It has been widely assumed that Valve has stepped away from the single-player experiences that helped make them the company they are today. Their last single-player game was Portal 2 in 2011, and there has been no official word on any more since then. These assumptions seemed to be confirmed through an interview conducted by Game Informer’s Andrew Reiner, and fans have all but given up hope on seeing sequels to their favorite franchises.
That interview proved to be important enough to get Valve to break their silence, as days later Valve head Gabe Newell announced that he would be doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) – one of his favorite ways to communicate with fans. The AMA took place last night on r/The_Gaben, and while Half-Life 3 was not confirmed, we got a lot more insight on what Valve has been up to and what to expect from them in the future.
A few of my favorite questions (may be edited for clarity):
Reddit User: Is Valve still working on any fully-fledged single player games?
Gabe: Yes.
RU: An unidentified anonymous source at Valve has said that Half Life 3 has been cancelled. Is that source legitimate?
Gabe: I personally believe all unidentified anonymous sources on the Internet.
RU: Does Valve plan on doing anything with Source 2 in the coming years? If so, what?
Gabe: We are continuing to use Source 2 as our primary game development environment. Aside from moving Dota 2 to the engine recently, we are are using it as the foundation of some unannounced products. We would like to have everyone working on games here at Valve to eventually be using the same engine. We also intend to continue to make the Source 2 engine work available to the broad developer community as we go, and to make it available free of charge.
RU: Hi GabeN, Why does Valve not talk to its community about the games/apps its developing as much as other companies?
Gabe: Because our decision making is way more conditional than most other companies. The one thing we won’t do is waste our customers time and money, which means we will cancel or change stuff much later in development. Tracking our choices would be annoying and frustrating.
The entire AMA can be read here. While it didn’t give us a ton of concrete information, it’s nice to know that the Valve from the old days is still there somewhere. Toiling away at the next great gaming experience.
