It’s not uncommon for a game studio to take a break from making games for a bit, especially if they feel burned out or have a desire to take some time to think about what their next move should be. For Valve, they weren’t just making games, they were also running one of the biggest gaming platforms in the world via Steam, as well as making consoles themselves. But the question has remained for gamers all over, when would they start making games again?
Never forget, this is the team that brought Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, Portal, and of course, Half-Life to life on our PC, and many people have wanted games from them for years. Now though, we do have some idea on what they were doing. Programmer Brandon Reinhart talked with IGN about what Valve is up to outside of their mobile game Artifact and why Valve hasn’t done major releases recently:
“We spent a lot of time improving customer service on Steam,” he explained.
Apparently, this process took longer than many expected:
“That was a hard problem, and it took a bunch of people a bunch of time to work on. A bunch of investment we’ve done over the past few years hasn’t really been exceptionally visible to customers playing our games.”
Now though, things seem to be in working order, and thus, they can go back to making games:
“Now we’re in a place where we’re able to invest and focus a lot more on games again. And to deliver a bunch of high quality games that show we’re actually working really hard.”
So the question now is, what games are they working on? As noted, they are working on a game that has been announced via Artifact, but that’s for mobile systems. Many are expecting a big PC or console release from them, but will we get it? We’ll have to wait and see.
