Valve Goes Back To Its Roots, Decides To Begin Making Games Again

This isn’t the freshest news, but it’s important enough to revive. Earlier this week, it was discovered that Valve has not just one game in the works, but multiple. The problem? We only know about the first, and nothing about the rest. So, before you get your hopes up for an Episode Three, it’s probably best to continue believing it’ll never happen (for the sake of sanity).

At Valve’s offices this week, company founder and president Gabe Newell showed off his company’s upcoming card game Artifact. With games like Blizzard’s Hearthstone proving so popular, and Valve absolutely loving the microtransaction infusion its own games have experienced, it’s not hard to envision how much a game like this will keep people glued to the Steam Market. Sweet.

Where Valve engages selected users to guide its future games

What about the future? Straight from the mouth of the gaming god: “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.”

The downside here is that we don’t know anything whatsoever about Valve’s future titles, because the company does an amazingly good job keeping all of that within its walls. But, we do know for sure, thanks to an old reddit AMA, that at least one of these games will be a full-fledged single-player adventure.

People have doubted that a Portal 3 will happen, but I see that being more likely than another Half-Life game, since that series seemed to completely fall apart after Episode Two. Add to that, Portal has an even greater reach, catering to players of all ages. At the same time, knowing what Valve is like, it wouldn’t be surprising if this new single player experience was completely brand-new IP that’s unlike anything any of us expect. If Half-Life fans ever get another taste, I’m betting on a Telltale adventure.

What do you think?