Everybody loves crazy rumors about what’s going on at Valve. From trying to will Half Life 3 into existence by putting rumors out on the internet to more legitimate teases about forĂ©es into wearable computers, when somebody starts talking about Gabe Newell and Co, people start listening. So listen to this, folks. For third time this year, concept art from a possible new IP from Valve has managed to find its way onto the internet. Based on the art (and more rumors), it sounds like Valve is working on an space-travelling MMO of some kind.
According to the second batch of concept art, released as a video back in April, the project is being referred to as “SOB”. According to a forum on FacePunch, the letters stand for “Stars of Barathrum”. Barathrum, as it happens, is a character from Dota. Valve has shown that it loves to tie franchises together (Half-Life and Portal, Left 4 Dead and Payday: The Heist) but building a whole game based on a single character seems a bit farfetched. Similarly, the MMO as we know is a rapidly deteriorating genre: Valve may be interested in exploring new ways to make  a game with a sustainable communities, but I’d hope they’d be working on something a little more outside the box.
Then again, this is a post entirely devoted to wild speculation based on images whose authenticity hasn’t been confirmed…Â So anything is possible. We’ve put a couple more images below, but there are many more images that may or may not be from a new Valve game on this FacePunch forum thread.
(FacePunch via Kotaku, image credit: FacePunch)
- Valve is also working on Source Engine 2…
- First wave of Steam Greenlight approved
- Steam isn’t just for games anymore.
