Back in October, it was reported that the developers behind furry space-sim Kerbal Space Program had “moved on”, though it wasn’t exactly clear where they were moving to. Well, for some of them, the destination appears to have been Valve.
Valve has a reputation for snapping up talented mod teams and professional studios neck-deep in the company’s Source engine — Team Fortress, Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead being prime examples.
So it wasn’t a massive surprise when former Valve artist Roger Lundeen let slip on the Game Dev Unchained podcast that Valve had hit up the “entire team” at Squad:
…they’re still buying up mod teams, there’s the group of modders … that made Kerbal Space Station [sic] … I think that happened four or five months ago … they gave that entire team jobs.
This roughly coincides with last year’s news. However, there are a few important details. Firstly, not everyone appears to have taken up the offer and those who did are reportedly already cooking something up, writes Ben Burns of PCGamesN:
In response to concerns about the possibility of the entire team at Squad having left to join Valve, the Mexican studio explained “we have had several people working on our team over the years, it is common among development studios for team members to come and go, and if some of them are currently working in Valve, it is on their behalf and we have nothing to do with it.” … Valve have already responded to questions about the validity of all of this, stating “they joined a little while ago and we will have more news about what they are doing soon.”
Not quite Half-Life 3 confirmed, but I’ll take it.
Squad say “core” Kerbal team haven’t left for Valve after all [PCGamesN]
Comments
3 responses to “Valve Has Former Kerbal Space Program Developers Working On… Something”
“Space. Space. Wanna go to space. Spaaaaaaaaaace!”
What ever happened to the PS4 version of KSP? Got released in the US but not Europe / Australia?
This is what Valve do now – buy out teams with good ideas and get them to generate new IP. Apparently Valve can’t make games anymore without basically buying an idea to start them off.