The time Valve spent away from developing and releasing any major new games (no, Artifact doesn’t count) was a frustrating and seemingly interminable one for no few people, but it seems like the company is finally ready to get back in the thick of things. In 2020, it released the incredible VR shooter Half-Life: Alyx, while recently, it also announced Counter-Strike 2, which is due out this year. However, it seems it might also have another game in the works- and it could be one that fans have been begging for for years.
That’s certainly what the LinkedIn profiles of some current and former Valve employees suggest. To be more specific, Valve artist Boyang Zhu’s profile mentions that he’s been working on an unannounced game for the developer since joining in January last year.
Meanwhile, Michael Anderson, who was a level designer at Valve for two years before leaving earlier year, mentions on his profile that while at the company, he was working on an unannounced title with “ambitious, never-before-seen gameplay”, for which he also made “puzzles from scratch”.
Those descriptions are quite vague, as one might expect for an unannounced title, but as you may have guessed, fans are speculating that they might be referring to a new Portal game. Fans of the series have been waiting for a new instalment for well over a decade at this point, but as is often the case with Valve franchises, it has been unable to get past its second instalment for a long, long time.
Interestingly, bite-sized Portal spinoff Aperture Desk Job was released last year as a Steam Deck advert of sorts- could that have been Valve dipping its toes in the water in preparation of jumping fully back into the universe with a full-fledged, long-overdue new mainline instalment? One would certainly hope- but for now, hope and speculate is all we can do.
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