Stefan Mileschin

Shacknews says that Eric Wolpaw, the writer behind Half Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead, is back at Valve. Following several other high profile departures, Eric left the gaming company about 2 years ago, and many saw it as a symptom of Valve's shift away from actually developing games. Shacknews first heard about his return via an (allegedly) leaked email floating around social media websites, but they ended up finding Wolpaw's name in the Artifact credits. As they note, Valve is facing some stiff competition in the PC gaming storefront space, and some newer titles from Valve could make the Steam store more competitive. Before our readers start confirming Half-Life 3 or Left 4 Dead 3 or Portal 3, it is important to remember that Valve recently demonstrated the ability to count to three. It may take some time for the creative juices to start flowing at the company. Valve's boss man Gabe Newell is on the record saying that "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." Wolpaw's return along with the acquisiton of Firewatch developer Campo Santo definitely adds some credibility to Gabe's claims. It also makes sense that Valve Software is going to get back to making games as they face increasing competition in the PC digital software storefront landscape... Shout out to shirif for bringing this to our attention with his Chatty post.

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2019/01/...back_at_valve/