The Portal 1, 2 writer Erik Wolpaw is back at Valve

Legendary writer Erik Wolpaw who created both Portal and Portal 2 and contributed to Half-Life 2 is working for Valve again. The news broke on Reddit first, when a user named Trenchman made a post on several subreddits about his recent find (here is a link to one of the posts).

Trenchman found Erik Wolpaw’s name in Artifact credits, and it technically is enough of a proof that the writer is back. The credits roll in alphabetical order, so you can go ahead and check it by yourself (it’s very easy to find Artifact credits with Google). To get a firm proof that Mr. Wolpaw is really back at Valve Trenchman sent an email to Gabe Newell and got an affirmative answer.

He also shared the letter with a member of Valve News Network to confirm that the email correspondence wasn’t fake.

Here is an interesting bit from the Valve history involving Erik Wolpaw. In 2004 the writer was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (a bowel disease causing frequent sores and diarrhea) and was going to quit his job at Valve because he knew he couldn’t perform his duties. Gabe Newell didn’t accept his resignation saying his new role at Valve was to get better and come back when he could. Fast forward a couple of years, Erik created Portal and Valve became the dream company to work at.

In 2017 Erik Wolpaw left Valve to work on Psychonauts 2 developed by Double Fine Productions. It seems like the work on that project was finished in time for the writer to contribute to Artifact.