Speaking to IGN, Valve explained that, “We were big fans of their prior work. We worked with them during their start-up phase, but they’re independent now and still working on their game. We wish them the best of luck.”

Semple added that, “Jeff [Gates] and I are working on indie games again. We were working for Valve in a remote office in San Mateo. It turned out that there weren’t many benefits for either side in that arrangement. Valve was super cool about it and is letting us continue to work on our game and is also giving us the office. So Jeff and I are starting up a new company called Temple Gates Games.”

Pretty big of the House that Half-Life Built, no?

Commenting on the change in his Linkedin profile, Semple stated that, “I’ve worked on Diablo 3, Star Wars Force Unleashed, and was the programmer that made Plants vs. Zombies. My recent startup was acquired by Valve and we are opening a new office on the San Francisco peninsula.” Jeff Gates, co-founder, also worked with Semple at worked at PopCap Games and even did a stint in Maxis.

Though Valve has yet to comment on the acquisition, rumblings of the purchase can be traced to as far back as September 20th when Semple noted on his blog that, “Jeff and I are flying up to Seattle today. We are going to go visit Valve and check out all the cool stuff they are working on and see if there are any business opportunities. I’m pretty excited about this trip! They are a crazy awesome company and they are doing so much cool new stuff.” This was followed by October 11th, which featured lunch with an unnamed billionaire.

Source: GIBiz