Risk of Rain 2—and the series in general—has enjoyed plenty of success over the years. With the first game made by uni students Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, and being somewhat of an indie smash hit, the second arrived in 2019 and also sold gangbusters, hitting 500,000 players in early access.
Then in 2022, the Risk of Rain IP shifted hands from Drummond and Morse’s development studio, Hopoo Games, over to Gearbox—and, if the reception to its latest expansion’s anything to go by, it’s not, uh, been going great.
When it comes to Hopoo, though, it looks like the studio’s journey is coming to a close. As announced on the Hopoo’s Twitter, both the studio’s founders, as well as “many other talented members”, are going to be “working on game development directly” at Valve, now.
The thread continues: “We’re incredibly grateful to Valve for their partnerships in the last decade, and are excited to continue working on their awesome titles.” This shift in direction comes with a sacrifice, though: “this does mean that we are stopping production on our unannounced game, ‘Snail’.” Drummond also commented on the move, via quote tweet: “I work at Valve now”. ’nuff said.
It all ends with a bittersweet send-off: “We love making games—and will continue to do so, for years to come. We’re excited to be working side-by-side with the talented people at Valve. But for now—sleep tight, Hopoo Games.”
I’ve got some mixed feelings on this, myself. I’ve enjoyed basically every Hopoo Games title I’ve played—so to know there probably won’t be any more originals from the studio, even if the bulk of its developers are working at Valve now, does kinda sting.
A similar situation happened with the former Firewatch developers Campo Santo, who were brought into the Valve fold in 2018—which caused In the Valley of the Gods, a game announced seven years ago, to linger in development purgatory. It’s even currently got a placeholder date of December 2029 on Steam, so I think we’re gonna be waiting a while, bare minimum.
On the other hand, considering what Valve’s doing with Deadlock at the moment (it’s very, very good) bringing on Hopoo to potentially work on that project—though it’s unclear where exactly they’ll be placed—seems like a win for everyone. To know there was a game in development that’s now being cancelled also sucks, but Snail was never announced—so it’s hard to mourn what you never knew.
Besides, while I’ve seen some memes about how ‘Valve doesn’t release games’ in response, I’m not sure if that really applies anymore. We’ve had Dota: Underlords, Half Life: Alyx, Counter-Strike 2, and now Deadlock in four years. The slumbering studio’s output is revving up once more and I, for one, am keen to see what bringing Hopoo into the fold does for that.