Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: campo santo, Firewatch, HRL, Valley of the Gods, valve

What Campo Santo's Move to Valve Means for In the Valley of Gods

Published Sat, 05 May 2018 15:20:35 -0500

When Firewatch dev Campo Santo announced that it was moving in-house to Valve, many fans of the developer's current project In the Valley of Gods were worried about how the move will affect development of the new game.

A recent report from IGN delves into the ramifications of the move with co-founder Sean Vanaman.

From IGN:

"This started from Jake and I both sitting down with ourselves and being like, 'What do we want as human beings,' and then 'What do we want Campo Santo to achieve,' and then 'What do we want as game developers to achieve," Vanaman explained.

"That conversation led into the conversation of 'That's all really good. You guys should really consider doing that here under Valve.'

That conversation started internally, but grew into Vanaman and Rodkin having informal discussions with outside parties, including some Valve employees.

"[The conversation involved us explaining] 'This is what we're thinking about our next game. We've got some problems we want to solve. This is the way we want to run the company," Vanaman said. "That conversation led into the conversation of 'That's all really good. You guys should really consider doing that here under Valve.'"

Vanaman explained this idea came from their very first discussion.

"Then the long slow journey of thinking about what that meant and doing mutual due diligence," he said. "Is this really a good fit for us? Is this a good fit for me? Is this a good fit for Jake? Is this a good fit for all the individuals who work at Campo Santo?

"One thing led to another and now we all work here."

So while Vanaman isn't the most effusive on how things might change for In the Valley of Gods, his commentary does support the earlier statements given by the studio as a whole. We do know much of the development will be staying the same — the same team is working on the game, and it's still being built in Unity. Further details on development will likely take a while to make it to us.