It looks like Turtle Rock Studio’s is moving onto new business quickly. According to job listing on their website, the company is looking for a Senior Level Designer to work on a AAA game in a “globally-known franchise.” In addition, the company is also looking for an Environment Artist, in which the requirements state “Demonstrated experience working with modern FPS engines.”
Given their history of first-person shooter games, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that they would continue to make them. This is the same team that created the classic Left 4 Dead, and despite being released ten years ago, it is still being played around the world today. Turtle Rock Studios attempted to recreate that magic with their next game, Evolve, and while it was initially successful, the game saw a huge drop off in sales as well as its online player base due to lack of a natural progression and content at launch. They tried to resuscitate the game with a free to play model, but that too was a failure. Turtle Rock dropped support of the game in late 2016, and in September of this year, 2K will officially shut down all servers for online play.
In late 2016, Turtle Rock announced that is was developing brand new IP, one with a “dark-fantasy co-op FPS.” Nothing has been seen nor heard of since that announcement, and the recent job listings don’t appear to support that project. We can only assume that they are indeed meant for a franchise that is well known throughout the gaming community.
One exciting prospect is that this could lead to the company working with Valve once again and making what most fans have wanted for a long time, Left 4 Dead 3. After the first game, Turtle Rock did not develop the sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, as the production was moved to Valve’s internal team. While there isn’t anything to back up this theory, the fact that they are working on something that is considered to be a “AAA” makes this even more intriguing. With potentially two brand new games to work on, Turtle Rock Studio is going to be busy for a while, so let’s just hope its worth the wait.