going at Valve and the shipping windows for these games, and out their project on the backburner to help make these as good as they can be for next year.
If they were coerced into this it really sucks, but knowing them walking into Valve must be like kids going into a candy store.
If they were coerced into this it really sucks, but knowing them walking into Valve must be like kids going into a candy store.
I miss Idle Thumbs and Important If True!
Glad Campo is able to work on the new Half Life though. Hopefully it was up to them to decide to can their own game for now...
Also, I know it probably just SEEMS that way but I find it weird how people that start working at Valve suddenly get real low-key or kinda disappear from the public eye/the internet.
I mean, I guess they are pretty busy making a NEW HALF-LIFE.
Actually yes that's why. Check out Geoff Keighley's interview with some of the team when the HLA announcement dropped.
They are probably under NDAs that make social media and the likes difficult.
I mean I could be 99% finished with a game that I've spent years on but if Valve randomly decided to hire me and buy my IP or whatever I would 100% drop it just to work on DOTA or HL:A.
That's not the sort of opportunity that comes around very often.
It's dead, Jim Jake.
Can't help but be personally disappointed, even if I obviously understand the allure of working on a Half-Life game.
Can't help but be personally disappointed, even if I obviously understand the allure of working on a Half-Life game.
This is really disappointing and frustrating. I'd much rather play something fresh and new like In The Valley of Gods than some Half-Life side-project. I'd trade the entire Half-Life franchise for the game, to be honest. But I should've known that the game died when they joined Valve because there's no way Valve would just acquire the entire studio and publish the game for them.
All that said, with all my personal frustration aside, I'm really happy for the team to be given the opportunity to work on whatever they want. Even if In The Valley of Gods is not meant to be, I'm always going to be grateful for Firewatch. <3
All that said, with all my personal frustration aside, I'm really happy for the team to be given the opportunity to work on whatever they want. Even if In The Valley of Gods is not meant to be, I'm always going to be grateful for Firewatch. <3
wonder if the game wasn't working out or whether they realised their personal life would be a lot better if they earned substantially more through fitting in at valve's culture and working on profitable projects (don't think there's a problem with this)
would be quite shocked if they wholly dropped a new ip they were excited for to work on HL due solely to creative passion, based on their attitude to franchises and lore on idle thumbs and the effort to get to this point
would be quite shocked if they wholly dropped a new ip they were excited for to work on HL due solely to creative passion, based on their attitude to franchises and lore on idle thumbs and the effort to get to this point
Honestly, I'm wondering if maybe In the Valley wasn't turning out so hot. I understand that maybe you don't say no to an opportunity like "the next Half Life game", but that thing is out in 5 4 months. Seems weird they would so unceremoniously drop it instead of being like "oh yeah, we're gonna work on that right after we ship Alyx"
"Why is Valve not using the Half-Life license, those evil bastards!?"
"a VR game"
And that's pretty much this whole thread so far. Lots of companies cancel/put games on hold. Lots of them do it after being acquired by bigger devs/pubs. But it seems only Evil Valve (tm) does it.
Also, we know straight from the horse's mouth that the Campo Santo people who moved over to the HL team (or the Dota team, or whatever) did it because they wanted to, but nope, better to just call out the evil Valve that's taking some time off their perennial indie killing so they can kill new games (that we didn''t really know much about, but hey, let's ignore that bit, doesn't fit very well).
People here keep talking about wanting the best for developers, but they forget to clarify that "the best for developers" is not something those developers should have a say in, but rather whatever the mob here wants.
Also all the ignorant "Half-Life side project" takes...