Marc Laidlaw (Writer of Half Life) Leaves Valve - Polidicks

Valve is dead.

The way they work means they only work on what they want to and I've seen people blame this as the reason for no HL3 but this is a good thing, I don't want a HL3 that Valve doesn't want to work on, it'll just end up being complete shit amplified even more by the fact it has to compete with previous games that Valve did want to work on. Which is why I never cared that they're not working on it, I prefer getting nothing over getting shit.

End of an era.

I hope this is a giant wake up call for Valve to actually make and release something and fix their broken company before the rest of the staff leaves for one reason or another

[QUOTE=Marc Laidlaw;49483575]Valve is dead.[/QUOTE] You don't strike me as someone that would prefer Chrome over Firefox or live in the UK.

Time to panic.

[QUOTE=Qaus;49483668]You don't strike me as someone that would prefer Chrome over Firefox or live in the UK.[/QUOTE] Clearly he's fled from the hordes of rabid ARG fanatics.

[QUOTE=kariko;49483303]Someone who got the forwarded email posted the entire header information, don't know how easy/hard that is to fake. [url]http://pastebin.com/4HNGTaEj[/url] There's also a small chain of people asking for forwards. I don't think that many people would be "in on it" but maybe. [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/3zzmi2/sent_an_email_to_marc_laidlaw_about_hl3_he/cyqbiy8[/url][/QUOTE] Fake level: Impossible (assuming it's really his email address). GMail mails are signed by Google (covering mime-version, in-reply-to, references, from, date, message-id, subject, to, content-type and the content itself), and this one checks out.

And I just got around to finishing episode 2 today after having played up to episode 1 like 7-8 years ago. That's mildly depressing.

For all care i would be happy if Valve released in any way they see fit a ending to Half Life. It ended with a cliffhanger and i personally want to get back into that universe of them.

Obviously, this means scenario for HL3 is done

So that finally settles it for good. I said as much in the ARG thread and got hammered with "You don't know what Valve is working on! They've got a bunch of games in the works!" But let's be real. The writing's been on the walls for years. When it comes to actually [i]making[/i] games, Valve cares solely about microtransactions and eSports these days, and that's if you can pull them away from their storefront and Steambox. Along with numerous statements that most people there don't [i]want[/i] to work on Half-Life, I think we finally have our answer. The Valve we knew died after the release of Portal 2. At least it was a worthy finale.

I did not see this coming, sounds odd having Valve without a Laidlaw, though. Been knowing him to be around since the company first started and since HL1 first came out, hearing his name pop up randomly, and to see him go now just feels.. odd.

Laidlaw left probably at least partially because Valve isn't making Half-life anymore because they have no financial incentive to. If you want a guy to blame for no Half-Life, don't blame VALVe as much as you Blame the guy who spends more money than he spent on the game on cosmetics or other downloadable comment, on their crate-gambling addiction. I always get the response "well it's my money" and I hate it because yeah, they're right. It's their right to spend their property how they see fit, but they still have some responsibility for their purchases, what their money is going towards, y'know? You spend 20$ on a singleplayer game but 30$ on hats or other such bullshit, you are for all intents and purposes telling Valve "I don't want more singleplayer games as much as I want imaginary clothes. Please give me more of that." Supply and Demand, man. I'm not saying that you're not allowed to spend your money as you please, all I'm saying is that when your purchases indicate that you want A over B, you have no right to be surprised or even upset when you never get more of B. Making a singleplayer game is expensive as hell and unlike a free to play game, you only get paid once. I'm really sorry to rant, but this is on my mind every time more "half-life isn't coming" news pops up on here and it's a little bit of a pet peeve for me.

If he signed an NDA he won't break it, he said it himself at the bottom of the email, Valve trust him and he intends to keep their trust. For all we know Marc's part in the game is over and he's retiring on a happy note. But of course who knows.

Viktor left a while ago and now that Marc Laidlaw is gone I've got no hope. I've always been one of the holdouts that thought it was coming eventually, but unless he wrote the story for Valve and dipped I don't think it's going to happen.

Valve is turning into EA and theres nothing we can do. If any valve employee reading, tell Gabe I said fuck you for me.

Maybe he got bored sitting around all day doing nothing.

[QUOTE=EdvardSchnitz;49483943]Valve is turning into EA and theres nothing we can do. If any valve employee reading, tell Gabe I said fuck you for me.[/QUOTE] It's not that they're turning into EA, they're turning into old EA. Don't forget that they had refunds before Valve and they also have a better policy where you get a day to request a refund, they have live customer support and because EA is publicly traded they have investor meetings where they tell people what's going on.

Goodbye Valve-made videogames, now lets all say hello to the future of Valve that is eSports and microtransactions.

"Hi I don't work at Valve but I know EXACTLY what's going on there this is in no way just kneejerk conjecture grr grr"

[QUOTE=Grandzeit;49483567]Playing it safe is understandable - the standards for something like Half Life 3 are astronomical. It wouldn't take much before the whole project would be considered a huge failure.[/QUOTE] Valve makes enough money to go into the development of a big Triple A SP game, they make enough off Steam and their other microtransaction assets to fund it all without a big risk. Plus a new Valve game getting released? One with the Half Life title? [I]It will sell even if its trash.[/I]

Can we at least get a book for the story of HL3? If not a game but a book at the very least? [I]Please?[/I]

[QUOTE=Reagy;49484025]Valve makes enough money to go into the development of a big Triple A SP game, they make enough off Steam and their other microtransaction assets to fund it all without a big risk. Plus a new Valve game getting released? One with the Half Life title? [I]It will sell even if its trash.[/I][/QUOTE] Or just do nothing and still receive all the monies

In this day and age I can't imagine how anyone could try to rationalize their way into believing Valve actually cares about gaming as much as they used to. They're not even TRYING to allay anyone's fears about the future of the company -- the closest we got to a new game was an ARG about a sale, and it was only confirmed to not be anything substantial after an employee started getting borderline harassed via email. Not a single word about any future releases since 2013, and no game with a single player campaign element since 2011. If they cared about HL3, but were worried about not meeting expectations (a big excuse from fans as to why they are the way they are) or even just cared about the fans who have been waiting for going on 10 years for a resolution to HL2E2, they'd write a comic like they did for Left 4 Dead, or even COMMISSION one. A relatively small effort which would go a long way to get back in people's good graces and bring closure to a lot of people. Valve is doing wonderful things still, but they're doing wonderful hardware things. Game development doesn't appear to be on their schedule anymore (excluding eSports of course, but they'd have to be even more insane to abandon such an easy source of money for relatively little input) [QUOTE=Mabus;49483862]If he signed an NDA he won't break it, he said it himself at the bottom of the email, Valve trust him and he intends to keep their trust. For all we know Marc's part in the game is over and he's retiring on a happy note. But of course who knows.[/QUOTE] People under NDA tend to simply dodge questions, not lie outright or come up with stories as big as this. Of course he could always be an outlier, but just like in the ARG thread, flat out calling him a liar comes across as a serious attack on his character that doesn't make sense when there's nothing really to go on other than the fact we don't like what he's saying.

[QUOTE]There has never been a finished script for a Half-Life game unless the game itself is finished. .... I wouldn't even know what a script might contain until we've got a fair bit of gameply that seems compelling. You have ideas for places, scenes, characters, but they are very very rough...sometimes reflected only in emails and conversations. Nothing like a design document of a script. This is my experience anyway [/QUOTE] well... good luck finding another writer who is ready to work like that.

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;49483929]Viktor left a while ago and now that Marc Laidlaw is gone I've got no hope. I've always been one of the holdouts that thought it was coming eventually, but unless he wrote the story for Valve and dipped I don't think it's going to happen.[/QUOTE] Ted Backman also left and there was a period when Kelly Bailey was gone too.

Craig Pearson of Facepunch confirmed it btw [url]https://twitter.com/BuckSexington/status/685448687481405440[/url] [QUOTE]Richard Stanton ‏@RichStanton 27m This email from Marc Laidlaw is being reported as his retiring from Valve, but I thought he'd done this years ago [url]http://m.imgur.com/a/EfHC5[/url] Richard Stanton ‏@RichStanton 21m21 minutes ago I may be wrong about that, not claiming insider knowledge. But yeah I don't think it's news, though I guess it may not be widely-known. Ben Barrett ‏@ChaosSmurf 19m19 minutes ago @RichStanton he's still on their employee page. Craig Pearson ‏@BuckSexington @ChaosSmurf @RichStanton I can confrim he's gone.[/QUOTE]

RIP HL3. He never scored.

Why do people think that this means that Half-Life 3 won't be made? Do you people honestly think that Marc hasn't written the story continuation for the Episode Two years ago?