Valve Acquires Firewatch Developer Campo Santo

Firewatch developer Campo Santo has been acquired by Valve for an unknown fee, the San Francisco-based developer has announced.

As part of the acquisition, Campo Santo's team of 12 will remain intact and continue to work on the studio's sophomore effort, In the Valley of Gods, which was revealed this past December during The Game Awards.

The developer writes the following about the acquisition via its official blog:

"If you're the type of person who gives two flips about this news, we can elaborate a little bit on this big decision. First, we really like making video games. Furthermore, and perhaps more accurately, we really like making and producing entertainment. From the day-to-day production of our last game, Firewatch, to the way we run the company, make merchandise, meet players at expos and shows, send out a quarterly literary journal, throw open-to-the-public game demos in the middle of an artificial forest—all of it is geared towards surprising, delighting, and entertaining the customers who have shared in our success.

"In Valve we found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do (this, you may be surprised to learn, doesn't happen every day). In us, they found a group with unique experience and valuable, diverse perspectives. It quickly became an obvious match."

Campo Santo continues:

"We had a series of long conversations with the people at Valve and everyone shared the satisfaction we take in working with people whose talents dwarf our own to make things we never thought possible. Both sides spoke about our values and how, when you get right down to it, we, as human beings, are hard-limited by the time we have left when it comes to making the things we care about and believe in. They asked us if we'd all be interested in coming up to Bellevue and doing that there and we said yes."

Elsewhere in the blogpost, Campo Santo confirms that it will continue to support Firewatch. Further, it revealed that it will be relocating to Washington to join Valve at its headquarters.

For those that don't know: Campo Santo was founded back in 2013 by Sean Vanaman, formerly the lead writer of Telltale's The Walking Dead and Idle Thumbs co-founder Jake Rodkin. The small team is notably further bodied by multiple developers previously of Double Fine Productions fame, as well as Mark of the Ninja designer Nels Anderson.

The studio revealed its debut game, Firewatch, back in 2014, before releasing it in February 2016. Upon release, it garnered considerable critical acclaim, and is widely considered one of the best games of 2016. As of December of the same year – not even a full year after launch – the game had sold more than one million copies.

Firewatch is currently available for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. Is is also slated to arrive on the Nintendo Switch sometime later this year. As for developer's next game, In the Valley of Gods, it is currently poised for a 2019 release.