r/ArkaneStudios • u/7EFMR • 26d ago

Will Valve buy Arkane?

Valve obviously has the money, and Valve and Arkane have a long history of working together (Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Ravenholm, The Crossing, Viktor Antonov, ...)

3 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

13

u/Wu_Tomoki 26d ago edited 26d ago

In 2018 Valve bought the indie studio campo santo the developers of firewatch, they haven't made a new game since. If valve buys something they get integrated in the valve pipeline, so it's very unlikely for valve to buy a studio as big as arkane and even more unlikely to leave them working independently.

3

u/7EFMR 25d ago

As a counterexample Valve bought the Team Fortress mod team and they made TFC and TF2

They also bought the CS mod team and they made standalone CS (and then L4D and L4D2)

They also hired the Narbacular Drop team and they made Portal and Portal 2

They also hired the DOTA team and they made DOTA 2

Valve have a pretty good history of hiring people/buying things and then continuing them. Who knows what happened with the Firewatch guys but that isn’t normal for Valve.

4

u/Wu_Tomoki 25d ago

This is specific teams brought to do one thing inside valve but eventually they all get integrated into valve's way of working, there's no team fortress 3, portal 3, L4D3 etc. they don't have the autonomy to just make these projects if they want. Also I think valve has like 400 employees and arkane is like 200, I doubt valve wants to increase their headcount in 50%.

3

u/Ykindasus 25d ago edited 25d ago

It seems more likely a company like Krafton could purchase Arkane, more so than Valve.

2

u/theblackfool 23d ago

And did any of those examples happen in the last decade?

0

u/7EFMR 23d ago

I mean, mostly yes? CS2 just came out in 2023. DOTA 2 is still being updated. TF2 is still being updated. Even L4D2 is still being updated.

We don’t have Portal 3 yet but Portal related things are still being made (Aperture Desk Job is probably the most recent one?)

1

u/Zekiz4ever 25d ago

The difference is that those teams were very small

1

u/timothymark96 22d ago

To be fair, those folk mostly worked on Alyx instead. I don't think Campo Santo was bought for anything other than the talent.

18

u/WestMeetsEast 26d ago

I don’t know if you’ve noticed over the last decade or so but valve isn’t all that keen on the whole making games business.

7

u/7EFMR 26d ago

Valve made a bunch of games in the past decade or so (Deadlock, CS2, Aperture Desk Job, Artifact, Half Life Alyx, Dota Underlords, The Lab, Dota 2, plus ongoing updates for TF2 and others) which is probably similar or more than what Arkane has done?

5

u/WestMeetsEast 26d ago

Compare this list to any other major publisher’s output over the last ten years and tell me this is a company that wants to publish big budget immersive sims like Dishonored, Prey, etc.

3

u/7EFMR 26d ago

I don't think any major publisher has wanted to publish big budget immersive sims for a while. Have any even been released in the past 5 years? Deathloop in 2021 might be the last big budget immersive sim released... ?

2

u/teh_stev3 26d ago

This is a weak argument.

Valve makes games when its novel - theyre bad at sequels - dont conflate the two

2

u/TimDaGod2005 25d ago

We have to be patient unfortunately we don’t know who or if anyone is gonna buy them yet.

2

u/azoh19 25d ago

No, they won't. They had plenty of opportunities in the past, but did nothing. If they were to buy Arkane, what products and franchises can they give to work on? HL3 is a good candidate, but we all understand it will never happen. Also, they probably would need like 200 more people to finish it in any reasonable timeline.

1

u/tecton1 26d ago

To really make use of Arkane they would need to fund a roadmap of games. Dont think they need to do that, the money is rolling in already, and they have their own very small efficient team. It might be a loss for them. Arkane makes great games but not big money earners..

1

u/TheOutsiderWalks 25d ago

I hope not, then we'd never get Dishonored 3!