Campo Santo – developer of the critically-acclaimed title, Firewatch – is officially becoming a part of Valve umbrella.
This past weekend, the Campo Santo team posted a blog on their website, indicating that the twelve-person studio will be combining forces with Valve in an effort to continue their love (and jobs) of creating video games, while helping Valve to (finally) achieve its newly rediscovered desire to start shipping games again.
The decision to join up with Valve, stems from a vision of core values shared between the two companies, from creating and developing games to the day-to-day operations of running a video game company.
“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.”
The reception to Valve’s endeavor back into the realm of making games has been lukewarm. Honestly, that’s putting it nicely. While fans had hoped for a long-awaited follow-up to Half-Life 2, or even another title in the Portal franchise, they were disappointed (to say the least) to learn that Valve’s next title will be Artifact; a DOTA card game in the same vein as Blizzard’s Hearthstone.
While it is impressive that Artifact has been created in collaboration with Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic the Gathering, it is just simply not what Valve fans want. Acquiring Campo Santo may be exactly what Valve needs to right the ship, in that sense.
Despite its technical issues, Firewatch was highly-praised for its visual style, story, and dialogue, by fans and critics alike, winning multiple awards following its release in February 2016. The game sold 500,000 copies within its first month of release, hitting their one-millionth copy sold in late 2016. If you’re still not impressed, the game is slated for a move to the big screen, with Campo Santo teaming up with film production company Good Universe (The Disaster Artist, Neighbors, Don’t Breathe) to develop a film adaptation based on the game.
With Valve wanting to start releasing video games again, joining up with Campo Santo appears to be a great move for both parties. Campo Santo will continue its work on In the Valley of Gods; the studio’s next title, which will be released as a Valve game.
Campo Santo may not be a household name yet, but publishing under the Valve umbrella could be just what the “small, but scrappy” company needs to become a heavy-hitting developer in the video game industry.