Firewatch Developer Campo Santo has announced in a blog post that their studio has been acquired by Valve. The affair has come about after a sort of enamorement period after the team at Campo Santo drank a bottle of champagne that was meant to be opened with the attribution of a Game of the Year accolade to Valve's own Portal 2 - back when Valve actually developed games (some of us can remember that time, yes).

The message sent by the Campo Santo team is one of excitement at the opportunity, and confidence that Valve will be a partner in the development their studio wants to make, rather than an evil overlord mind-bent on franchise and creativity destruction. Knowing Valve, I'm sure people would agree with the developers. Here's hoping this marks a newfound interest from Valve in games development... even if by proxy. How I miss GLADoS' jokes... but that's a story for another day. For now, you can read the press release from Campo Santo right after the break.

You've probably heard about the recent issues regarding PewDiePie (handle of one of the most popular gaming YouTubers, Felix Kjellberg) and Campo Santo (Firewatch). The company issued a copyright strike for the YouTuber's streaming of their game, where Kjellberg used racist terms which Campo Santo didn't feel they should be in any way associated with. YouTube accepted the copyright strike, taking the video down. Legally, Campo Santo (and any video game company for that matter) can do such a thing. Kjellberg, however, is particularly worried because, as he said, "It's a pretty big deal. If I get more than three of them, my channel will shut down." As a response, users started review bombing Firewatch on Steam - id est, posting negative review after negative review, or changing their positive reviews for negative ones, so as to diminish the game's score in the light of what they see as a reprimandable action from Campo Santo.