Valve has purchased the company that developed Firewatch, Campo Santo. Purportedly all 12 of the developer's staff will be staying on with the company and will continue to work on its planned next game, In The Valley of Gods, which is still on track for release at some point in 2019.
"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," Campo Santo said of the news. "They asked us if we’d all be interested in coming up to Bellevue and doing that there and we said yes."
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For the most part it sounds like little will change thanks to this move, although the Camp Santo employees will have a number of new colleagues now as part of the larger Valve collective. If needed too, it seems that the developers will have much greater resources at their disposal, as Valve is one of the largest game developer/publishers in the world, with all of Steam sales to back up its finances.
If anything, this news should act as further endorsement of Campo Santo. Valve doesn't just buy up companies willy nilly and has in fact only done it twice in the past. It acquired a few Plants vs. Zombies developers in 2012, but the last time it really acquired another developer was when it brought in Turtle Rock Studios to co-develop Left 4 Dead 2. And we all know how well that turned out.
