Kane Parsons Confirms Talks With Valve but Won’t Adapt Its Games Without the Right Approach

Backrooms director Kane Parsons has confirmed he has held conversations with Valve, but says he won’t pursue an adaptation of the studio’s games unless it can be done well. In an October 28 appearance on The Kyle Buchanan Show, as reported by IGN, he stopped short of saying what the talks are about.

Parsons wore a Valve hoodie during the interview, which prompted Buchanan to ask about his recent trips to the developer’s offices. After Backrooms came out, Parsons said he’d like to make a Portal film and later posted about visiting Valve on Instagram. Asked directly, he neither confirmed nor denied a project, and said he doesn’t want to sensationalise whatever he may or may not be discussing with the company.

He described the exchange as exploratory. Parsons said Valve “work in experiments”, a method he says suits his own, and framed the talks as a set of open questions: whether something compelling can be made, what Valve wants to do, what he wants to do, and whether anything is actually on the table. If nothing is, he said he’d defend a future where the two sides never go down that road. He compared the conversation to an abstract creative chat that could head in about 30 directions, and said Valve seems to prefer internal experiments over public announcements, adding that if something comes of it, people will find out.

That caution matches what he told the same show earlier this week. As we reported yesterday, he said he’s working on three unnamed “dream projects”, and IGN says they appear to be tied to an existing property. IGN also notes that Parsons has said he has no real interest in something like Star Wars, and that his adaptation wishlist is a handful of childhood favourites, Valve’s games among them. We first looked at the Valve link in our piece on his office visit and the Portal movie rumours.

Nothing has been announced by either side, so a Portal film remains a fan theory. There hasn’t been a new mainline Portal game since 2011, according to IGN, though interest in the series stays high. IGN also floats the idea that the talks could lead to something beyond a film, such as a project with Valve’s developers, but that is the outlet’s speculation, not anything Parsons said.