Portal 3 Left Hanging Due to Lack of Support Among Valve Employees
The writers of the Portal series may have an idea for a third game, but the „flat structure” at Valve means that the project must attract other employees.
December news from Valve raised hopes for a continuation of the Portal series, and by no means in the form of further spin-offs (barely related to the brand in that case). However, it doesn't look like the company's aversion to number 3 in game titles will go away any time soon. One of the series' writers has once again made it clear that at Valve, for the time being, there is a lack of support for Portal 3.
Recently Erik Wolpaw - for he is the man in question - was a guest on the My Perfect Console podcast, hosted by Simon Parkin. The screenwriter of the two main installments of Portal mentioned during the conversation that Valve's "flat" structure (i.e., with few formal levels of management and giving a fair amount of freedom to employees) means that every initiative requires the voluntary involvement of those within the company.
Wolpaw stressed that while Valve may appear to be a market giant (owning, among other things, Steam), in reality it does not employ that many developers. These, in turn, have the choice of overseeing the development of the company's already released products or developing new, sometimes experimental projects.
Operating Steam and Steam Deck alone requires a sizable team, not to mention working on Counter-Strike 2. As a result, as Wolpaw put it, there's "always something going on" at Valve, and because of this, for now, ideas for Portal 3 have not found enough support among the employees.
Nevertheless, the screenwriter intends to "push" Valve, albeit jokingly rather than by force. He himself admits that, although he values the time spent on the development of Gabe Newell's company's game, given a choice between games or Steam, he would bet on "the most democratizing technology", which he considers Valve's digital distribution platform to be.
