Risk of Rain Studio Closes Its Doors to Join One of the Biggest Developers In Gaming
A hit indie studio joins forces with a blockbuster developer.
It’s been a busy couple of years for Hopoo Games, developer of cult indie roguelike Risk of Rain. After selling the rights to Risk of Rain 2 in 2022 and releasing the remastered Risk of Rain Returns last year, the studio is now shutting doors, but not calling it quits. As Hopoo Games announced on X this week, its staff is moving to Valve to work on an unnamed project.
“Today, we have an exciting update,” Hopoo said. “Duncan and Paul, alongside many other talented members at Hopoo Games, will now be working on game development directly at Valve.”
Hopoo also says that the move means stopping production on its next game, known by the codename Snail.
Hopoo Games did not immediately respond to Inverse’s request for comment.
So far, there’s no word on what Hopoo Games could be working on for Valve. The only game confirmed to be in production at the publisher right now is Deadlock, a multiplayer MOBA shooter that has long been one of gaming’s worst-kept secrets. While playtests have been running for a while, and videos showcasing everything the game has to offer have been around for months, Deadlock gained a lot more attention recently after The Verge reported on a “secret” early build that had around 20,000 players at the time. Not long after, Valve finally acknowledged Deadlock’s existence.
Other than Deadlock, we only have rumors of what Valve is up to, particularly the long-awaited, possibly never to be released Half-Life 3. There’s been no shortage of supposed leaks claiming to confirm Half-Life 3, the most recent being voice actor Natasha Chandel casually mentioning a role on a Valve game called Project White Sands on her website. Members of the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit claim it’s a Half-Life project due to White Sands being a national park in New Mexico, just like the setting of the original Half-Life, Black Mesa. Chandel has since removed the mention of White Sands from her website.
Hopoo Games was acquired by Valve after releasing the indie hit Risk of Rain and its sequel.
Neither of those projects seems to bear much resemblance to Hopoo’s work on the Risk of Rain series, but that doesn’t mean the newly acquired developers couldn’t be working on one of those projects. In 2018, Firewatch developer Campo Santo was acquired by Valve. Since its acquisition, Campo Santo’s developers went to work on games including Half-Life: Alyx and Dota Underlords. A VR shooter and an autobattler, respectively, the two projects have essentially nothing in common with Firewatch, a meditative first-person adventure game. So while Hopoo has proved its expertise at making both 2D and 3D roguelike action games, its developers could end up working on very different projects now that they’re at Valve.
The studio’s move to Valve also echoes Campo Santo’s acquisition in another, more troubling way. When Campo Santo was acquired, it was at work on a game called In the Valley of the Gods. The adventure game looked like a natural project to follow Firewatch, and fans of the studio were eagerly awaiting its release. However, Into the Valley of the Gods was put on hold while its former developers worked on other Valve projects, and at this point, it’s been shelved indefinitely.
Hopoo has never publicly revealed Snail, so it doesn’t have anything approaching the amount of hype that In the Valley of the Gods had been worked stopped. Still, Risk of Rain fans were eagerly awaiting word of the upcoming game, which may now never see the light of day.
The first Risk of Rain 2 DLC released after its purchase by Gearbox isn’t going great.
Risk of Rain 2 players aren’t having the best time right now, either. Last week, Gearbox released Seekers of the Storm, the game’s first DLC since the publisher bought Risk of Rain 2 from Hopoo. Sitting at a Mostly Negative rating on Steam, with 80 percent bad reviews, Seekers of the Storm launched alongside an update for all players that reportedly introduced a slew of bugs and performance issues even for people who didn’t buy the DLC. Gearbox has promised fixes are on the way, and in the meantime, Hopoo co-founder Duncan Drummond shared sympathy on X.
“It sucks for the fans, who lost functionality for the game they love,” Drummond said. “It also sucks for the developers at GBX, who are probably under a ton of stress and can't really celebrate the win of launching a new DLC.”
So while it’s not the best time to be a Risk of Rain 2 player, fans might soon have a Valve game made by its creators to look forward to. It’s still too early to tell just what contributions from Hopoo will make their way into Valve’s upcoming releases, and the future is even murkier for the Snail project. Whatever happens, it’s clearly a huge step for Hopoo — and if it means we’re one step closer to seeing Half-Life 3 in our lifetimes, it’s hard not to be at least a little bit excited.
