Valve's allergy to the number 3 continues, perhaps not as much as to Half-Life 3 (or Episode 3), but there are many fans eager for a sequel to the Portal series, including Portal series writer Eric Wolpaw. are many. Unfortunately, the possibility of a sequel is still hard to gauge.

Walpaugh has previously advocated for a "Portal 3" (opens in new tab) and hopes to bring action to the company, which he returned to in 2019 as a part-time contractor after a stint at Double Fine.In December, a "starting point" for Portal 3 (opens in new tab) was announced by Open in tab), but even revealed that Valve had not committed to the development, and four months later, not much seems to have changed.

In an interview with Simon Parkin on the My Perfect Console podcast (opens in new tab), Walpaugh explained the difficulty of getting a sequel off the ground. He said, "With a flat structure like Valve, there's an opportunity cost to doing anything, and with an organization as flat as Valve, there's an opportunity cost to doing anything.

This means that there must be enough people within Valve to work on Portal 3. But in the meantime, Walpow is going to keep pushing for it and jokingly giving Valve a hard time. He added, "People who might be annoyed within the company need to understand that I'm just messing around."

A source of frustration for fans is the long period of time Valve seems to be developing nothing else. Or Half-Life 3." However, Walpaugh defended his employer.

"Valve is not a huge company, I know it sometimes seems that way because Steam is so influential, but there really aren't that many people there, and it takes people to keep Dota going, it takes people to keep CSGO going, it takes people to keep Dota going, it takes people to keep CSGO going, it takes people to keep Dota going, it takes people to keep CSGO going, it takes people to keep Dota going, it takes people to keep CSGO going. And the free-form nature of Valve simply means that there are a lot of experiments that fail; if you were inside Valve, you'd think there's always a lot going on.

And Valve has clearly been busy lately, with the launch of Steam Deck and the development of Counter-Strike 2 (opens in new tab). And Steam itself remains the most important piece of software Valve has ever designed and maintained.

"I've enjoyed working on and spending time at Valve, and it's important to me, but if I had to choose between Valve games and Steam, I'd choose Steam... Steam is about people making games, game creators actually I feel like it's the most democratized technology that has ever come along that allows people to make games and put them in front of people, and I think that's what Steam is all about.

In other words, at Valve, there is always something competing for attention. 'It's a question of manpower,' he said. 'You have to choose what to work on, and time is limited.'