Firewatch Developer Acquired By Valve, Hints Of Future Games To Come?

Campo Santo was the indie development studio responsible for the massive hit, Firewatch. As indie games go, it offered one of the most unique experiences that was pulled off so well, it helped push the growth of the indie scene even further for everyone else. Valve has apparently acquired the studio, which hints at the company’s potential renewed interest in actually making games.

The acquisition was announced by Campo Santo last Saturday, noting a few key factors in the development, including the need for relocation of the team that’s composed of 12 people. This is also a rather delicate development since the studio is currently working on its next game, “In the Valley of the Gods,” which is basically a treasure hunt set in ancient Egypt.

“In Valve we found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do (this, you may be surprised to learn, doesn’t happen every day). In us, they found a group with unique experience and valuable, diverse perspectives. It quickly became an obvious match,” Campo Santo writes.

As Ars Technica notes, this development is surprising for a variety of reasons. One of them is the fact that Valve has been relatively silent on its video game development front in recent years. While it has announced titles that include a card game and a collaboration on a bridge-building simulator, it hasn’t released a full title since Portal 2 and Dota 2.

The company has been mostly preoccupied with building gaming hardware, investing in VR, and expanding its digital distribution platform, Steam. With the acquisition of Campo Santo, perhaps Valve is finally ready to create new installments of its existing IP or perhaps work on a new one. For those who might be hoping that this might mean Half-Life 3 is coming, though, there’s, unfortunately, no chance of that happening.