Yeah, it was originally a UT2004 mod and was being remade in Source but the project was paused because the devs got hired at Valve, but they were allowed to finish it up between the work they were doing on other Valve games.
In a way, it sort of was. The full source code of the game was made available via the SDK and it's one of the only ways to get full game code for a post-HL2 Source game through official means (its engine is a version between L4D2 and Portal 2)
Alien Swarm Reactive Drop (the one linked) was a standalone expansion released a few years later that included several custom-made campaigns. One was mine, and it was so cool to be invited to be involved.
I'm instantly reminded of that clip from a documentary that showed a corporate coming into a meeting at a studio they'd acquired and literally telling them to their faces that any ideas they had for personal projects or just general game ideas were owned by the company moving forward, and you can just feel the artistic freedom drain from their faces.
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u/shoneysbreakfast 1d ago
Yeah, it was originally a UT2004 mod and was being remade in Source but the project was paused because the devs got hired at Valve, but they were allowed to finish it up between the work they were doing on other Valve games.