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Valve Leaving Episodic Model Behind

by Bryan Vore on May 09, 2011 at 01:41 PM


Anyone who's been waiting for Half-Life 2: Episode Three probably knows this full well already, but Valve co-founder Gabe Newell says in a recent interview that the company is done with episodic gaming.

“We went through the episodes phase, and now we’re going towards shorter and even shorter cycles,” Newell says in an interview with Develop. “For me, ‘entertainment as a service’ is a clear distillation of the episodic content model.”

Newell holds up Team Fortress 2 as the model for this philosophy with its endless stream of updates years after its release. But what about Valve's latest game?

“Portal 2? We’ll have to see how much our customers want us to push in that direction," Newell says. "In general, our approach is to come into work and ask ‘what can we do for our customers today’?"

For the full story, check out Develop's post.