Portal 2 project lead wants Valve to return to single-player games

During PAX Aus 2024 not only did we get the Steam Deck for Australia announcement, but the project leader on Valve's own Portal 2 did an interview with KIWI TALKZ.

The interview goes over many things about what it was like at Valve, scepticism around the original release of Steam itself, there's a Q&A section and so on. One bit that sticks out is how even the lead on Portal 2 really hopes that Valve return to more single-player games.

Here's an excerpt from what Josh Weier said in reply to a question that brings up how the Risk of Rain creators Hopoo Games joining Valve:

I've been out of Valve for 7 years now. So I don't really have a lot of insight into what they're doing. When I left the company had certainly shifted away from thinking about single player and they were very interested in VR and they were very interested in the counter-strikes and DOTA and kind of more games of service. That never resonated with me, I'm a single player person, I don't care for games as a service, I don't want to do that so that was a big reason I was like eh I'll go do something else. I'd love to see them get back to those roots because obviously that's the thing I think they did incredibly well. And I want to play that as a customer.

Full interview video is below, the particular section above is about 53:00 in:

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Always good to hear more behind the scenes from people who used to work for Valve. You don't get this kind of insight too often, with Valve continuing to be a pretty tight-lipped company.

What single player game would you have as your number 1 for Valve to bring out next?