Valve denies rumours of a Korean acquisition

“We’re pretty happy”

Chris KempSeptember 30, 2012

Rumours have been circulating that Half-life developer Valve may be acquired by Korean publishers Nexon and NCsoft. However, Chet Faliszek, writer of many of Valve’s major titles, has said they’re all nonsense.

He compares the Korean acquisition to other previous false rumours, such as when Valve was supposedly to be acquired by EA and Apple.

“It’s the same as when Tim Schmidt came by and visited us,” he explained, referring to the Apple rumours. “It’s weird, because Gabe just gave that interview to the NYT which everyone was quoting – it’s weirdly twisted how they took it.

“They were asking if we were going to sell out to someone and Gabe was like, we’re not going to do that. The guy made the question to be about, ‘how’s this going to end’.

“There’s no thoughts about that – everyone likes working there, we like working together we like the culture we have and the way it works because of all the parts of it. We’re not changing any of that, we’re pretty happy. We’re doing OK.”

Reports from earlier this week posted on a Korean site claimed that the NCsoft and Nexon CEOs had met at a private developer summit to discuss merging and acquiring the Steam developer with their pooled resources.

Some of this speculation was fuelled by the fact that Nexon purchased a massive $685 million stake in NCsoft, making it the largest shareholder in the company.

Recently The New York Times claimed that EA had sought to acquire valve for the cool price of $1 billion. However, Valve president Gabe Newell later said that he would sooner have the company disintegrate than be purchased by another.