Kerbal Space Program has been around in one form or another since 2011, and went into full release in 2015. But even with all that water under the bridge, the past year has quite possibly been the most tumultuous for developer Squad. Last May, creator and lead developer Felipe Falanghe announced that he was leaving the studio and the game; and this May, it came to light that Valve has hired the development team, or some portion of it.
The news came by way of a Game Dev Unchained interview with former Valve developer Roger Lundeen, now with Turtle Rock, whose credits include CS:GO and Portal 2. "[Valve] is still buying up mod teams. There's the group of... the modders who made—is it Kerbal Space Station? ... I think it just happened about four or five months ago, six months ago," he said. "They just gave that entire team jobs."
"Those guys are out of Mexico, I believe. I don't know how many have gone up to Valve, but I just heard that the crew that made Kerbal Space Station [got hired]," he added.
Lundeen is obviously a bit off the mark with the title—it's a Program, not a Station, and it's not a mod—but his information, as it turns out, is accurate. It's not known how many members of the studio have been picked up, but a Valve rep confirmed that at least some of the Kerbal team had been hired and added, "We'll be announcing more soon."
We'll let you know when they do.
Update: The headline has been changed to reflect that the new hires were not current members of KSP studio Squad when they joined Valve.
