14 DAY TRIAL // Brad Wardell, the leader of Stardock, has sought to offer further justification for the sale of the Impulse digital distribution service to retail chain GameStop, suggesting that Valve might have been silent on the issue of Half Life 2: Episode 3 because of their need to keep working on their own Steam service.
Wardell has talked to IndustryGamers and stated, “Even though Valve is in Seattle, where you can get developers everywhere, had an effect on their own development schedule.”
He added, “There's not been a new Half-Life in a long time; a lot of people have complained about that. They've have their own challenges getting new titles out the door, and a big part of that I'm sure is the same problems we've had. When one of your groups is so ridiculously profitable, every business instinct you have is to throw all your best people at it, because that's what's making the money. That's just sound business.”
The Stardock boss believes that his company had a choice to face when Impulse became popular, even if small when compared to Steam, and he chose to let the digital distribution side of the company go in order to be able to focus on creating video games and consumer software.
Valve has never talked about how it distributes resources internally and how much of the company's workforce is linked to the development and maintenance of Steam, which is the most successful digital distribution service on the PC.
Gamers have been asking about the future of the Half Life universe for quite some time, but Valve has never made an official announcement linked to it, although it seems that the upcoming Portal 2 might offer some clues.
At the moment, Stardock is working on the Fallen Enchantress expansion for their Elemental: War of Magic strategy, which is set to be delivered for free to those who committed early to the flawed but ambitious game.