#f-stop

This will be updated if any other Valve personnel say anything/if I find something I missed! Note that these are all for the most part just talk or theories (so basically this isn't a confirmation of any sort). If Valve was to work on Portal 3, it would take awhile to start production. These are all about the concept of it, but things can change anytime.

Reportedly from Tyler McVicker, Erik Wolpaw, the main writer of the Portal games, has been working on Portal related things since 2020 and has mentioned in multiple interviews around then that he wants to continue Portal. Although it's a reoccurring thing with the same issue- not enough people around him are able to work on it.

In March 2021, Erik Wolpaw on Game Maker's Notebook saying Portal 3 would make money.

"Someday, maybe someone from Valve will listen, we should make a Portal 3! We should make one! Guaranteed, you will make your money back!"

In February 2022, interviewed by Kiwi Talkz: Josh Weier, Portal 2's lead designer, never thought of Portal 3 but "never say never". He then goes into a story about Portal 2's development process, which could be similar for Portal 3.

[Answering if Valve considered Portal 3] "Not by me! It was hard for us when we were making Portal 2 because how are we going to continue making Portal because Portal put a bow on itself. Steam gave us this ability to retcon this thing which is kind of cool ... I'm sure they [Valve making Portal 3?] could do that stuff ... Never say never because actually a big part of what made Portal 2 work is that when we started Portal 2 we were in this mindset "if we're going to do this different mechanic, we're going to change it up a bit. People want new things, they don't want the same old thing" and we just beat our head against the wall for six months and it was getting kind of dire ... Scott Lynch ... came to us and said "Hey, Microsoft wants you to make Portal for the Xbox, can you do that?" and we're like "yeah we'll just port it" and then we had a thought ... there's this cool mod [Portal Still Alive] that came out that adds a bunch of mechanics, maybe we can put that in as well and clean it up and then that'll add a little extra value, it'll make the Xbox version special ... it was really crucial to Portal 2's development because it made us back up and sort of resaturate ourselves as developers in Portal and take on these new mechanics and go "oh you know actually I think there are more things we can do here and I think we've been too quick to dismiss how much more we can do", which seems more obvious in retrospect ... I feel like if that Xbox port wouldn't have happened, Portal 2 may not have happened right or it may have happened in this really different way that I wouldn't have been involved in ... there's always this reflection point where you're like "our game is awful" and then you kind of back up and go "how do we make our game not awful". We were lucky at Valve that we could do that, a lot of game companies have that inflection point and then their publisher is like "great okay bye" and they take it and they know it's going out the door unfinished ... at Valve we could always have that inflection point and sit down and go "okay let's rip this up, let's take the good parts, let's piece it back together". That always gave us the ability to really make really great products. We could take the time to refine what we had and to really sit back and analyze it versus just going "uh we just got to get this out the door that's our best shot like that's the best we could do in the time" ..."

I shortened what he said here somewhat, but what he's saying is it's hard to make a third game if you think the first two games were done perfectly. You have to dig in and think about what can be improved. Additional content was made through new changes and new ideas or outside sources, so it's possible for there to be a Portal 3, but currently there isn't a point left off in Portal 2 to continue from in the same format unless they alter the existing story. They'll have to reflect on weak points in the game to remove and reconstruct what they think could be the best improved version of both games.

In April 2022 in an interview with Kiwi Talkz, Erik Wolpaw gives the support in Valve starting Portal 3, even though it's not very plausible.

"I'd work on another Portal in a second but I can't do it unfortunately by myself ... I can't make it happen. I could advocate for it- I would not do it! It might help a little bit but the problem is with 300 employees and there isn't the breakdown like how many of them are on the production side versus Steam business side versus legal versus whatever. Of course there's a lot of opportunity cost to taking 75 people and trying to get a game made. As much as it seems like Valve often is just a bunch of people sitting around sipping gin and tonics by a pool, everybody's working. They're working all the time, it's just it doesn't always end up coming out or it comes out years later, it gets turned into something else. So everybody is accounted for, I guess is what I'm saying. People are all doing something so you almost have to take them, it's like a revolution, you'd have to stir up a bunch of people to leave what they're currently working on and come work on something else. In this case it would be Portal 3. You'd make some money, the problem is you would make money, but is it Counter-Strike: GO money? Probably not, but having said that maybe every game doesn't need to make Counter-Strike: GO money."

"We gotta start Portal 3, that's my message to, I don't know.. to whoever. Anything you can do, let's do it. Let's just make it happen. 'Cause I am also not getting any younger. We are reaching the point where it's, crazy to think, literally too old to work on Portal 3. So.. we should just do it. And Desk Job was fun, you like Desk Job, send mail to Gabe! Tell him you want some Portal 3. It won't do anything but maybe it will make you feel better."

In August 2022, interviewed by Kiwi Talkz, Ellen McLain, voice of GLaDOS, says she supports Portal 3.

"Well, write in! Email Valve, you've got my blessing. Say "Ellen wants a Portal 3"!"

In November 2022, Erik states in an interview with Do You Know Gaming that he and Jay are making a script and is asking around for help at Valve.

"Jay and I have an idea that we think is pretty awesome for what would happen, generally speaking. We don't have a script or any details worked out but we have sort of a starting point that we like a ton. It's good that we have this idea but there's a lot left to do. Somebody's gotta think up some new portal puzzles. But we do have an actual idea, yes."

DYKG expands that Erik and Jay have brought it up around Valve with the response being positive but they need more people on board and more commitment. Especially with the lack of a pitch process there and with the overwhelm of current projects that they can't pull people away from. Having the idea for the game is vastly different than the game being in progress, so it might take awhile for actual production on Portal 3 to happen.

In April 2023 with the My Perfect Console podcast (which is also on Spotify. And reiterated by PC Gamer), Erik says his initial statements were jokes.

"In a flat structure like Valve there is an opportunity cost to doing anything. Whatever is going on at Valve right now requires the dedication and participation of the people working on it, and its voluntary. To some extent I would like to make a Portal 3 but I understand that other than the fact that I'm largely joking when I say it, just to give Valve- the people I work with some crap. It is- to really go out and advocate for something like that could really be destructive just in the sense that you don't want to cause internal strife. Which I guess I am doing but the people who could be disturbed by it internally understand that it's just me joking around."

Then explaining more upon how busy Valve is and what people think about it with the size of Steam.

"Keeping CSGO and DoTA, for a small company... the thing is, Valve is not a giant company. I think people sometimes think it is because of the outside influence of Steam. But it's not really that many people, so it takes manpower to keep DotA going, it takes manpower to keep CSGO going. And the freeform nature of Valve means there are a lot of experiments that simply fail. So things are happening, if you were inside Valve you would think stuff is always going on, because it is."

Later saying it's not a money problem at Valve to make games, it's a manpower problem. Noting though that Valve was very busy in it's early years with many game releases close together.

A lot of people theorized Portal 3 was coming when Valve announced it had other games coming up.

From Greg Coomer, a product designer at Valve, with Axios in March 2022:

“There are multiple games in development right now at Valve, and I think they're pretty exciting ones.”

From Greg Coomer with Famitsu in August 2022:

"Valve has a lot of games in development. We will continue to release games. Game development is very important to Valve. I don't know the exact numbers, but the percentage of employees involved in game development is high. A lot of people are involved."

[Talking about the release of Aperture Desk Job] "I think Valve has a lot of Portal works that should be made in the future. That world is worthy of further exploration. So I don't have anything to announce right now, but I would like to create another Portal someday."

[When asked about Half-Life Alyx's impact on the series] "We love that world, and we want to continue exploring the Half-Life universe. "Half-Life: Alyx" was a really fun game to make. Even though we were the ones who created that world, it's fun to go back there and tell more stories. Additionally, there are many challenges with virtual reality, and solving them was an interesting task. Half-Life works are always accompanied by technological innovation, so it was a big step in that sense as well. Returning to the original question, the short answer is "yes." Half-Life: Alyx is a sign that Valve has more to say about that world."

(I'm including that last one as Portal and Half-Life share a multiverse, meaning more Half-Life likely means more Portal content in some way)

People believed a new Portal game was coming even more so when Valve had been consistently releasing new Portal related products in 2022. Such as the Companion Collection for Nintendo Switch, Portal RTX, Aperture Desk Job, the Geico Portal commercial, and Tag the Power of Paint's release on Steam.

Valve has tried to work on other Portal related projects in years prior but nothing has happened with them yet (like F-Stop, HL2e3, unfinished time experiment game, Aperture ghost F-Stop game, a HL3 idea, Portal in VR, and definitely more we haven't heard of yet or I'm forgetting to list). There is always a chance they reuse these ideas.

There was also an alleged puzzle game that Valve was working on 2021 to 2022 (although it being Portal 3 is unlikely unless it spirals into being that). In the 2022 Aperture Desk Job datamine leak, it was shown that Valve was making a Portal paint related game at some point that was related to the older F-Stop ideas, titled as "steampal". (Maybe related to early versions of ADJ? Steampal is the name of Steamdecks Japan mascot so you'd assume it relates to Steamdeck- Steampal was also the codename in development, apparently). It is unknown if the 2021 puzzle game and the ADJ leak are the same project, but that was the connection I made.

"This isn’t a bed and breakfast and if you decide to stay the night, I’m charging you rent for the next year."

70s Aperture Content Dump.

I feel like the tide is turning hard and fast on Valve these days. The timing of this certainly doesn’t help. Valve is no longer a software company. They are bleeding talent that worked on some of their biggest, most critically acclaimed work.

And the fact that they are bleeding this talent is important. Valve is not a company that you should just walk away from. Erik Wolpaw once told a story about a flare-up of ulcerative colitis that made him miss months of work. Valve paid for all the hospital expenses and even gave him full paid leave. Gabe Newell told him “Your job is to get better. That is your job description at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you are better.” They didn’t have to do that, but they extended the ultimate in generosity to keep him happy, healthy, and employed at Valve.

So when Erik Wolpaw leaves Valve, that’s not a decision I’m sure he came to lightly. Even though Marc Laidlaw, Erik Wolpaw, and Chet Faliszek all left and said there was no bad blood, they are putting the golden goose back in the pen and saying “Naw, I’ve got somewhere else to be.”

That’s a reflection on what Valve is, and what Valve will become going forward.

Valve has, essentially, infinite money. And not only do they have infinite money, but they’re constantly looking for solutions to avoid hiring more employees. They’d rather figure out a way to make the community do all the work for them, so they can kick back and go for a swim in their Scrooge McDuck money bins.

In a lot of ways, it’s starting to feel very reminiscent of the trend you see on Kickstarter. The big important game developer promises you everything you’ve ever hoped or dreamed for, they get millions of dollars, go over-budget, miss deadlines, and ultimately under-deliver. We saw it with Broken Age, we saw it with Mighty No. 9, we saw it with Yooka-Laylee, we’re seeing it with Shenmue 3 and most likely Bloodstained (which, after three years in development, is apparently only 20% complete). It’s less that these guys have lost their touches and more that they have the freedom to do whatever they want, and whatever they want turns out to be beyond reasonable budgets.

Take Broken Age: when Tim Schafer pitched the Kickstarter, he thought they’d do a short, simple adventure game, like the very first Maniac Mansion. No voice acting, not even HD visuals. The final Broken Age was so expensive it had to be broken in to two separate halves, with the sales of Broken Age 1 funding part 2.

I think it was in their Yooka-Laylee video, but Stop Skeletons From Fighting brought up a wonderful clip from behind the scenes of The Incredibles, where Brad Bird is arguing for a big, impressive, and most importantly time consuming and expensive action scene to cap the movie off. If Brad Bird had total creative freedom he would do that scene without a second thought, but since he was working for Disney, he had a producer on hand pushing back against it. Brad, in his own words, wanted to do “something cool” and the producer wanted it “on time and on budget” – and ultimately, that clash lead to a fantastic final product, because limitations foster creativity. Unchecked freedom can just make a very costly mess, which is a trap many of these high-profile Kickstarters are falling in to.

Valve gets around some of that because their money hose doesn’t stop gushing. They don’t even have to put out software anymore – Valve takes a deep cut of every DOTA 2 International tournament prize pool, which this year raised $24,000,000. Roughly half of that gets funneled back in to Valve, every year, until the day DOTA 2 stops being interesting. On top of the 30% of every sale on Steam. On top of them ramping up the tournament scene in CS:GO in the last two years with the same tactics that filled DOTA 2 with money. Valve clearly has more cash than they know what to do with.

But what has that gotten us?

A failed deal with Adult Swim for Valve to produce Team Fortress 2 shorts as a TV series. Only one episode was ever finished and released (Expiration Date), which reportedly took something like a whole year (or more) to put together. Using a piece of software Valve built themselves, and is intimately familiar with. When fans, using that same piece of software, routinely produce a significantly greater volume of work at nearly professional standards, and often by single-person teams working alone (there’s even a yearly film festival about this exact thing). The best Valve could muster was a single episode, despite reportedly employing more than 200 people.

Two, the Steam Controller. Valve custom-built an entire assembly line factory with their own money to produce Steam Controllers after nearly two years of private and public R&D. It failed to set the world on fire, because in order to use it, it requires you to unlearn basically everything you’ve ever known about game controllers. It is the DVORAK of gamepads, catering to a very narrow audience of people who either forced themselves to like it or grew up knowing nothing else.

Three, are Steam Machines, which is really just a nebulous PC spec that doesn’t seem to have really stuck around or gone anywhere at all.

Four, SteamVR (The Vive), which is prohibitively expensive and requires a minimum amount of space in order to work that most people apparently do not have. Cool if you’re rich enough to afford any of that, but I don’t think very many can right now.

And five, a DOTA 2 collectible card game that seems to exist only because Valve saw how much money Blizzard was making with Hearthstone, and they decided to make their own version of that.

Not exactly the greatest pedigree to have after a high point like Portal 2. So much for Valve’s “make something interesting, and if it’s cool enough it’ll eventually come out.” mantra.

How many projects like Half-Life 2 Episode 3 were left on the cutting room floor? Forgotten about if for no other reason than the person working on it got pulled away to help crunch for a TF2 update, or producing The International, or something else? Only to, weeks or even months later, come back and realize they don’t remember where they left off. But who cares, right? If it wasn’t cool enough, then you can just work on something else. Nobody’s going to stop you. Wheel your desk somewhere else and start over on whatever catches your interest that week.

What happened to F-STOP? The idea that was reportedly going to make up Portal 2 but ended up being abandoned because it was “too good.” That was more than six years ago. They spent one whole year prototyping F-STOP and we haven’t heard a peep about it since (unless they planned to have a whole section in Portal 2 where you play a DOTA 2 card game, I guess).