"Portal 2 will probably be Valve's last game with an isolated single-player experience," Keighley wrote in Final Hours, "What this all means is something Newell is still trying to figure out."

Quote from here: http://kotaku.com/#!5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single+player-games

I can't be bothered to figure out where they lifted it from (and it's Kotaku, so they surely did).

Wow, is all I can say. I'm the first to laud all the great co-op experiences we're getting from the industry now, finally I can play with my loved ones and friends instead of fragging them (even a few years ago this was limited to a much smaller handful of games). But saying no more single player sounds like (to me) saying "We don't feel like telling a story most of the time and hope to bully you into buying multiple copies of all our games, one for everyone in your family."

Maybe I'm reading too much into this.

That's a horribly written article but, that aside, I don't think it means no more single player. Looks to me that they're saying no more games where it's all single-player only. Meaning they're planning on having the ability, even in the 'single player' portion, of also allowing co-op play.

It's Kotaku, they're all horribly written:)

In practice what you say makes fine sense, and I have no problem with it. But they were already doing that with Portal 2, single player and co-op. Now they're saying that's the last one (direct quote, that claims to be re-iterating what Newel said).

So....this means there will be no Half-life Episode 3?

Or just that HL:EP3 == Left 4 dead 3, the story of how the zombies were a bi-product of the invasion, and the final chapter of the HL story being available only to groups of four people who've achieved at least 70% of the achievements in game, at which point they get to play the co-op campaign again, but this time with one person being Gordon Freeman, one person being Barney the security guard, one being Alyx and one being that there Professor what's his face.

Oh and it'd likely also be the first time you hear the hillarious lines of Gordon Freeman. Pure geek gold like only a guy with too much exposure to radioactive materials and aliens can have.

Potentially with DLC adding Chell from Portal, available to parties of four people who all separately have bought every single Valve title. But boy will it be worth it to use portals to fling a charger at a hunter.

I haven't played Portal 2, but they mention an 'isolated' single-player experience. Is there a large section of Portal 2 that cannot be played co-op? i.e. a definite single player only campaign? That's what I took the description to mean.

Why do I think this could actually happen? What happened to you industry?

You're reading way too much into this. If you read the article on Geoff Keighley's "The Final Hours of Portal 2" app for iPad, you learn that even they don't exactly have worked out what that means.

To be fair, the single player is a full if relatively short experience. I would probably only recommend the game to someone that would also play the co op, though, as it is a slightly more significant aspect that brings the total value to full price (not that any game should cost 60 dollars, necessarily).
Troll Repelant: If you didn't like the first one anyway, then obviously avoid the 2nd.

Is every PC developer just absolutely bent on making me lose any and all enthusiasm for PC gaming? Is this just how it has to go?

I'd personally like more co-op games where you can play on the same system with multiple controllers through a singleplayerish storyline. Most of the console titles nowadays seem to unfairly only allow co-op over XBOX Live Gold or with two linked 360s in the same room/building. :(

It could just mean that the single player and coop campaigns would be the same - i.e. any section of the game you can play by yourself, you can also play coop? (like Halo 3 where the main campaign is both single player and coop) I dunno. It's a vague statement.

I think they could do something like Shogun Total War 2, where every time you enter a battle, the game can look for another player to play the opposing side against you. In this case, the co-op bits as Alyx, for example.

Still, if there's no AI for you to play it as a simple single-player game, then I'm done with Valve games.

'Single player' has been dying for quite a while now.

Well, they better leave some sort of true single player in there if they still want my money :)

People might say no one plays SP anymore but I can assure you, there are plenty of us who care more for SP than for any kind of multiplayer mode. And as fun as Portal 2's co-op is, if that was the only mode offered, I wouldn't have bought the game.