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Today, we have an exciting update: Duncan and Paul, alongside many other talented members at Hopoo Games, will now be working on game development directly at @valvesoftware

  • regul@lemm.ee
    61·
    2 months ago

    Excuse the overdramatization, but it feels a lot like Frodo going to the Grey Havens. They did something great and now their reward is to disappear forever and be well taken care of.

    • Gamma@beehaw.orgEnglish
      43·
      2 months ago

      Pretty much. They said they were done with RoR (the sequel was already ambitious, they don’t want to be stuck with the series forever) and the payout for the IP was probably worth it to keep the studio financially flexible. Joining Valve is a no-brainer imo

      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
        21·
        2 months ago

        Oh yeah you’d be dumb to pass up working there. I totally understand not wanting to work on the same game forever.

        Good for them, imo. I just think it’s funny they “played both sides” so to speak.

        • Gamma@beehaw.orgEnglish
          6·
          2 months ago

          It’s definitely unusual, at least for a studio with this kind of success. Typically devs like to keep their IP! With how poorly the new dlc is going it does seem like they came out on top

        • Midnitte@beehaw.orgEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Would be interesting, though I don’t imagine they’d do that - Deadlock is pretty far along (despite the “early development” tag) and they seem like they have a full dev team.

          Valve seems to hire teams for new projects (such as Portal and Left 4 dead) so I’d be really interested to see if they’re doing something new

          • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            2·
            2 months ago

            I mean, they’re not gonna stop developing deadlock once it comes out. It’s likely gonna be a decade long project at least. More hands won’t hurt.

            • HER0@beehaw.org
              2·
              2 months ago

              The way they are handling Deadlock has many parallels to Dota 2. For example: popular invite-only playtest, probably a free-to-play model with cosmetics for sale, Dota 2/Icefrog style gameplay depth and balancing.

              This game has consistently had more players than most games on Steam without even being released yet. I think it is far from going the way of Artifact, and is much more likely to take a place alongside Dota 2 and CS2 as a giant multiplayer game with indefinite longevity.

              • dino@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                I hope you are right, I really like the game and hope they have some interesting fix for toxicitiy and matchmaking.

                • HER0@beehaw.org
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  Well, we can also look at their other games for this. For example, in Dota 2, everyone has a behavior score, based on reports and such. This is used for matchmaking on top of skill, and lower behavior scores result in certain restrictions (like can’t speak, can’t ping as much, can’t play ranked, can’t pause).