10 Video Games That Made Their Creators Leave The Industry

This is an especially interesting one. Before finally leaving Valve in 2016, Marc Laidlaw had worked at the company for roughly 20 years, having served as the sole writer of the first two Half-Life games, and also being the story lead on the two episodic spin-offs released in 2006 and 2007 respectively.

In his later years in the company, Laidlaw also served as a major creative force behind Dota 2, spending four years producing lore content even as fans continued to ask him about his involvement in a potential third Half-Life game.

Upon leaving in 2016, Laidlaw diplomatically said, "I had a good run, but lately I have been feeling a need for a break from the collaborative chaos of game production, and a return to more self-directed writing projects."

It didn't take much reading between the lines to suggest that Laidlaw, a published sci-fi author who continued to write while working at Valve, was burned out from working on Dota 2, and needed to take leave for his own sake.

The story got even more interesting in 2017, then, when he shocked the world by releasing his own thinly-veiled plot outline for Half-Life 2: Episode Three. While not officially canon, it at least gave fans a small measure of peace regarding the game's theoretical narrative direction.

Given that Laidlaw called the outline a "snapshot of a dream I had many years ago," many interpreted it as him sharing his frustration with fans that neither Episode Three nor Half-Life 3 have ever materialised.