Previously rumored to be under some development troubles, it’s now official: In the Valley of Gods is on hold, as Campo Santo has joined the team working on Half-Life: Alyx and other Valve projects. In a statement provided to Polygon, Campo Santo co-founder Jake Rodkin reveals that the oft-repeated story of “you can work on anything at Valve” is quite true. Upon being purchased, the developers began to help out on other projects, mostly Half-Life: Alyx along with Dota Underlords and Steam in general. This ultimately caused In the Valley of Gods to lose its central team. So, for now, the game is on hold, but Rodkin says they may return to it in the future.
The statement can be read in full below:
To fans looking forward to In the Valley of Gods, it’s probably clear that the optimistic “2019” at the end of the announcement trailer isn’t going to be accurate. In the end, Valve Time makes fools of us all. But yes, developers from the former Campo Santo team have joined other projects at Valve, including Half-Life: Alyx. As you can imagine, our experience in the first-person adventure genre is pretty relevant. You hear a lot about how at Valve you can work on what you want. It turns out that’s true, and there’s a lot of work available. As we integrated ourselves into Valve it became clear there was a lot of valuable work to be done on Half-Life: Alyx. Some of us starting lending a hand, and have since become full-time on the project as it approaches launch. Similarly, some ex-Campos are working on Dota Underlords, some are on Steam, and so on. So to answer your question as of today, In the Valley of Gods development is on hold—but it certainly feels like a project people can and may return to. And when that happens, we’ll find an exciting way to let fans know.
In the Valley of Gods was originally announced during the 2017 Game Awards. No additional trailers or news was shared about the game’s development since developer Campo Santo was acquired by Valve in 2018. Fears of a delay or cancellation grew when the game was removed from Campo Santo’s website, the trailer was removed from YouTube, and several the developers removed references to the title from their Twitter profiles. It seems these fears were ultimately well-founded, and Rodkin’s wording sounds dubious as to whether or not Campo Santo will ever return to the project.
[Source: Polygon]
