“Half-Life 3” is probably the top title in the gaming industry surrounded by the most speculation, and while Valve, the franchise’s developer, have been pretty quiet on the situation – and claiming that they aren’t working on the game at one point – there are always tons of rumors surrounding this particular game and it looks like gamers will never grow tired of speculating about it.
Most of these rumors can usually be safely dismissed, but every once in a while we get something that sounds more interesting and paints a completely different picture. Recently, someone claiming to have worked at Valve stated that the game is still in active development behind the scenes, despite the silence from Valve, and it’s expected to arrive at some point in 2017 or 2018.
The post contained some information about the development processes currently running at Valve, and claimed that the company is strongly focused on “Left 4 Dead 3” at the moment. That’s apparently the reason why “Half-Life 3” will come out so late, and Valve are also well aware of the hype surrounding the title and the huge interest that people have in it.
This has been stopping them from focusing on the game too strongly at the moment as they seem to want to release it as a major surprise, at a time when fans don’t expect it anymore. Until then, we’re going to see a new “Left 4 Dead” game at some point between now and 2017, if the leak is true.
That would certainly make sense in light of some other rumors that came out previously, such as a sneak peek at Valve’s internal bug tracking database that showed entries for “Left 4 Dead 3”. Then, it was implied that the game would be the first title to release on Valve’s brand new “Source 2” engine, but things changed significantly since then and the engine is currently being fitted to “Dota 2” (or rather, the other way around).
In addition, the post alleged that Valve might not focus too heavily on developing new games in the future as they’re in a pretty good position right now thanks to Steam and the profits it brings for them. On the other hand, they also have their engine which earns them a tidy sum from licensing deals, and the company seems to be doing quite well in terms of its intellectual properties and their profitability right now as a whole.
Does this mean that we’re never going to see sequels to other games like “Team Fortress” and “Portal”? That would indeed be a sad possibility, but it’s entirely plausible in light of what we’re hearing now. Hopefully Valve will remember where they came from and why they are so popular right now, because it would be disappointing to see them focusing exclusively on Steam in the future and becoming yet another faceless publisher that churns out other companies’ products.
“Half-Life 3” is something that gamers want to see eventually, whether it takes one or five more years. They’ve waited for so long that time seems irrelevant for most fans right now, and people just want to know that the game will be finished one day. It’s probably not very encouraging to hear Gabe Newell denying the existence of the project, but Valve are known for enjoying their surprises and they frequently mislead their community in order to make an even bigger impact with something that they announce.