So in some sense, this is a return home for us.
Never ones to pass up free alcohol, we stole it and drank it to celebrate the launch of Firewatch a year later. It happened to be engraved on an unopened bottle of champagne. Second, while visiting IGN’s headquarters in early 2015 to talk about Firewatch, we came across an undelivered 2011 Game of the Year Award for Portal 2. In us, they found a group with unique experience and valuable, diverse perspectives. 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). From the day-to-day production of our last game, Firewatch, to the way we run the company, make merchandise, meet players at expos and shows, send out a quarterly literary journal, throw open-to-the-public game demos in the middle of an artificial forest-all of it is geared towards surprising, delighting, and entertaining the customers who have shared in our success. Furthermore, and perhaps more accurately, we really like making and producing entertainment.
First, we really like making video games.
If you’re the type of person who gives two flips about this news, we can elaborate a little bit on this big decision. The twelve of us at Campo Santo have agreed to join Valve, where we will maintain our jobs as video game developers and continue production on our current project, In the Valley of Gods.