Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek has left Valve

Chet Faliszek, whose writing credits include Half-Life: Episode One and two, Portal and Portal 2, Left 4 Dead, L4D2, CS:GO, and Dota 2, has confirmed with GamesIndustry that he is no longer with Valve. Faliszek's departure comes just a few months after that of his Old Man Murray cohort Erik Wolpaw, who left in February, and a little over a year behind Marc Laidlaw, who bid his farewell in January 2016. 

"[It was] nothing exciting or drama filled," Faliszek said. "I worked there 12 years, shipped a bunch of great games and some amazing hardware and wanted to change things up. There's no news on what's next etc, I will let you know when that happens." 

Faliszek has obviously been a tremendously influential game writer over the years, but more recently he'd become one of Valve's most visible VR evangelists, attending conferences and engaging with developers and consumers alike about the technology's potential as a storytelling tool. But he was also visibly enthusiastic about what it's capable of right now: In a presentation at the DevGAMM Conference last year, he pointed out that Raw Data, released last summer, was the "number-one-selling game the day it came out," despite being a VR-exclusive release. 

"This isn't some—often in VR we're talking about the future, something that comes later," he said. "But what we're saying is, right here today, that day, it was the number-one selling title. And it went on to stay on the charts for awhile. They did really well. So you can find success now. And that pool of people who have kits and are buying games are just getting larger and larger every day."