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In the Valley of Gods (Campo Santo's next game) is officially on-hold
- Thread starter Deleted member 5322
- Start date
Also of note - its the studio / parent company / devs at fault - - - unless it's one of those that fits my angry preconceived narrative.
That's not relevant. There's a lot of people telling us that we should be happy that they're doing what they're doing. But there are plenty of reasons to be unhappy about it.
Wat. I think you got the wrong idea here. There's a ton of people saying that evil Valve just killed another game, blablabla (while conveniently ignoring the Campo Santo people). Then there's some people saying that you know, this kind of thing happens, it sucks, but it's probably better that the game is on hold than forcing the devs to work on something where they don't feel like they have the inspiration to keep going.
And the post I quoted is still kinda wrong, don't you think? Valve is not known for "absorbing every good developer to work on their mega projects". That was a pretty big exaggeration on your part, which is par for the course with the tone of this thread.
Woof reading this twitter thread makes me want to burn my steam account to the ground and not buy a single thing from them again.
It sucks the game is on hold, I was looking forward to it, but if the Campo Santo people would rather spend their time on other projects at the moment, that's their prerogative and I support them.
I am of the opinion that I don't owe sales to developers, and developers don't owe me games.
I'd rather the developers work on what they want to work on, hoping it will be something I'll like too once they feel it's ready to put out.
I am of the opinion that I don't owe sales to developers, and developers don't owe me games.
I'd rather the developers work on what they want to work on, hoping it will be something I'll like too once they feel it's ready to put out.
Maybe read the entire twitter thread and then also read this one:
Aim this hot take at your PC, and you'd probably succeed.
More seriously, I think this whole thing really shows up the lack of awareness some people have about what goes on behind the scenes, and the influence of bias and "a little knowledge is a bad thing". Like
a) Creative freedom is great, and few (if any) multi-billion-dollar-a-year companies allow their employees to move around like this. Most would force their employees to work on a project until completion, even if it meant it was worse for wear (Schreier's piece on Anthem came to mind here).
b) Projects get placed on-hold or cancelled all the time, in every industry, not to mention projects that get downgraded during production. It's a fact of life that not every project a group works on will see release, either as intended, or at all. But because people were already aware of Valley, it's so much worse than, say, Stars of Blood, which was only revealed after it had been canned for awhile.
c) Because shitting on Valve has become a national pastime for gamers, It's obviously Valve's fault Valley is on hold. Sure, compensation is tied success to some degree, but it's shockingly disrespectful to everyone at Valve, not least the Campo devs, to say they moved onto Alyx (or elsewhere in the company) because of money. Like, sometimes the creative juices just aren't flowing, and you have to move on for awhile. This is not a new thing, considering composers have been walking off projects for centuries because they can't untangle the knot they've wrought for themselves.
d) The lack of knowledge about how Valve works (contract writers, people moving around, Valve happy to rehire talent that left) really pushes home the fact that some people just want to ignorantly shit-post about the company, and move on. Like, the gaming equivalent of a toilet, in some ways.
Like, I've said before, I get the disappointment in it being on-hold, but this seems to be a weird confluence of people shitting on Valve (in a way not unlike people ripping apart EA for buying and dissolving studios), and people wanting a game released sooner rather than later, even if that means the quality is bad. Valve really are damned if they do, damned if they don't, considering if they allowed Valley to be released next year and it sucked, the arguments would be both the same as in this thread, and coincidentally entirely contradictory.
Very disappointed in Campo Santo. They committed to an X1X upgrade for Firewatch, then bailed on it. Then announced an awesome looking game like this and bailed on it as well. It appears the staff don't care about their fans and just want to go work on a mainstream title.
And to tell you the truth, the reasons to be unhappy are borderline selfish, especially those spewing out hot takes in here. Nobody knows the true story on why "In The Valley of..." is on hold. All we know is how Campo Santo devs have put the game on the backburner to concentrate on other stuff like HL: Alyx, Dota, and the Steam service. Valve didn't force them, the devs decided to pursue those options. It's stated in the article and hell, it's even stated in this thread. For all we know, they can revisit "In The Valley of..." down the line whether it's with Valve or not. Valve isn't known to stranglehold the creative work of their employees especially if it is IP that haven't been birthed from Valve. Is it disappointing? Yeah but you really shouldn't call this project dead just yet because it was the devs that put a halt on things, not Valve.
Valve didn't develop and release HL2 E3, a game that they promised and had a release date for, for 12 years and counting. FOH with this valve apologist BS.
A videogame tracking the racial history of Egypt sounded awesome! I really really hope it's not completely dead 😔
Oof, this makes the game sound even more interesting than I imagined.
I think what stings the most about this is that we've "lost" what could have been an incredibly unique voice in the industry after just one game. Even if some of that will go into Half-Life, I very much doubt it's going to be the same. Good for the devs probably but as a player it's just so... sad and disappointing.
Turtle Rock and.. who was the other studio that left Valve?
people trying to say they didn't sell out? they did sell out and selling out is never bad for the person/people selling out or else you don't sell out
Holy crap. Duncan. His work on the Firewatch newsletter/blog/website was so freaking good. What a shame this is.
There is much more to a writer than being able to come up with a story and write a TLDR, though.
Didn't a large chunk of the Kerbal Space Program people get hired and later leave? That's my best guess.
Funny thing about that, they're finally making good on that cancelled game. It's called Half-Life: Alyx, you may have heard about it.
Creating a VR only exclusive is not making good on anything considering the vast majority of HL fans across PC and consoles will not be able to play it.
If Valve were making good, then a traditional game would have been focus, rather than this tone deaf approach.
Basically Campo signed away their creative freedom to join Valve which is ironic considering why they left Telltale.
How? They're free to do whatever they want (within reasonable limits). You may have a problem with Valve not having a manager who would finish a game no matter what, but otherwise nobody signed their creativity away. It's not like they turned into Bend who were a glorified go to spin-off guys/support team for over a decade or exist solely to work on a single IP like 343 and Coalition.
Did we ever see anything more than the initial trailer, which was cinematic?
A bit premature to say it "never looked fun"...
I can see why Valve canned it now.
Valve releasing a game with 2 black women leads would not go down well on the steam forums.
Yeah that's why their main new project is a game where you play an Afro-Asian woman. Because they're pandering to racists and sexists. Makes perfect sense.
The devs themselves have stated what happened, Era is just ignoring that because of reasons.
Like this reply is a perfect example for posting something that has nothing to do with the topic at all:
Of course. Remember how Firewatch's Steam forum was flooded by angry PewDiePie fans, Gaben literally bought Campo Santo to cancel their game as an act of revenge in Felix's honor.
I probably should add /s just in case
I don't like Valve as a publisher.
I presume they're experimenting and working on a bunch of projects and pitches, but barely any of them live on for long enough to see the light of day. And the ones that do, and are games, tend to be these attempts at being big popular multiplayer trend things, with hats.
Maybe the concept/experiment phase is engaging as a developer, but as a peruser of video games it's sad to see effectively nothing happen. Or nothing that I'm into, I suppose. Alyx is the first game since Portal 2 I would've been interested in, but then it was VR only. And now instead of In the Valley of the Gods, a game I might've cared for, there's nothing.
I suppose if a significant amount of Campo Santos don't particularly care to keep working on In the Valley of the Gods, if their hearts aren't in it, or if they'd rather do other things, perhaps it's for the best that it's not happening, and perhaps we should move on as well.
But still, it's sad to see nothing happen. What's at the core of this feeling like a bummer is the prospect of Campo Santo becoming another cog in the Valve. It does quite sound like they're disbanding and spreading out across the company. And also this cool game gold is why Important if True disappearing wasn't a complete downer.
:(
I presume they're experimenting and working on a bunch of projects and pitches, but barely any of them live on for long enough to see the light of day. And the ones that do, and are games, tend to be these attempts at being big popular multiplayer trend things, with hats.
Maybe the concept/experiment phase is engaging as a developer, but as a peruser of video games it's sad to see effectively nothing happen. Or nothing that I'm into, I suppose. Alyx is the first game since Portal 2 I would've been interested in, but then it was VR only. And now instead of In the Valley of the Gods, a game I might've cared for, there's nothing.
I suppose if a significant amount of Campo Santos don't particularly care to keep working on In the Valley of the Gods, if their hearts aren't in it, or if they'd rather do other things, perhaps it's for the best that it's not happening, and perhaps we should move on as well.
But still, it's sad to see nothing happen. What's at the core of this feeling like a bummer is the prospect of Campo Santo becoming another cog in the Valve. It does quite sound like they're disbanding and spreading out across the company. And also this cool game gold is why Important if True disappearing wasn't a complete downer.
:(
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I mean, Telltale was also an abusive shithole in terms of work environment. Valve is not even remotely comparable.
Hard to blame then. When you get bought by Valve and find out that they are indeed working on a new Half Life game it's almost impossible to not want to work on it.
Some of the "selling out" stuff in here is really gross, but I guess that's par for the course on this pro-developer forum.
or maybe its because the devs decided they wanted to work on other projects? They seem to be really excited about working on Half-Life Alyx.
It's so hilarious. Both Valve and Campo Santo explained why the game is on indefinite hold for the time being in a very transparent matter and yet, it's time to shit on the devs and call them sell outs or say 1,001 Valve memes.
However, like you said, what can you expect from this pro-developer forum.
It serves as a reminder that era is no less toxic than most other forums. Maybe a little less bigoted, but just as toxic.
Some of the people in this thread should just admit they don't actually care about the Campo devs and are just using this to rag on Valve.
This is now the second deeply embarrassing Campo/Valve thread, made all the more embarrassing by the fact that at least two of the devs post on this forum.
"Evil Volvo" narrative is too good to give up on. Change Valve on Corporation S or Corporation N and it suddenly will be "for the better".
Remember when we had the first one when Campo was bought and Campo devs came here to say they were dissapointed with the reaction and era promised to be better?
I remember.