Skip to main content

One of main Valve’s mainstay writers, Chet Faliszek, is leaving after 12 years

chet faliszek leaving valve
Pressfire
Chet Faliszek, one of Valve’s longest-tenured employees and the writer for such hit games as Portal, Left 4 Dead and the first two Half-Life 2 episodes, has announced he’s leaving the developer. After a 12-year stint at the company, he said he was looking to “change things up.”

Although in more recent years Faliszek has been a true evangelist for Valve’s SteamVR platform and the HTC Vive headset, helping developers and consumers come to grips with the technology in various ways, his resumé is packed with writing credits. He wrote the story for several of Valve’s most well-received games over the past decade and has been a proponent of storytelling in gaming.

Recommended Videos

His reasons for leaving are simple. In a statement to GamesIndustry, he said that he simply wanted to start something new:

“[It was] nothing exciting or drama filled,” he said. “I worked there 12 years, shipped a bunch of great games and some amazing hardware and wanted to change things up. There’s no news on what’s next etc, I will let you know when that happens.”

Comparisons have been drawn between Faliszek’s departure and Eric Wolfpaw and Marc Laidlaw, two other Valve writers who left the company within the past year. Wolfpaw also ran a popular gaming site with Faliszek back in the early 2000s, though neither suggested their near-simultaneous departure is any indication of collaboration between the two.

Much praise has been heaped on Faliszek at the news of his leaving Valve, with many highlighting his willingness to view new virtual reality ideas with an open mind, as well as his importance in raising the awareness of VR as a new entertainment medium.

Some fans expressed sadness at the news of his leaving, while others suggest that it could well be the final nail in the coffin for their hopes that Valve ever makes a Half-Life game again. With many of Valve’s long-time story writers having moved on to new pastures, there is even less indication that Valve would consider a new, single-player, story-driven experience as a future development.

Of course, with Valve you never know, as it rarely tells the world what it’s working on until when they are nearly ready, but it certainly does not bode well for anyone still holding out hope for Half-Life 3.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…
Quiz: Can you tell the difference between these PS5 and PS5 Pro screenshots?
A PS5 Pro that's floating in front of a gray background. It's turned to the side.

Ever since the PlayStation 5 Pro was first revealed, I've seen a common refrain from some skeptics: "I don't see a difference!"

I was in the same boat when Mark Cerny introduced the console in a YouTube video back in September. A compressed YouTube stream just isn't the best way to communicate a console that both increases resolution and frame rate. I only started to see just how different the PS5 Pro looks compared to the base model once I could see them side by side in my own home. It took me some time -- and a lot of eye straining -- to spot some of the finer details outside of its more obvious AI-upscaling benefits, but I was able to see them eventually. The PS5 Pro does improve image quality, but is the bump enough to justify a $700 purchase?

Read more
Battle Aces was born from a rejected StarCraft 2 expansion pitch
Art from the reveal trailer for Battle Aces.

The fast-paced real-time strategy (RTS) game Battle Aces was inspired by an idea that game director David Kim had while working on StarCraft 2 at Blizzard Entertainment.

“Why can’t there be an RTS game that gets rid of all these tedious clicks and focuses on the fun factors?” Kim recalled thinking. “There was a point during Legacy of the Void’s development where we seriously considered cleaning up all of those things and made an RTS game that’s really focused on the fun. But the conclusion was that we should not switch up what StarCraft 2 is on the last expansion of the game.”

Read more
Nintendo’s next system is compatible with Nintendo Switch games
An image of the Nintendo Switch - OLED Model Mario Red Edition.

During its latest financial results, Nintendo revealed some more details about the successor to the Nintendo Switch. Specifically, Nintendo confirmed that people will be able to play their Nintendo Switch games on the new system.

"This is Furukawa. At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch," Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday night. "Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well. Further information about the successor to Nintendo Switch, including its compatibility with Nintendo Switch, will be announced at a later date."

Read more