Independent studio Campo Santo (Firewatch) has been acquired by a most unlikely suitor – Valve, a digital store operator that once made video games. Three people familiar with the news confirmed the purchase to Kotaku today.
Valve plans to leave Campo Santo intact as a team, a source said, rather than absorbing the studio and re-assigning its employees to other projects. But the independent developers are already enjoying Valve’s perks – we’ve heard that this past week, Campo Santo employees got to attend Valve’s annual retreat to Hawaii. The studio will also relocate to Seattle soon.
Campo Santo, founded in 2013, released the critically and commercially successful adventure game Firewatch in February of 2016. The studio’s next game, In the Valley of Gods, is scheduled for next year.
Campo Santo confirmed the news on its website, saying that Valve became an “obvious match” to the studio. “Both sides spoke about our values and how, when you get right down to it, we, as human beings, are hard-limited by the time we have left when it comes to making the things we care about and believe in. They asked us if we’d all be interested in coming up to Bellevue and doing that there and we said yes.”
Comments
25 responses to “Valve Buys Firewatch Developer Campo Santo”
Shots fired. XD
Things that make you go ‘Hmmm’
Can’t wait to see the DoTA2 items these guys make.
I’m going to be that pessimistic turd. I hope it doesn’t mean that Valley of the Gods will have an unnecessary multiplayer component shoehorned in instead of being an immersive single player narrative… With the option to buy hats.. Which will take a few more years to develop.
Would it be that bad if they sold hats for a single player first person game without mirrors?
Nice try Valve, but I’m still watching for games made by you and not just another team you’ve absorbed!
Like Portal! Or Counter-Strike!
Well yeah I don’t count those for the most part. They have only joined the ranks through a legacy of having more portal and counter strike added over the years. As far as I’m concerned anyway.
Portal 3 with great VR support (optional) would be pretty popular, they have already teased it with that VR robot assembly demo.
A game where you constantly fly around at high speed bouncing off of things at freakish angles while up and down constantly change. IN VR!
What will they name it?
Portal 3: Chunder Cannon?
Obligatory Half Life 3 comment
I’m surprised this is not the first comment.
Hopefully their creativity and good story telling will make HL3 a reality.
Can’t wait for the 5 hour Gordon Freeman walking simulator
You means like the first 10-15 minutes of every Half-Life game
And there we are like this guy
So Firewatch is literally the only thing they will ever make then.
They’re already midway through development on In The Valley of the God – they’d finish work on that before any of those kinds of moves started kicking in.
Psssh, a project half done and then being thrown out? That’s classic Valve 😉
I feel like this was a missed opportunity for Microsoft. They should have paid top dollar to acquire this studio.
hey, at least its better than “EA buys Firewatch Developer Campo Santo”
I got sad just reading that!
Wow that’s some bleak alternate reality.
This is bizarre, why would Valve want this studio? Why would Campo Santo want to become part of the Lord Gaben-Mind? The studio owners are probably laughing all the way to the bank, but that can’t be the only reason for this.
I’m hoping it signals that Valve is pivoting back towards strong single-player games.
I mean, it probably isn’t, but a guy can dream!
Valve will have these guys doing VR nodoubt.
buy enough developers and one of them might be able to finish half-life.