When players think of successful video game companies, names like Nintendo and Epic Games come to mind. But no one can discount Valve, the owner of Steam and, arguably, one of the most successful video game companies today. With this year's Steam Summer Sale wrapping up, it's important to catalog everything in Valve's pedigree.
Even before Steam, Valve had created several successful games. Half-Life was and is one of the most important titles in video game history, and both Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO are still played today. For a long time after Steam, Valve's games very much fell by the wayside. Until the introduction of the Index and Half-Life: Alyx, the glory days of Valve's game production seemed to be fading in the rearview mirror with Portal 2.
Contrary to this image, it seems Valve has been trying to get a new game out for some time now. It was recently announced that a documentary would show the inner workings of Valve, including projects it was working on up to the release of Half-Life: Alyx and the Index. One of these was A.R.T.I, which would have been a voxel-based game similar to Minecraft, focusing on destruction and construction. The writer of Half-Life 2 and Portal was on board as a character at one point. The game was moved to VR, but production was halted to focus on Alyx.
A.R.T.I's story is not unique among the projects Valve was working on. Also shelved for Alyx's production was SimTrek, a VR game developed by the Kerbal Space Program team. Shooter was the name for another project, an FPS created entirely from Half-Life 2 assets. It was designed to be part of The Lab, but was not considered ready for the launch.
Since the Index is still getting new features and Shooter hasn't been shelved officially, there's a real chance it may come back. There's also a chance for Borealis, another Half-Life universe game that would take place on a time-traveling ship, but how much of a chance is unknown.
It seems like the Index would have been the Half-Life console, at least at first, had all of these projects come to fruition. Considering the easily modifiable nature of the game, that's not really a bad thing. In fact, one fan has already created a PT mod for Alyx, showing real mod potential for the platform. This is good news, especially considering Valve's first attempt at a VR platform, internally named Vader, was far too expensive.
How many of these projects, if any, will be revived is uncertain, but it does seem certain all Valve's current properties have futures. Team Fortress 2 may not be the online juggernaut it once was, but it's still getting mod content. The Index will have new headline games in the future, and there's a good chance several will be from Valve itself. Here's hoping the Half-Life universe, and others, expand a little more.
Source: IGN