Valve happy to discuss acquisition

The VP of Half-Life 2, Team Fortress and Portal developer Valve, Doug Lombardi, has stated that his company would be happy to have conversations with companies thinking of acquiring the successful firm.

In an interview with Gamasutra Lombardi stated that if anyone was interested in acquiring the firm he would be happy to have that conversation”, adding: By the same token, the company’s doing pretty well, and we’re really happy with what we’re doing. So we’ll see. I mean, anything is possible.

We had been socialised to doing so many things ourselves, whether it’s box creation, funding our own development, etc. When we came to meet with folks about a distribution deal – and I use that phrase intentionally – we were looking for somebody to do a certain set of services that we didn’t want to do, or weren’t versed in, and nothing more.”

He also had many words of praise for current partner EA, explaining: "EA was very progressive about saying ‘we understand who you guys are, we understand what Steam is, we don’t want Steam to go away’. Well, they might want Steam to go away, but they’re not asking us to make Steam go away."

EA has obviously become a powerhouse now, with us, Crytek, Rock Band, the announcement with Carmack and the id guys. So, you know, they’re enjoying some great days, and we enjoy working with them.”