FIREWATCH Developer Campo Santo Has Recently Been Acquired By Valve Corporation

The studio behind Firewatch and the upcoming In The Valley of Gods, Campo Santo, has recently been acquired by Valve Corporation. Valve is a well-known game developer and publisher that has games like Half-Life, Dota, Left 4 Dead, and Portal, to name but a few, under their belt as opposed to smaller indie developer studio Campo Santo who are known for the fantastic, and mysterious Firewatch.

The news of the acquisition came from Campo Santo's official blog where they announced the deal, gave their reasons as to why they chose to join Valve, and shared a rather entertaining anecdote involving a stolen bottle of champagne. 

As per the post, Campo Santo have always wanted to entertain by making and producing their games as well as meeting people and, more important, their fans. And they say that they found those very same traits in Valve, who are people who love to entertain, and creating content that others can enjoy, which quickly became an obvious match.

"In Valve we found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do (this, you may be surprised to learn, doesn’t happen every day). In us, they found a group with unique experience and valuable, diverse perspectives."

As a funny anecdote, they mention that during their visit at the IGN headquarters, as they discussed Firewatch, they came accross an undelivered 2011 Game of the Year Award for Portal 2.

"It happened to be engraved on an unopened bottle of champagne. Never ones to pass up free alcohol, we stole it and drank it to celebrate the launch of Firewatch a year later.So in some sense, this is a return home for us. Well, for that bottle of champagne."

Then, the Campo Santo team share, they discussed with Valve about their values and how they were asked by Valve if they wanted to join them at Bellevue and they said yes.

"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."

They were quick to reassure fans that they are still working on In the Valley of the Gods and it will now be a Valve game. They also mentioned that they won't stop supporting Firewatch so fans of Campo Santo shouldn't be worried about the decision they made in joining Valve.

While this does sound reassuring, indie developers being acquired by bigger corporations may get tricky down the road since most indie developers actually start passion projects and take their time without having to meet any deadlines, and that's probably something that doesn't necessarily sit well with bigger studios that may want results fast. It is still good news for the team at Campo Santo, especially because they know that what they're doing is what's best for their company.