Valve have been hard at work on various fronts, but some of their fans have started to notice that the company is pretty quiet in terms of actually releasing new games. It seems like they’ve shifted their focus to producing cosmetics and finding new ways to monetize their existing titles in recent times, and this has drawn some criticism from their community.
However, there have been some interesting reports on sites like reddit and other forums lately, with sources allegedly close to Valve claiming that the company does have another game in the works, and it’s none other than “Left 4 Dead 3”.
It’s not the first time the game has been mentioned. Previously, it was supposedly spotted in Steam’s databases (although not directly), while there were also reports that people had seen references to it on Valve’s monitors during a tour of the studio.
It was suspected that “Left 4 Dead 3” is Valve’s main game for the development of the next version of their Source Engine. Indeed, they showed a preview of the engine featuring one of the original “Left 4 Dead” levels remade in Source Engine 2. Since then however, there has been no news on that front, and most fans assumed that the project had become dormant.
It’s very hard to tell if Valve are actually doing anything behind the scenes right now or not, as the studio is extremely protective of their secrets. People have been trying for years to learn anything about “Half-Life 3”, but there seems to be no news about that title on the horizon.
In fact, some fans of the studio expressed disappointment at the suggestion that their next game could actually be “Left 4 Dead 3”, claiming that Valve should focus on their original and most important franchise before developing others.
There are various reasons why Valve could be postponing the release of “Half-Life 3” though, and some of their fans even claim that the company will never release the game at all, making “Left 4 Dead 3” a much bigger probability.
What could the next zombie game do to build on the previous ones successfully though? “Left 4 Dead 2” was a bit controversial when it arrived, due to the short period of time that had passed since the previous game. Valve assured their fans that they wanted to support both titles equally, but there were technical limitations preventing them from pulling off their ideas on the original game, so they had to move on to the new one.
The studio won’t have this problem now, as it’s been quite a while since “Left 4 Dead 2”, and many gamers are actually excited at the possibility of getting a sequel in that franchise right now. It looks like this is the best candidate from the studio’s various titles to be continued, other than the obvious “Half-Life 3” of course. So if Valve really are working on “Left 4 Dead 3”, they’ve made the right choice.
There are some more interesting rumors about the game too, such as the suggestion that it could have a more developed single player campaign instead of focusing on the online experience only. The previous games could still be played solo, but that was just a different version of the multiplayer mode, with other players replaced by AI-controlled ones. According to these rumors, “Left 4 Dead 3” could be something different in this regard.