Valve skips Dev Day this year, promises big presence at GDC

The hidden kingdom that is Valve Software opened its gates ever so slightly yesterday when a representative said that it would not host a developer's conference this year, Gamasutra reports.

Announced in October of 2013, the first ever Steam Dev Days was billed as an "off the record" event. It took place last year on Jan. 15 and 16 in Seattle. AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Oculus and Unity were all on the guest list along with more than 1,200 developers.

Valve used the event to create an easygoing atmosphere for developers. Twitter was filled with the #SteamDevDays hashtag and generally attendees seemed to be having a good time. When the opportunity arose, Valve spent its energy pitching SteamOS along with its dedicated hardware, including a then-new Steam Machine and a haptic controller, both of which had been introduced at CES only a week prior.

But this year, Polygon has found that Valve is largely absent from CES. Even Alienware's living room-sized offering is missing the Steam Machine branding, and there's little sign of a circular, gray, force-feedback touchpad in or around Las Vegas.

Valve has never been known to keep a regular schedule, or to make its intentions known. It generally likes to fight battles for public opinion at the time and place of its choosing.

This year, the Valve representative said, that battleground will be GDC.

"Steam Dev Days was a great way to brief a large number of Steam developers," a Valve representative told Gamasutra. "This year our focus will be a bit different, so we are planning a larger than usual presence at GDC. So, there will not be a Steam Dev Days this year."

Polygon will be on hand at this year's GDC to find out more about what Valve has in store.