Laidlaw announced his departure from Valve in January 2016. He said the primary reason for his departure was his age, and planned to return to writing stories. Laidlaw later said he had tired of the FPS form and of solving the problems of storytelling in a Half-Life-style narrative; he said he had "always hoped that we'd stumble into a more expansive vocabulary or grammar for storytelling within the FPS medium, one that would let you do more than shoot or push buttons, or push crates".
