Valve hires key employees from Risk of Rain developer

It sounds like Hopoo Games, the developer of cult hit and roguelike platformer Risk of Rain, is going on a hiatus. In an announcement on X/Twitter, the company has announced that its co-founders Paul Morse and Duncan Drummond, "alongside many other talented members at Hopoo Games," will now be working for Valve. The company is stopping the production of an unannounced game called Snail as a result, and it's not quite clear if it will ever pick up from where it left off in the future. Hopoo also didn't say how many of its staff members are joining Valve and how many chose to leave or had been left out of the deal. "...[F]or now — sleep tight, Hopoo Games," one of the company's tweets reads.

As Game Developer and several posters on the Steam subreddit notes, the former Hopoo staffers could be joining Valve's development of Deadlock, an upcoming MOBA shooter that it has been testing since 2023. Deadlock attracted thousands of early players before it was even officially announced, though it remains invite only and is still in early development with no release date yet.

Hopoo also developed a side-scrolling stealth-action game called Deadbolt, but it owes most of its success to Risk of Rain, which spawned a sequel and a remake. Risk of Rain was released in 2013, and while its 2D shooting and platforming mechanics are pretty simple, the game isn't easy. It becomes more difficult and throws stronger monsters at you the more you play, and you only get one life — you'll lose all the experience you've gained if you die and will have to start again.