One of the biggest moves a publisher of video games can make is to bring a new developer into their fold. This makes them exclusive to that publisher, which can lead to some interesting titles and possibilities. For the team at Valve, they’ve been mostly quiet on the gaming front, but promised that more games are coming. And now, they’ve made a move to help seal that, as they’ve acquired developer Campo Sant, best known as the team behind Firewatch.
Campo Santo themselves are very young developer wise, they were only born in 2013, and released their first game, Firewatch, in 2016. The game was very successful, selling over a million units in less than a year and getting critical acclaim all over. So for Valve to want them is a big honor. On their website, the team talked about the acquisition.
“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.”
They went on to talk about the negotiations:
“We had a series of long conversations with the people at Valve and everyone shared the satisfaction we take in working with people whose talents dwarf our own to make things we never thought possible. 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.”
The team promises that they will continue Firewatch, as well as work on their second title, In the Valley of Gods. However, they will be moving to Washington in order to be located in Valve’s headquarters.
