Campo Santo’s In the Valley of Gods will be “on hold” for the time being, as the developer tries to work through various options with the title amide a changing landscape for the studio and the wider games industry. After the company came under Valve’s control, a lot of fans were left wondering what was coming next. The announcement comes from PCGamesN, who held a recent interview with various team members involved with the project. The game was initially delayed late last year to focus on VR, now we don’t know when it will see the light of day.
In 2018, Campo Santo was acquired by Valve, and the recently announced In the Valley of Gods was seemingly left hanging. Campo Santo co-founder Sean Vanaman assured fans that the project would not be abandoned, and it appears as though that’s still the case, even though it is now technically indefinitely delayed.
“It’s all [still] in Unity, and we use all the same tools, and we do everything the same,” he said, explaining that their recent purchase was more of “mindshare” rather than a full transfer of power. “The thing that was going to kill our game wasn’t an overlord. It’s never going to be that. That’s just not what exists here,” explained Vanaman.
The shift in plans comes amid a huge push on VR for Valve and Campo Santo with the launch of Half-Life: Alyx. Chris Remo a former member of Campo Santo who jumped over to Valve after the purchase says, the company is still finding its footing in this ever-changing world. It was Remo who announced that the indie title was on hold for the time being. The studio is still interested in it, it just had to be taken off of active development while the team works on getting other things in order.
Remo says “We were working on it when those of us from Campo Santo came up to Valve, and something we found over time was, in contrast to working on that game, Valve was a place with a lot of teams, a lot of projects, a lot going on.”