Back in March, Valve CEO Gabe Newell gave gamers a fresh bout of hope for ever seeing Half-Life 3 in their lifetimes, promising that the company's DOTA-based card game, Artifact, was not the only thing Valve was working on, labelling it as the 'first of several games' we should expect from the studio in the future.

In a recent interview, Valve developers reiterated their intention of getting back into the business of developing and publishing games. They also acknowledged the many jokes and memes surrounding the now-infamous sequel to Half-Life 2 and told IGN that they regularly share these among themselves.

Explaining Valve's lack of new releases in recent years, Artifact programmer Brandon Reinhart suggested the company's behind-the-scenes work on improving the experience on Steam was part of its investment for the future. With that investment now yielding returns, he continued,

"Now we're in a place where we're able to, as a company, invest and focus a lot more on games again... The answer to 'you're just sitting on your butts, sitting on a pile of money, swimming around the gold vault,' is to not actually do that. To deliver a bunch of high quality games that show we're actually working really hard."

Valve's first game release since 2013, Artifact, will be available from November 28 on PC.

Source: IGN | ﻿Image via Den of Geek