It's now been 20 years since Valve changed the world with Half-Life 2, one of the most famous shooters of all time and, two decades later, possibly the most infamous videogame cliffhanger ever. We've had a couple of episodic follow-ups since Half-Life 2 arrived on November 16, 2004, and the Half-Life: Alyx VR spinoff, but Half-Life 3 remains stubbornly elusive.
Still, hope dies hard, especially when it's fuelled by the veritable cottage industry that's grown up around watching every step Valve takes. There's been no end of leaks, rumors, and rumblings over the years, each of them assuring one and all that this time, Half-Life 3 is really happening. It never has, of course, but it's been a fun ride.
The roller coaster seems to have slowed somewhat more recently, perhaps because, as PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde pointed out, people who are 20 years old now were 0 years old when Half-Life 2 came out. Interest may be waning, especially with Valve remaining so steadfastly silent on the whole thing.
It's possible we'll see a new wave of rumors and hoaxes now that Half-Life 2's 20th anniversary is upon us, and dataminers are still doggedly digging up evidence of... well, something. Hell, it's possible Valve will blow our minds by dropping Half-Life 3 in our laps as a surprise birthday present. (We've already got one surprise birthday present: The huge Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Update.) Honestly, though, I hope not. Let Half-Life 3 live on as a myth, a legend, the one that got away: The real thing will never live up to expectations, but as long as it's the game that might have been and might yet be, we can dream—and we can have some fun with it, too.
Speaking of which, here we have it: Every Half-Life 3 hoax, rumor, and leak we've collected from 20 years of Half-Life 2 history. Happy birthday, big fella. Thanks for the good times.
May 2006 – Confirmed
The fun begins not with a hoax, but an actual, official announcement: Half-Life 2: Episode 3, in time for Christmas 2007! There was even talk of Episode Four! Because sure, why not? Gabe Newell said episodic releases would be "pretty frequent," ideally spaced out by six to eights months. By my calculations, that means we're just about due for Half-Life 2 Episode 16.
January 2008 - The faking begins
Half-life 3 fakes started pretty much as soon as The Orange Box was out the door. Just a few months later, this screenshot began circulating. It was obviously a fake, but it was a sign of things to come: the years of hoaxes, leaks, rumors, and wishful thinking that led to this article today.
October 2008 - Two million copies?
Just as things were getting into full gear for the 2008 holiday season, Valve's Doug Lombardi told Videogames Daily that Valve "may [show Episode 3] at the very end of the year." Emphasis on "may," obviously, as Valve ultimately had nothing to say. He also expressed worry about over-committing to Half-Life 3, saying that if the studio got too deep into it, "We have to sell two million copies or else we're fucked." Two million copies, you say? I suppose that seemed like a lot back then.
July 2010 – The blob shake
Half-Life 3 references are found in the Alien Swarm SDK, in object properties like "Ep3 Blob Shake Position," "Ep 3 Fire Cover Position," and "Ep 3 Blob Brain Cover Position." It obviously wasn't proof of anything, but we were so hungry for a new Half-Life by this point that it was taken as rock-solid evidence that Gordo and co. would be making their return any day now.
May 2011 – Bad advice
"Combine Advisor – Roaming" code is found in the Portal 2 SDK. Advisors had previously appeared in Half-Life 2, primarily in Episode Two, but that particular slice of code was not in the Episode Two SDK. It was new! And then Valve removed it! Clearly there was something to hide, although by now probably everyone involved has forgotten what it was.
July 2011 – A small, strange room
A brief, very strange video clip containing a hex string led to the discovery of a small Half-Life 2 map on Megaupload. Hidden in the tiny, decrepit room is a heavily distorted image of a face and an audio file that, when fed into a spectrograph, revealed... well, not a hell of a lot of anything, really. The Half-Life connection at that point was pretty thin but that's the conclusion everyone jumped to because we were all so desperate for some crumb of hope, and it did have the distinct look of an ARG in its early stages. Alas, Valve kiboshed the idea in short order, and that was that.
December 2011 – T-shirt guy
All I'm saying is I saw this at a local game developer event worn by a Valve employee. http://t.co/8trtqZ2o #HalfLife3 #ValveTrollingDecember 2, 2011
Some guy, who some other guy said works at Valve, wore a Half-Life 3 t-shirt to a "local game development event." The wearer of said shirt was cool with having a photo of the shirt taken, although not his face, which is perhaps telling—although whether it's telling us that the over-sharing Valve employee wanted to keep his identity on the downlow, or that he was just some rando who dropped a fiver at a t-shirt shop, is impossible to say.
December 2011 – Wheatley gets involved
Valve whipped up a video for the 2011 VGAs featuring Wheatley of Portal 2 fame, complete with Stephen Merchant's voice, and also some science-y looking guffola in the background. Among it was a spot of Russian text which translates in part to "Lanthanum," derived from the ancient Greek "lanthanein," meaning "to lie hidden," and written, "λανθανω." That first character look familiar to anyone? Sadly, Wheatley didn't win his award, and we still don't have the game.
December 2011 – Black Aperture
The last month of 2011 was a big one for Half-Life 3. A couple of weeks after t-shirt guy made his appearance, a mysterious site appeared at black-aperture.com bearing a very similar logo, along with branding for Valve, Steam, and the Source engine. Alas, the hoax effort didn't even stand up to the cursory inspection of a domain whois check, but it's to the credit of the owner that the site is still up, now bearing a blurry ".../3" image.
April 2012 – P-powered
Proving that simple is sometimes best, an April Fool joker caused millions of fans to momentarily go nuts when he posted a Half-Life 3: Now Available image at store.steamppowered.com. (The URL now leads to a potential phishing site, so we've disabled it.) Some legitimate news sites fell for it, so excited were they by the prospect of Half-Life 3 being honest-to-God real that they failed to notice the extra "p" in the URL. The site remains up to this very day, although it's now tagged with a notice that it is in fact an April Fool's joke.
April 2012 - Ricochet, too?
Valve honcho Gabe Newell confused everyone when he discussed the development of Episode 3 in the context of Ricochet 2, the hypothetical sequel to the Valve-developed battle frisbee game.
"We'd like to be super-transparent about the future of Ricochet 2," he said, "but the problem is that the twists and turns that we're going through would probably drive people more crazy than being silent about it until we can be very crisp about what's happening." I can't say that I'm really with you on that one, Gabe, at least not here in the year 2016. The good news, Newell added, is that "everyone who's working on Ricochet 2 continues to work on Ricochet 2."
And so now we sometimes refer to Half-Life 3 as Ricochet 2, and may forever.
June 2012 - Concept art slips out
This leak came to us through the bad luck of artist Andrea Wicklund, whose Picasa portfolio ended up spilling concept art all over the net. Images included Alyx in various get-ups, a crashed helicopter in the Arctic, and pictures of the alien world Xen. Interestingly, while the art was dated from 2008, it didn't slip out until mid-2012.
August 2012 – No responsibility is taken
The 2012 edition of Gamescom promised to be an exciting one: Games scheduled for exhibit that year included Dragon Age 3 and Half-Life 3! Before we could line up for plane tickets to Germany, though, a correction was issued. Eurogamer asked three separate times why the titles had been listed, but Gamescom would only say that it was "a mistake."
June 2013 – Jira leak, stage one
Data from Valve's project tracking tool (Jira) leaked to the public, revealing that 42 people are attached to a Half-Life 3 mailing list. Obviously, there was no way to verify that the leak was real, and even if it was, determining the age or status of the mailing list in question was impossible too. Maybe 42 people were working on Half-Life 3, or maybe 42 people are just too damn lazy to unsubscribe from the list. (I don't judge. I have two Felix the Fish plushies, because it was easier to let Big Fish Games sock my credit card for 7 bucks a month than to figure out how to make it stop.)
June 2013 – It was just a joke, we swear
A motley crew of yuksters manages to "accidentally" convince people that Half-Life 3 is in development in a segregated section of Valve's studios, and that a reveal of the project was finally imminent—in the pages of their own magazine, no less! Which gang of comedy doofuses cooked this one up, you wonder? I cannot tell a lie: It was us (but it was meant to be an obvious joke, not a hoax).
August 2013 - The pen is mightier
A Steam dev posted an announcement of the beginning of a Half-Life 3 internal beta on the community announcements page. Real developer, real community post—but fake announcement, as a close look at the list of updates makes clear. The dev in question quickly copped to it, saying he didn't "expect it to show up everywhere." Because when has that ever happened before, right?
@DanStapleton It's fake. I posted it testing stuff, didn't really expect it to show up everywhere.August 19, 2013
August 2013 – Mr. Overwatch causes a stir
John Patrick Lowrie, voice of Odessa Cubbage and husband of Combine Overwatch and GlaDOS voice actor Ellen McLain, caused a stir when he explained that Half-Life 3 wasn't moving forward because of challenges with motion capture—which of course implied that he had some insight into the situation. He even said that overcoming mo-cap limitations was "one of the things they're working on," meaning that it was—gasp!—being worked on. Progress! Except, four days later he took it all back, saying that he doesn't know nothin' about nothin', and nobody can prove otherwise.
September 2013 – Jira, part deux
Jira leaks again! This time there was a new "Half-Life 3 Core" group listed, and the number of people on the project had grown, too. That's practically an official announcement, right?
October 2013 – European trademark
A trademark filing for Half-Life 3, owned by Valve, appeared in Europe. Trademark filings are a great way to get an early heads-up on new game projects: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Gwent are two high-profile examples of games that came to light first as a result of a trademark filing. Half-Life 3 trademarked? Half-Life 3 confirmed!
October 2013, one week later – European disappointment
Half-Life 3 de-confirmed. Fake filing. Why does this keep happening?
May 2014 – Minh Le has seen things
Counter-Strike mastermind Minh Le told goRGNtv that he'd seen Half-Life 3 concept art, and the game is in fact being worked on! Sort of, anyway. More precisely, he said he saw something "that looked kinda like in the Half-Life universe," although he seemed surprised that anyone would be interested in such a thing. It also wasn't clear when he'd seen the material in question, since he'd left Valve several years prior to the interview. He was also clearly far more interested in Left 4 Dead 3 than anything to do with Half-Life. Thanks for nothing, Minh.
October 2014 – A bad idea
The "We Want Half-Life 3" Indiegogo campaign wasn't a Half-Life 3 hoax or broken promise, just a monumentally bad idea. Basically, a couple of advertising types decided to crowdfund a harassment campaign to let Valve know that people really want them to make Half-Life 3. You know, in case that wasn't clear. They asked for $150,000 for their campaign (which, in their defense, they later clarified was meant to be a one-day lark rather than concerted stalking); they closed with a little shy of $1600.
June 2015 – Another fake site
Sweet Aunt Petunia, a Half-Life 3 logo actually appeared on the Valve.Software website. Unfortunately, that site is not actually related to Valve Software, but for a few delicious hours (or minutes, depending on when you heard about it and how innately suspicious you are of such things) we could let ourselves believe that the light was finally shining. The site is still up and the HL3 logo still there, but the fine print makes it clear that it is "just a joke site." Half-Life 3 hoaxes are no joking matter, Timmy.
October 2015 – Dota 2 discovery
A file named hl3.txt was found in a Dota 2 update, containing references to "Combine Pulse Ceiling Turret" and "NPCs that are in the same squad (i.e. have matching squad names) will share information about enemies, and will take turns attacking and covering each other." That's straight out of a Combine soldier AI script, but what's with the hl3 filename? Valve maintained its usual stony silence, but I think it's worth noting that a year later, Gordon Freeman still hasn't appeared in Dota 2. That has to mean something.
Jan 2016 – Confusion on Reddit
Drama in r/HalfLife, billed as "possibly the first legitimate Half-Life 3 leak." What's interesting about this one is that as far as I can tell, nobody is entirely, 100 percent certain that it was a hoax. The information provided was deep, detailed, and not at all flashy in the way of most other gag teases, and its veracity was backed, in ways he couldn't or wouldn't make clear, by the forum mod. Eventually, the whole thing just fizzled out, without the usual "lol suckers" flourish at the end, which could be seen as further "proof" that the leak was real. But probably not.
February 2016 – Virtual teasing
The innocuous-sounding SteamVR Performance Test software, an app intended to determine whether or not your rig is up to the strains of virtual reality, is found to contain some Half-Life secrets in its code, including a high-quality 3D model of Dog, the super-strong, ball-fetching robot from Half-Life 2. Half-Life 3: The VR Experience, perhaps? Not likely: The software contained material from other Valve games too, including Left 4 Dead and Dota 2, and writer Chet Faliszek was quite clear on the point when asked about it last year. (He said "No.")
August 2016 – Gamescomedy
Right there, large as life and side-by-side with Titanfall 2, was a poster proclaiming, plainly and boldly, Half-Life 3! And some fine print underneath, which might have been missed at first because the poster said Half-Life 3! Except it was actually Half-Life: 3, as in, "Half-Life: 3 editors who played it back then." It's not so much a hoax as a lazy gag, but we all spasmed reflexively and so it gets the credit.
And that brings us to today, at least until the next joke, leak, hoax, apparent ARG, or off-hand comment. We give it at least 24 hours before that happens.
January 2017 – We never promised you a rose, Gordon
"There is no such thing as Half-Life 3," an anonymous Valve developer tells Game Informer. "Valve has never announced a Half-Life 3. The closest they’ve come is after Half-Life 2, they said there would be three episodes. We only got two of those. That is arguably an unfulfilled promise. Anything else that we might think about as a full game or sequel has never been promised."
In other words, who ever said you were getting Half-Life 3 in the first place?
January 2017 – Ask no questions, hear no lies
Valve top banana Gabe Newell takes part in an AMA in which he acknowledges the existence of questions about Half-Life 3. When asked about the status of HL3 or Half-Life 2 Episode 3, he says, "The number 3 must not be said." And all those rumors that just won't go away? "I personally believe all unidentified anonymous sources on the internet."
February 2017 – Kids will be kids
Newell lays the blame for some of the persistence of Half-Life 3 rumors at the feet of Valve employees, who he says get a kick out of messing with people—although he's above such things himself, of course. "Some of the more childish members of our company have worn Half-Life 3 t-shirts to GDC," he says (via VentureBeat). The appearance of an HL3 icon in a photo of a monitor at Valve was, Newell adds, was "news to us."
(Click the upper right corner to enlarge the image above, and squint at the icon above the recycle bin on the monitor.)
July 2017 – "I have no interest in going back."
Half-Life and Half-Life 2 writer Marc Laidlaw, who left Valve in January, tells Arcade Attack that he has no idea if Half-Life 3 will ever see the light of day, and doesn't much care anyway. "I had ideas for Episode 3. They were all supposed to take the series to a point where I could step away from it and leave it to the next generation," he said.
And even if it is released someday, he doesn't think it will actually bring with it any sort of proper resolution: "My intention was that Ep3 would simply tie up the plot threads that were particular to HL2. But it would still end like HL1 and HL2, with Gordon in an indeterminate space, on hold, waiting for the next game to begin. So one cliffhanger after another."
August 2017 – Gertrude Fremont gets involved
This one also comes courtesy of Mr. Laidlaw, who shares what is apparently a twisted-up synopsis of Half-Life 3 on his blog. Eli Vance is confirmed dead, Dr. Mossman tracks down the Borealis, Gordon and Alyx travel to Antarctica to handle the situation, and of course the plan falls completely apart before it even begins. What's especially interesting about the story is that it's basically "gender-swapped fan fiction," as we called it: Male characters are female and vice-versa, names are changed up slightly, but remain close enough to the originals to be recognizable by fans.
Assuming Laidlaw didn't make the whole thing up to mess with people (as Valve employees like to do, remember), Half-Life 3 would end with Alyx Vance murdering Dr. Mossman, after which the G-Man takes her away in place of Gordon; Gordon escapes his seeming inevitable doom with the help of the Vortigaunts, and by all appearances his role in the series is over, as Laidlaw had intended. How much validity there is to Laidlaw's tale is impossible to judge, but it does have one thing going for it: You can play (kinda, sorta) play it.
November 2019 – Half-Life the third
It isn't exactly Half-Life 3, but Valve announced a prequel to the series called Half-Life: Alyx that released in March 2020. Although it doesn't actually have a "3" in the title, it's very much a third Half-Life game, clocking in at a similar playtime to Half-Life 2. It is reportedly the biggest team of developers that Valve has ever had working on a single game. Check the link above for all the other details on the prequel.
In a followup interview, The Verge asked designer David Speyrer if this was a full return to Half-Life and if we could expect more games in the series now that Valve has finally brought it out of stasis. "It’s probably no surprise that many people at Valve have been wanting to get back to the Half-Life universe for a long time," Speyrer said, "and this experience has only reinforced that." He elaborates, explaining that Valve has explored new ways to tell stories in the Half-Life world and new gameplay experiences it can create for players.
March 2020 — Valve says it didn't want to make Half-Life 3 alongside a new engine
In an interview with IGN around the launch of Half-Life: Alyx, level designer Dario Casali explained that Half-Life 2's long development cycle was partly due to the way the team was developing the Source engine at the same time as the game. "I think our main takeaway from that is, 'Get some stable technology and then build a game on top of it'," he said.
It's this lesson that, Casali said, is part of why Half-Life 3 never made it off the ground. He said the studio was ready for a new engine by the time Episode Two came out in 2007. The Source 2 engine was unveiled way back in 2015, so we can assume there was no active Half-Life 3 development at that time.
As for why Half-Life 2's episodic adventures were never continued, that can be summed up by over-ambition, apparently. Casali explained that episodic development was eventually effected by "scope creep" that made its annual releases untenable. It's a shame that whatever work was done on Episode Three was ultimately scrapped, though.
March 2020 - The future of Half-Life games depend on Alyx's reception
Now that Half-Life: Alyx is out in the wild, where Half-Life goes from here is up in the air. In an interview with PC Gamer before the launch of Alyx, Valve level designer Dario Casali said the shape Half-Life's future depends a lot on Alyx.
"At this point, we don't really know what [another Half-Life game] would be—we don't know if it's going to be another VR title. We don't know if it's going to be a non VR title," said Casali, who worked on both the original Half-Life games.
"The best thing we can do at this point is to gauge the response to this product. How are people able to enjoy it? How many people can we get into the VR platform? [Are] people saying that VR is now this essential part of Half-Life? We really don't know those answers until we put the game out and we start listening."
The good news is that people seem to really like Half-Life: Alyx. Our review gave it a 92, praising its impressive tech, interactive combat, and story. Another VR game would be great, but there are millions of VR-less fans that would love to return to Half-Life's world with a mouse and keyboard.
March 2022 – A new Valve game references Half-Life: Alyx, Citadel, Counter-Strike 2, and, uh, not Half-Life 3
I mention Aperture Desk Job not because of what it revealed about Half-Life 3, but because it revealed nothing at all. Tyler McVicker, the man behind Valve News Network, called it "the most fruitful datamine I have ever experienced," with references to Citadel (the game that eventually became Deadlock), a Half-Life: Alyx sequel, Counter-Strike 2 (which was still officially non-existent at that time, and a cancelled Portal "paint game—and nothing at all about Half-Life 3. A new Valve game with absolutely zero connections to Half-Life 3—weird, right? Anyway, moving on.
July 2023 – Half-Life 3 at Gamescom
In the summer of 2023, rumors began to surface that Half-Life 3 was going to make a surprise appearance at Gamescom. Valve was in fact listed as an exhibitor, and—bigger news—so was the Half-Life "brand," whatever that means. It was widely taken to mean Half-Life 3, of course, until Gamescom organizers shot the whole thing down, telling Eurogamer it was "a mistake."
February 2024 – HLX
Data strings found in Counter-Strike 2 make mention of something called HLX. Is Valve skipping Half-Life 3 and going straight to Half-Life 10? Probably not. It could be a code name for Half-Life 3, but it could also be something else entirely. Half-Life: Xen? Half-Life: Xtreme Beach Volleyball? We just don't know.
But the HL part is pretty clear, at least, so it sure seemed like something was cooking—especially since the strings also made reference to Citadel, which as mentioned earlier was a pre-release codename for Deadlock.
Mention of another future Valve game in Half-Life universe (codename HLX, similar to HLVR a.k.a. Half-Life: Alyx) pic.twitter.com/GeS8QjOfmeFebruary 7, 2024
August 2024 – "White Sands"
Spotted in the résumé of a voice actor with credits on games including Starfield, Fallout 76, and Valorant, "Project White Sands" was listed as a Valve game they'd worked on with a TBA release date. "White Sands" does align nicely with Black Mesa, the secretive research facility at the heart of the Half-Life series. The listing was quickly removed, but not before the long-suffering Half-Life community reacted as you'd expect: As redditor nicksuperdx put it, "HL3 copium is back."
Automatic_bazooti was perhaps a little more self-reflective about the whole thing:
August 2024 – Black Mesa is real
Speaking of Black Mesa, the appearance of a mysterious website at blackmesa.com, complete with encoded text at the bottom, kicked off some real excitement, as eager fans speculated that it might be the start of an ARG similar to the one Valve used to announce Portal 2.
Much digging and sleuthing led to the let-down truth: Black Mesa is an actual real company, entirely unrelated to Half-Life or Valve. They were good sports about it, though, writing in a blog post that they enjoyed interacting with fans trying to figure out what was going on and "would be honored to be part of any Valve game." They also invited Gabe Newell to give them a call, and asked "KingPotatoVII" to drop them a line so they could "send you some swag for cracking the cipher."
(Somewhere along the line, they also added a little message to the bottom of their website.)
Ah well. Maybe next time.
