In a surprising move, Valve has acquired the developer of Firewatch, and the upcoming In the Valley of the Gods, Campo Santo. A post on Campo Santo’s official site goes into more detail, but it appears as though Campo Santo’s 12 employees will be joining Valve and will be continuing the production of their current project, In the Valley of the Gods, which was debuted at The Game Awards last year.
Campo Santo was founded in 2013 by Sean Vanaman (Telltale, The Walking Dead), Jake Rodkin (Telltale, The Walking Dead), Nels Anderson (Mark of the Ninja) and Olly Moss (Graphic Artist). Firewatch was released on February 6th, 2016 and was received rather positively. I reviewed Firewatch for Marooners’ Rock and gave it an 8.8, saying; “Firewatch is a special game from the newly formed Campo Santo. It’s a game that is over pretty quickly, but stays with you for a long time after…The future is bright for developer Campo Santo, and I can’t wait to see where they take us next.” Well, now we know some of that future and that it was indeed bright.
In addition to In the Valley of the Gods, Campo Santo had announced that Firewatch would be headed to the Switch this spring. This all happened before the acquisition, but it appears that is still on track. It doesn’t appear there will be any added features, but it will be nice to take that adventure on the go with you.
To end this story, I will post a quote from Campo Santo that may shed some light on why this occurred, and once again, as I said in my review, I can’t wait to see where they take us next.
…We had a series of long conversations with the people at Valve and everyone shared the satisfaction we take in working with people whose talents dwarf our own to make things we never thought possible. Both sides spoke about our values and how, when you get right down to it, we, as human beings, are hard-limited by the time we have left when it comes to making the things we care about and believe in. They asked us if we’d all be interested in coming up to Bellevue and doing that there and we said yes.
