Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell gave one of his rare interviews with New Zealand employees 1 news. In it, he talks about his admiration for the island country, where he recently applied for residency after taking shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also used the interview to confirm that Valve does indeed have new games in development (although he declined to offer further details) and addressed rumors that the company plans to open an office in New Zealand.
Most of the time, it seems that Newell is having a great time living in a country that has not reported any deaths from COVID-19 since September last year. He says he has participated in motor racing and has been interested in neuroscience, while Valve employees in the United States have been stuck at home for months on end. Unsurprisingly, although Newell has recently denied reports that Valve is actively planning to open an office in the country, he says there is “strong interest” from company employees in moving.
“There is a lot of grassroots interest within the company that some people move in,” says Newell, adding that New Zealand’s public health infrastructure is now “extremely valuable” for a company in a pandemic era.
“It’s like there’s a new element that has been discovered called ‘non-stupidium’, and New Zealand is one of the world’s producers of that – it’s actually something that was built by the people of New Zealand,” says Newell, “It is absolutely, extremely valuable – like, any high-tech company would say that our people will be much more productive in New Zealand than in Ireland or Los Angeles or in many other places ”.
Inevitably, the interview touches on future games for Valve’s Half life and Portal franchises. Although Newell declined to provide exact details (“I haven’t talked about these things in a long time and I hope I won’t continue to talk about them until they are debatable.”), He confirmed that the company has games in development. “It’s fun to launch games,” he said.
It may not be much, but it is comforting that a studio with such an enviable title catalog still plans to release more games in the future – not least because Valve has acquired Fire clock the developer Campo Santo in 2018, after launching his next impressive project, In the valley of the gods. Last year, Valve made its long-awaited return to single player gaming with excellent exclusive VR Half-life: Alyx, with some employees reporting that their development had made “the studio’s enthusiasm and creativity flow” to launch more games.
You can check out the full interview at 1 news.