At a reveal event for Artifact, a digital card came set in DOTA’s universe and Valve’s first full non-VR game since Portal 2 was released in 2011, CEO Gabe Newell had some interesting comments that are sure to immediately reignite conversation about whether we’ll ever be getting the next chapter of the Half-Life or Portal games.
Newell first talked about Valve’s focus on Steam and hardware (specifically the Vive VR headset and Steam machines), saying that was an “investment in the future.” Following those comments, he addressed Artifact and how it was just the first of several impending Valve titles. “Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us. So that’s sort of good news. Hooray! Valve’s going to start shipping games again.” Last year in a Reddit AMA, Newell did confirm that Valve is working on at least one fully single-player games, in addition to confirming three VR games later in the year. Newell’s statement doesn’t clarify if there are projects in the works beyond those games, but nature of the statement does seem to indicate that there are things coming we don’t yet know about. “We aren’t going to be talking about it today,” Newell said, “but sort of the big thing, the new arrow we have in our quiver, really, is our ability to develop hardware and software simultaneously.”
It’s impossible for Valve to take about software w...