Jay Pinkerton, probably the last Valve writer you’ve heard of, has joined his former colleagues in leaving the Half-Life developers.
Valve have made many of our best FPS games on PC.
A number of observers, including ValveTime on Twitter, noted a Facebook update from Pinkerton indicating he had left his job. Chet Faliszek, another writer who left Valve several weeks ago, confirmed the news:
VICTORY AT LAST!
VICTORY AT LAST!Sigh. @jaypinkerton really is one of the funniest guys I've ever met, let alone worked with. https://t.co/yVPL8gdfYv
— Chet Faliszek (@chetfaliszek) June 7, 2017
Pinkerton co-wrote Portal 2 with Faliszek and Eric Wolpaw, who left the company in February. He also worked on both Left 4 Dead games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and the Team Fortress 2 comics.
Pinkerton’s departure almost completes the exodus of Valve writers which Marc Laidlaw, who penned Half-Life, began in January last year. As far as we know, Steve Jaros and Sheila Sadeghi are now the only ones left. Sadeghi has worked on the TF2 comics before, and will presumably conclude them, but the departure of Valve’s four most prominent writers in 18 months is indicative of the company’s present course: away from single-player narrative games, toward multiplayer live games. Don’t expect that to change any time soon.