Valve to Start Developing Games Again, Gabe Newell Confirms
Valve, which has been considered a premier game developer before it eventually settled down to maintaining the Steam games distribution store, is getting back into making games. Company co-founder Gabe Newell announced that they will be working on several titles, starting with "Artifact."
It's not exactly what "Half-Life" or "Portal" fans are waiting for, but now that the company is on very solid ground revenue-wise with Steam, there's plenty of time to come around to "Half-Life 3" or a similar game.
Steam and Valve's hardware projects are things that are "an investment in the future," Newell said during a press presentation.
"Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us. So that's sort of good news. Hooray! Valve's going to start shipping games again," Newell announced before presenting their upcoming card game, as quoted by PC Gamer.
Valve first came into prominence with their classic games that they have extended to include multiplayer, including the immensely popular "Half-Life" series as well as "Portal" and "Team Fortress." In recent years, the company has stopped developing new games entirely, and instead focused on its Steam platform, and later on with hardware development.
All this work on creating a huge games distribution platform and their own hardware looks to be in preparation for going back into making games, although Newell would not share any specifics for now, as IGN noted.
"We aren't going to be talking about it today," Newell added, "but sort of the big thing that, the new arrow we have in our quiver really is the ability to develop hardware and software simultaneously," he further stated.
Part of the reason for this approach is their admiration for other companies. "We've always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo," Newell admitted, eyeing their ability to control both the software and hardware side of their games.