Valve's forgotten game has resurfaced with a surprising but likely meaningless 2029 release window

In The Valley of the Gods
(Image credit: Valve)

Valve's previously announced game from the developer of Firewatch has randomly got a new release window on Steam, despite production on the game being paused in 2019. 

In The Valley of Gods was announced back in 2017, set to release in 2019, and was being developed by Firewatch developer Campo Santo - which was purchased by Valve in 2018. The first-person action adventure game would see players explore a remote valley in Egypt in search of treasure, and was so far along in development that Steam still has some screenshots on the game's store listing. 

As reported by Polygon though, by December 2019, development on In The Valley of Gods was put "on hold" due to developers at Campo Santo moving onto other Valve projects such as Half-Life: Alyx and Dota Underlords. Studio co-founder Jake Rodkin made a point, in the statement provided to Polygon in 2019, that the game hadn't been scrapped, and was just put on the back burner for now. However, we are yet to hear any update on this. 

Fast forward to February 2023 though, and something has changed on In The Valley of Gods' Steam page. Instead of featuring the 'TBD' release date placeholder that it did previously, the store page now says that the game is set to release in 'December 2029.' 

Unfortunately for those excited for Valve to eventually release this one, this change of release window probably doesn't mean a whole lot. Just like the before, the December 2029 release date is probably just another placeholder, what with it being 10 years after the game was originally set to release.

If you want to know what games are definitely coming out soon, take a look at our new games 2023 list. 

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Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at 12DOVE before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.  

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