I had a tour at the Valve HQ recently, this is what I found out.

[valvefriend]

Hi,

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend a tour at Valve HQ as I was passing through Seattle on my way back up to Vancouver.

I've come here because there were a few interesting bits and pieces that I was told about current Valve franchises.

Portal: I asked about portal, because it's my favorite valve game if you exclude DOTA. I was told that whilst Valve are not working on a Portal 3 as such, there is a small team working on porting over the community puzzles to Source 2 for release as a separate product. Apparently the main benefit is that it provides a much more streamlined interface, and much more control over the creation process. I asked if a Portal 3 was ever going to arrive, and was basically told they aren't working on it at this stage.

VR: I asked what was happening in terms of VR, and what I found was quite interesting. Valve heavily incentivised the non-crucial team members of their projects to move over to SteamVR in early November, and most are yet to move back to their projects. Apparently there were 3 main projects that were to be released in VR, and that the 3rd hasn't been released yet. After it is released, most people will return to their previous teams. This does not mean they have finished writing VR products though, as there is still a large VR team.

Other Projects: I tried asking about Half-Life, but was told they can't talk about it at this stage. I also asked about DOTA however the people I was with didn't have much to do with it.

I was looking around for any possible concept art, or unreleased products open on monitors, but it appears they're quite thorough on their sweeps before letting people into their offices.

Thanks

 

[Omnomnick]

If what you claim is true, those are some interesting topics to learn about. You didn't really provide any evidence about your trip or the discussions you had, but certain things do sound plausible. I'm not sure about the Portal 2 community puzzle stuff as I can't really see a reason why they would bother revisiting that kind of content so many years on, especially when the editor included in Portal 2 was simple enough in the first place. I guess we'll wait and see.

 

[mooki]

Why doesn't someone just go on a Valve tour, and then immediately run into a Valve bathroom inside the office and act like you're taking a 2 hour long shit, but what you're really doing is just waiting in the stall for employees to walk in and talk about Half-Life 3 while they're pissing?

 

[MattFiler]

Some interesting points, sounds plausible that Valve would do more work with Portal in Source 2 concidering they already used Portal for their VR experiments, does seem a little odd that they would mention it on a tour though without officially announcing it.

I wonder if the 3rd VR project they are working on will be more of a "proper" game and not just an "experiment" considering they've put so many team members on it and it is still yet to release - perhaps we'll hear more at the Dev Days? The only other VR project we've had any hints about (to my knowledge) is that "HLVR" code, so perhaps we could be getting a Half-Life minigame in VR, I'm not sure if Valve would ever do that though - full HL3 or nothing, it would probably annoy the fans too much.

Also interesting to hear how SteamVR seems to have taken focus over other projects, perhaps they were behind schedule and needed more team members to get it ready to release. Also, just to verify this, Alan Yates said that about a third of Valve is now working on VR.

 

[User With No Name]

Apparently there were 3 main projects that were to be released in VR, and that the 3rd hasn't been released yet.

Classic Valve

 

[Clan Wolf 2]

the portal thing sounds inline with what their saying about source 2, csgo could really benifet from it. I know everytime i load 20 maps on startup of the game. it stalls and takes forever. same with portal 2 n left 4 dead 2............esp l4d2!!!!!!

and it really does sound like alot of them have moved onto VR, which is a good thing. fast tracking that to success

only so much you can do with 229 members, according to the steam group

 

[Ennui]

I wonder if the 3rd VR project they are working on will be more of a "proper" game and not just an "experiment" considering they've put so many team members on it and it is still yet to release - perhaps we'll hear more at the Dev Days? The only other VR project we've had any hints about (to my knowledge) is that "HLVR" code, so perhaps we could be getting a Half-Life minigame in VR, I'm not sure if Valve would ever do that though - full HL3 or nothing, it would probably annoy the fans too much.

Do we have any evidence to suggest that HLVR is anything but the VR port of HL2 that Valve released as a beta on Steam several years ago? I played it on my DK2 a few years ago... if memory serves, this was before there was even a SteamVR beta (I only remember enabling the VR beta on HL2 itself, not downloading SteamVR as a tool, but I could be wrong).

Also... what is the 2nd "released" VR title after The Lab? Is that also just the fact that HL2 has SteamVR support? I have no idea if the HL2 VR code has been updated to be compatible with the modern Oculus SDK (or Vive for that matter).

 

[Omnomnick]

Also... what is the 2nd "released" VR title after The Lab? Is that also just the fact that HL2 has SteamVR support? I have no idea if the HL2 VR code has been updated to be compatible with the modern Oculus SDK (or Vive for that matter).

Destinations.

 

[UshankaCat]

Why doesn't someone just go on a Valve tour, and then immediately run into a Valve bathroom inside the office and act like you're taking a 2 hour long shit, but what you're really doing is just waiting in the stall for employees to walk in and talk about Half-Life 3 while they're pissing?

"I'm just gonna go take a leak..."

I'm a bit disappointed that there are not a lot of news besides Source 2 Portal puzzles. I still don't know how to interpret the "can't talk about it at this stage" of Half-Life 3- it does suggest that there is a stage of development, right? I want to believe, dammit!