Valve SOB Project Was Called 'Stars of Blood'

[Hectic Glenn]

Gabe's birthday has come and gone but you might have heard some fans paid him a visit on his special day. The lengthy Q&A session with Gabe was recorded and uploaded to youtube, in which the fans asked a huge array of questions including what on earth the space game 'SOB' was? Gabe said:

"We kind of had an internal project that was called Stars of Blood, which was a space pirate game and it never saw the light of day." - Gabe

We've previously seen art work from ex-Valve artists Peter Konig and Gray Horsfield but only knew of the project as SOB. But there's more...Ken Birdwell a senior engineer at Valve owns the domain www.starsofblood.com. Interestingly he owns a few others, including rhinoscar.com (an old name for Valve Software) as well as www.seasofblood.com.

Potentially Seas of Blood and Stars of Blood may have derived from the same origins, with Seas of Blood being the original concept from back in 2003 when its trademark was registered by Ken Birdwell.

 

[MFL]

So I guess their current projects are jack and shit, respectively.

 

[Dekstar]

Shame, really. I have faith that any new IP Valve undertakes would be at least a damn good game. I wonder how far through development they got before they decided they didn't want to continue. Who even decides that at Valve?

 

[Omnomnick]

Glad to know all the SOB rumors will finally be put to bed. It's about time.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Also as a disclaimer - the image is from Peter Konig's collection and isn't verified as SOB. The logo / font is also made by us and not official!

 

[MFL]

Does anyone anywhere know what Valve is working on?

 

[Dr.IndianaJones]

I would guess they are working mostly on DOTA 2 stuff, Linux and porting more of their games to the workshop - such as L4D2 which is coming soon.


Also that image sure looks great!

 

[Omnomnick]

Does anyone anywhere know what Valve is working on?

Well Valve is a pretty large studio these days. There are always small teams working on TF2 and CS:GO stuff, I imagine a large team for Dota 2, as well as the Linux Steam team and the small L4D2 on-going content team.

Then we probably have a massive portion working on keeping Steam up to date and running day-to-day, then a team for whatever Half-Life title is being worked on, and then probably 2-3 other teams working on prototype or unannounced projects.

 

[MFL]

Cybersports and software distributions the name of the game, then.

 

[cunningmunki]

You lot read this but missed the news about Source 2?

 

[Barnz]

You lot read this but missed the news about Source 2?

http://www.valvetime.net/threads/va...11th-november-2012-source-2-announced.236971/

 

[MFL]

*Cough*

I'll just go sit in the corner now.

 

[ríomhaire]

Does anyone anywhere know what Valve is working on?

TF2, L4D2, Portal 2, CSGO, Source Filmmaker and general Steam updates. Steam for Linux, Big Picture Mode, Wearable Computing, eSports support and Source 2.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

*Cough*

I'll just go sit in the corner now.

I think you're right, a lot of time will go into the Dota 2 & CSGO pro scene development. While SC2 drops off, a nice void is opening up for Valve. LoL & Dota 2 on the MOBA front and CSGO on the FPS front. I'm skeptical that CSGO is going to make the grade though; it's going to need a lot of help.

 

[MFL]

I should have phrased my question as, "Does anyone anywhere know what new things Valve is working on?", yes.

 

[Stigmata]

"Valve SOB Project was"

Stopped reading and died here.

 

[Gloone]

Am I the only one who's relieved about this? I didn't care for CS:GO or Dota 2, and I didn't care for a space sim either. If Valve's next announcement was SoB, I'd have crumpled with despair. This news makes it all the more likely that they have been working on HL3 properly.

 

[Cogen]

I was desperate for a space sim... but now we have the announcement of Star Citizen, and there's pretty much no better person on the planet to make it than Chris Roberts. So that has put me at ease, even if it is 2 years away....

Valve can keep working on HL3. ;-)

 

[DEATH eVADER]

0x10c, Space Citizen, Elite Dangerous. All we can hope for now is that Valve do continue to develop SOB and somebody comes out with a new Freelancer.