Valve says it is 'always working on games' alongside Steam Deck

Valve reiterates that it is 'always working on games' even as it readies new hardware like the Steam Deck.

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Valve has made a big splash into the hardware market. Over the last decade Valve has released multiple new hardware platforms aiming to iterate and innovate the PC space. First there was the ill-fated Steam Machines, which were essentially cheaper console-like PCs that ran Steam games, then there was the Steam Controller, and more recently the popular Valve Index VR headset and the even more popular Steam Deck handheld-PC hybrid. So...where are the games?

In a recent interview with IGN, Valve's business development guru Erik Peterson says the company is still making software outside of Steam OS. "We're always working on games. We have nothing new to announce today, but we're a game developer in addition to working on Steam, and we're always working on things."

Half-Life 3 is still possible, Valve says other Half-Life games coming

Peterson's words are a direct extension of those spoken by Valve's Greg Coomer, who said that the Half-Life maker has quite a few projects in development right now. Coomer also hinted one of them will be Half-Life related.

"We're not stopping making games at all. Valve has a lot of games in development. We will continue to release games," Coomer said in an August interview with Famitsu.

"Game development is very important to Valve. I don't know the exact numbers, but the percentage of employees involved in game development is high. A lot of people are involved."

Coomer also says following Half-Life Alyx's success that Valve has "more to say about the Half-Life world."

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So what is Valve working on? No one knows for sure--Valve is very secretive--but back in 2020, images and info leaked out about a cancelled Left 4 Dead 3 project were unearthed, showing an open world game built on Source 2.

Sadly Valve has moved on: "We are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven't for years," Valve told IGN in January 2020. "We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next gen opportunities a few years ago."

Valve is currently hiring for dozens of roles, some of which are hardware-related (they're even hiring an economist to handle data, and a psychologist for experimental studies), but a good portion of the listings are for software-related and game development positions.

In 2019, Valve had said that Half-Life Alyx offered the teams an opportunity to ease back into the franchise. They didn't want to jump right into Half-Life 3 after such a long lapse since Half-Life 2's 2004 release date.

That doesn't mean Valve hadn't been developing, tinkering, and experimenting with Half-Life 3 builds, though. One build saw Half-Life 3 using procedural generation technology to keep game areas fresh and unique

"We were working on this single-player game that would use proceduralism in concert with a crafted experience to create something played in an open-ended way," Dave Speyrer said in the Half-Life Alyx The Final Hours documentary.

"That project was called Half-Life 3."