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It is rare for Valve to make any big acquisitions, with its last being the acquisition of Campo Santo, the studio behind indie-hit, Firewatch, back in 2018. Now, Valve has made another move, hiring the developers at Hopoo Games, the team behind the Risk of Rain series, prior to the IP being bought by Gearbox.
In a statement, Hopoo Games confirmed that with its developers moving to Valve's offices, the studio will be saying goodbye for now and will be halting production on its next game. Instead, the Hopoo Games team will begin working on various in-development projects at Valve.
“Today, we have an exciting update: Duncan and Paul, alongside many other talented members at Hopoo Games, will now be working on game development directly at Valve. We're incredibly grateful to Valve for their partnerships in the last decade, and are excited to continue working on their awesome titles. However, this does mean that we are stopping production on our unannounced game, Snail.”
“We love making games – and will continue to do so, for years to come. We're excited to be working side-by-side with the talented people at Valve. But for now – sleep tight, Hopoo Games.”
Interestingly, this move comes immediately after dataminers discovered that Valve is working on a new single-player Half-Life game. The situation is all very similar to Valve's acquisition of Campo Santo back in 2018, after those developers moved into Valve's office, they scrapped their plans for their announced game, Valley of the Gods, and instead began working on Half-Life: Alyx. It is entirely possible that the Hopoo Games team will now be helping out on the new, unannounced Half-Life game.
KitGuru Says: It is always exciting when Valve gets a production boost. The studio was stuck in a cycle of starting and scrapping projects for a decade. However, over these past six years or so, there has been a real change in momentum, albeit with a few misses, like Artifact and Dota: Underlords.
