Although the company is known these days as the creator of the Steam platform, as well as hosting eSports tournaments, there was a time when Valve was one of the most prolific game studios going. From the influential Half-Life series, to both Portal 1 and 2, as well as such popular deathmatch games like Team Fortress 2, it was a developer that always seemed to be on the cutting edge of gameplay and storytelling. At one point, Gabe Newell and company began working on a space pirate themed game, which was sadly cancelled. However, some concept art has recently emerged showing what it may have looked like.

According to a recent tweet from Obscure Game Aesthetics, Valve began work on a game called Stars of Blood, which never saw the light of day. However, the Twitter account uploaded a bunch of concept art from the scrapped title, as well as a link to more images, which show a series of environments. The fact that it’s described as a space pirate game, coupled with the art, suggests that SoB was probably going to be a sci-fi entry, though hardly anything is known about it beyond the name and the posted pictures.

On top of that, Obscure Game Aesthetics also links to some footage on YouTube, which shows a test reel footage by ex-Valve developer Gary Horsfield from 2012 of what could have been a concept that may have ended up in Stars of Blood. However, this is only speculation. Unfortunately, with Valve busy marketing its upcoming Steam Deck system, as well as maintaining its other lucrative assets, fans will probably never know what the game was going to be about, with the concept art seemingly being the only thing left over from the project.

This also isn’t the first time the Steam developer has cancelled games. Last year, a documentary revealed that a bunch of other projects had also been given the boot for one reason or another. Such examples include a Minecraft-style game that used voxel visuals, as well as an FPS called Shooter which would have used assets from Half-Life 2. Whether any of these games will ever see the light of day remains to be seen.

While the concept art released does look really cool, they will only ever represent a very small portion of what could have been with Stars of Blood. With Half-Life 2 still being updated, it does seem like Valve is interested in looking back at its old games, but it appears that its space pirate game will always just be an idea.

Source: Valve Archive