Another day, another indie studio shutting down in the gaming industry. But at least not all of their employees are being left out of their future plans.
Hopoo Games, the studio known for creating the rougelite Risk of Rain and stealth game Deadbolt, announced in a series of posts of X/Twitter yesterday that the heads of the studio along with several others will be working on game development with Steam creator Valve. The thread didn’t go into any detail on what they’ll be working on, but this announcement came at the expense of the unannounced Hopoo game Snail, which was canceled. The rest of the thread talked about how excited they are to be joining Valve and thanked all of their fans for their support over the last 12 years.
The thread ended with the phrase “sleep tight, Hopoo Games.” While this can be interpreted any different way, some took it as an official statement of studio closure, which would be on par with all of the recent news of studios being shut down or suffering layoffs incurred by big corporations. Many comments in the thread expressed disappointment that the studio might not be fully operating as an indie, but also got excited over what game they could possibly be making for Valve. Some immediately jumped to the developers working on updates for Counter Strike 2 or starting development on the highly requested Half-Life 3.
In the meantime, the Risk of Rain series, which was acquired by Borderlands developer Gearbox a few years ago, continues on. Most recently, the company released the Seekers of the Storm expansion for Risk of Rain 2, which hasn’t gone over well with fans and has led to a lot of negative reviews for the game on Steam. As the future of Hopoo Games remains up in the air, their most popular IP also faces an uncertain future.
