Risk of Rain 2—and the series in general—has enjoyed plenty of success over the years. With the first game made by uni students Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, and being somewhat of an indie smash hit, the second arrived in 2019 and also , hitting 500,000 players in early access.
Then in 2022, the Risk of Rain IP shifted hands from Drummond and Morse's development studio, Hopoo Games, over to —and, if the reception to its latest expansion's anything to go by, .
It all ends with a : "We love making games—and will continue to do so, for years to come. We're excited to be working side-by-side with the talented people at Valve. But for now—sleep tight, Hopoo Games."
I've got some mixed feelings on this, myself. I've enjoyed basically every Hopoo Games title I've played—so to know there probably won't be any more originals from the studio, even if the bulk of its developers are working at Valve now, does kinda sting.
A similar situation happened with the former Firewatch developers Campo Santo, who were brought into the Valve fold in 2018—which caused , a game announced seven years ago, to linger in development purgatory. It's even currently got a , so I think we're gonna be waiting a [[link]] while, bare minimum.
On the other hand, considering what Valve's doing with Deadlock at the moment () bringing on Hopoo to potentially work on that project—though it's unclear where exactly they'll be placed—seems like a win for everyone. To know there was a game in development that's now being cancelled also sucks, but Snail was never announced—so it's hard to mourn what [[link]] you never knew.