Gabe Newell

Gabe Newell confirms that Valve is developing several new games, wants to do more single-player


Valve’s co-founder and CEO Gabe Newell has given assurance that Valve has multiple games in development, and that it is keen to make more single-player experience for the players.

We definitely have games in development that we’re going to be announcing, it’s fun to ship games,” said Newell when speaking to 1 News [via VGC]. “Alyx was great — to be back doing single-player games, that created a lot of momentum inside of the company to do more of that.”

In case you didn’t know, Valve’s Gabe Newell has been living in New Zealand since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The success of New Zealand’s response to the virus forced him to consider moving to New Zealand permanently.

This news comes nearly one year after Valve released Half-Life: Alyx.

“You don’t want to uproot a bunch of families, have them come here, and then the situation gets a bunch better and then they have to turn around and go back,” Gabe said.

“So that’s why getting a better handle on how long the epidemic is going to be affecting our operational decisions is important to that.”

New Zealand, Gabe said, is a fantastic environment for game development, especially with its strong situation amid the pandemic.

“The infrastructure is what you need. There’s a lot of local development talent as well — there’s absolutely no reason why game development companies couldn’t be located here“.

However, when asked about what particular video games Valve might have in development, Newell would not give a direct answer or any hint whatsoever. His response on the topic was rather cryptic.

“I’ve successfully not spoken about those things for a long time and I hope to continue to not talk about them until they are moot questions,” said Newell.

“The nice thing is, by not answering those questions, I avoid the community coming up with new, equally-difficult-to-answer questions.”

So it still remains unclear as to what all PC titles are currently in development. Gabe also dismissed Half-Life 3 and Portal 3 as “moot questions”. When asked about Valve’s project Citadel, which predates Alyx, Newell was quick to end that conversation as well.

“We have a bunch of code names — are you referring to a code name?” said Newell. “I don’t know what ‘Citadel’ is — what is Citadel? Just to be clear — internally we have a bunch of different names and they change over time.”

Stay tuned for more!