Campo Santo, known for its critically acclaimed first person narrative-driven adventure Firewatch, has recently been purchased by Valve. The rather surprising announcement was revealed in a blog post over the weekend when the studio noted that it would shift to Bellevue, Washington.
There aren’t many changes at this point – the blog noted that the studio “maintain our jobs as video game developers”. To that, you can still expect its next game In the Valley of Gods to ship in 2019. Those who thought that joining with Valve would affect the game’s launch for consoles, Campo Santo said on Twitter that it wouldn’t. Thus far, In the Valley of Gods has only been announced for PC.
What motivated the desire to join the Half-Life and Portal developer? According to Campo Santo, “We had a series of long conversations with the people at Valve and everyone shared the satisfaction we take in working with people whose talents dwarf our own to make things we never thought possible.
“Both sides spoke about our values and how, when you get right down to it, we, as human beings, are hard-limited by the time we have left when it comes to making the things we care about and believe in.”
Valve revealed recently that it would begin shipping games once more after many years of managing Steam, supporting competitive titles like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: GO, and constantly denying that Half-Life 3 was in development. Perhaps Campo Santo joining the studio could factor into that plan? Stay tuned for more information in the coming months.