What is Valve working on these days?
- Thread starter fluffydelusions
- Start date
I'd never really thought about this till now, but HL3 would absolutely require notable outsourcing at this point. Asset wise, to hold up to next-gen, Valve simply don't have the internal bandwidth to build it.
Money isn't an issue, but talent might well be if they're unwilling to share the workload with outside teams.
Yeah, I'm not a "super fan" so I couldn't spot them as that art immediately. Do you have a link? I can see if they look familiar enough from my memory. It was about 8-12 different busts of some various characters. Female/Male, white/asian/black, old/young, etc
ashecitism
Member
Will never see the light of day anyway
Yeah me too. That would mean defo no HL3 in '16....
That surprised me as well. Last time at Cologne a pro gamer said 5 people are working on it. For the 2nd most played game on Steam? lol Surely if they want to move it to Source 2 at least more people are needed?
It's been 6 months since a proper heads up. Not encouraging.
lol
Well, Erik Johnson said they're going to work on original heroes eventually.
Good post.
Their "communication" and silence is worse than Valve Time.
im hoping for a stealth release of HL3.
they could get away with it. once everyone realized it was out they would buy it anyway
speculawyer
Member
Do they even make new games anymore? Or is it just Steam updates, TF2 updates, and DOTA 2 updates.
It's hard to say. 2014 is the only year since 2002 that they haven't released a game.
I think a year off is okay and we shouldn't jump to conclusions that they don't make new games anymore based off one year.
Yeah, when you look at how many people big publishers use to make even one AAA game it's pretty obvious why some things just take time at valve.
Currently they're adding Oracle to Dota:
They have three more heroes left after this one so in about three more years they might start on a new project.
I actually hope this year they will put a brand new hero out for their Chinese New Year event. We should get Winter Wvyvern this Christmas (They have been sitting on the voice recordings for a year now), and no on really wants Zet.
Sentenza
Member
I still think these concept arts look incredible. They have such an unusual vibe. Love it.
I was more intrigued by this project than I could probably ever be for a new Half-Life.
And I like Half-Life a lot.
Dota, TF2, and CSGo all account for less then 1/4th of their staff (By some measures its likely 50 people between the 3 games at this point), there is a huge portion of the company that is very intrested in some unannounced stuff.
Uh, one is here - It's a video from when it was believed to be called Stars of Barathrum, you can find a lot more info by googling Valve SOB Concept Art. And around the 1:30 mark there are some faces that may sound like what you saw. Do see the entire video though, there's some really nice art in there.
edit: beaten by ashecitism
Damn you.
They've moved the entirety of SteamOS to Debian instead of Ubuntu. And that shit takes time. To quote a wise man; These things... They take time.
ashecitism
Member
Mind you that according to jshackles the biggest group is ...wait for it... customer service!
Uh, one is here - It's a video from when it was believed to be called Stars of Barathrum, you can find a lot more info by googling Valve SOB Concept Art. And around the 1:30 mark there are some faces that may sound like what you saw. Do see the entire video though, there's some really nice art in there.
edit: beaten by ashecitism
Damn you.
They've moved the entirety of SteamOS to Debian instead of Ubuntu. And that shit takes time. To quote a wise man; These things... They take time.
Stuff at 1:34 looks familiar but I dont think they were all deformed like that. Might be remembering wrong though
I was going to say, well less than half of Valve's staff is game devs.
Less than you think. Ubuntu is actually based off Debian, under the hood there is not a lot of difference. Each version of Ubuntu is forked from a stable snapshot of Debian.
ashecitism
Member
Why are people saying they moved SteamOS from Ubuntu to Debian? When the "beta" came out last year it was already based on Debian.
jim-jam bongs
Member
Honestly, whenever the fuck the next morsel of half-life comes out I am confident it will be spectacular. They have earned my faith in that regard, because they've never let me down so far. Until then, I'm happy with them doing all of the other exceptional things they do.
I think thats because they more or less have to all do some customer service. Likely its something like "All people not working on X, must do CS for 1 hour a week"
You know, the worse thing about the whole Half Life 3 thing is Valve likely can't even outsource a spin off or side game anymore until they put out a proper game, there was several Half Life projects that were being worked on by other companies that all managed to fall though.
ashecitism
Member
This is certainly a possibility. I mean iirc a now ex-Valve said the SteamOS project consisted of 3 people. 3 people. For an OS. Same goes for vogl which is supposed to be very important to this initiative. And then we have 5 people working on GO, the 2nd most popular game on Steam.
I mean. Yeah....
TheRedSnifit
Member
I'm sure valve is working on a few of their main titles (HL3, Portal 3 , L4D3) but they are just extremely quiet. They refuse to release any information on anything unless it's a solid definite it's going to come out. People also seem to forget valve isn't always slow at making games. When L4D2 dropped, a lot of people were surprised it came after the first one.
Also as others have stated, I think they are porting or have been working on making their new games on Source 2.0. Valve is always about trying to revolutionize game mechanics and what not. To be honest though, I am surprised L4D3 hasn't at least even been announced. This adds speculation because it makes you wonder if it's even in a playable state. I have a strange feeling Valve may try a new "orange box" thing and release all the heavy hitters inside their.
Also as others have stated, I think they are porting or have been working on making their new games on Source 2.0. Valve is always about trying to revolutionize game mechanics and what not. To be honest though, I am surprised L4D3 hasn't at least even been announced. This adds speculation because it makes you wonder if it's even in a playable state. I have a strange feeling Valve may try a new "orange box" thing and release all the heavy hitters inside their.
This is a good post.
While I think being too open/not secret enough can actually be a detriment to a game's hype, Valve will almost never find themselves in that scenario because of the strength of their brand alone.
I don't even think HL3 is a focus, or that they care. It's to the point where it might be better off as a myth than a game that cannot break free of expectations that they also helped catalyze.
Dota has like a Dozen people.
I just assume the art staff is mostly "freelance" and isn't counted in these numbers. There has to be like 2 or 3 big projects sucking people in, like the main Dota team shrunk a huge amount after mid 2013 (So I think a lot of those guys must be working on Source 2)
To me, I feel like Valve works very similar like Apple when it comes to releases. Apple doesn't tease anything or say what they are working on. Yet when Apple does announce a new product, it's usually able to be brought two weeks later. At this point I feel like Valve just announcing they are working on HL3 would do no good. They would have to announce it and give a date when it's coming out or have it come out I'mmediately after announcement.
The lack of info makes me wonder that HL3 is probably in development hell though. I think L4D3 is much farther along the line then it
Working with Shane Acker on an animated film called Deep apparently:
http://screenrant.com/shane-acker-valve-deep-movie-sandy-178699/
http://screenrant.com/shane-acker-valve-deep-movie-sandy-178699/
Don't be silly, they have the community making all the hats now.
You should have been a good little Freeman and found some air ducts to crouch-walk through. And then eavesdrop!
alexandros
Banned
It makes you wonder what the rest of them are working on.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Planning the holiday sale of course!
Interficium
Banned
An important thing to remember is that 30-40 percent of Valve staff only works on Steam. The developer side is relatively small, only a couple hundred at best. While those couple hundred people could, theoretically, produce HL3, my understanding is that there's only small pockets of support to returning to the AAA space at Valve, not nearly enough to get everyone on board (which they would absolutely need). This would either sacrifice a lot of the resources devoted to CS, TF2, DOTA, etc (which they don't want to do), or require them to do a staff up (ditto).
Valve employees are generally not very keen on the idea of going back to the death march crunch cycle of AAA game development. I don't blame them, either.
/edit: the "There's only five people working on CS!!!" comments are really overblown. There may be five people who are dedicated to CS:GO but I assure you the number of individual contributors is much greater.
Insiders have said that DOTAs core team is tiny
So i doubt it
All they do is release chests once a month anyway
Also why would they even care to announce shit?
The only people who gain is the customers, seeing as Valve is still privately owned and has no stock market listing