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
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.
So they sold thier game to one publisher, and then left to work for a different dev?
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
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.
They did, indeed, come out on top.
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
Yeah, but it’s not GoOd PR unless you reframe “hired by” as “joined”
Fuck, one of the best roguelikes destroyed
I didn’t know Valve still made games 😄.
Err…
they would fit into the Deadlock development, imo
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
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.
More hands won’t hurt.
Well, that’s not entirely true
Sure, but deadlock isn’t exactly late. And if there’s a time when you want to add more developers, then an alpha when the game is still in the early stages is the best time to do so
Risk of Snow
hopefully, I just hope Deadlock doesn’t get the Artifact treatment
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.
I hope you are right, I really like the game and hope they have some interesting fix for toxicitiy and matchmaking.
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).
They seem to be getting back into it.
There was Alyx, at first. But today there’s Deadlock, two more rumoured games, and now this?
Dont forget cs2, plus the short (but very fun) Aperture Desk Job)
Half Life VR game for Deckard most likely
the RoR devs are looking to apply their talents to…VR headsets?
welp, glad I never bought Risk of Rain or Risk of Rain 2 then.
Why? They are not live service games.
Despite that, I’ve heard from friends there’s been some major changes since the sale… and they’re not good.
Not live service, but an update broke a lot of stuff and people aren’t too happy about it.
That’s the DLC for RoR2 that came out like 4 days ago - it’ll get fixed.
That doesn’t change RoR or RoR Remaster - plus… having been playing RoR2 Seekers of the Storm, I feel like people are being a little too sweaty - seems rather fine imo
The DLC didn’t break the game, the updates to the game to support the DLC broke the game. I don’t own the DLC but hit major game breaking bugs playing RoR2 last night. Gearbox is breaking shit 100%
They’ll get better at managing bugs. What we’ll have to watch out for is other shit.
In particular, I’m not keen on the main menu ad for the DLC they slapped on, which stays even if you own the DLC.
Well I already run an adblocker in 1 game so I guess another won’t hurt. At least after I’m actually willing to update. (Yes there is a mod that does that)
Worst me and my fiancé have experienced is one enemy fell through the map after being punched by the new character – not exactly game breaking
me when the final boss is literally unkillable sometimes and many things are now tied to fps (so if you have 200 fps loader will move like 3 times faster)
Oh I do play it regularly as well but I would never let a minor setback like this to gate me from one of my favourite games.
You can download old depots from Steam and even keep games from updating. Very useful if you want to try outdated mods or prevent devs like Beat Games from forcing monthly updates on you.
Not really excusing Gearbox since I like to think that I’m sane but the game is really good. They really should’ve released the update as a beta first.
What in the fuck