Valve Insider shares horrible news about Half Life 3


Before you start turning to ancient numerology to confirm that Half Life 3 is just around the corner, put away your set square and leave the lizard people alone, because we’ve got some bad news for you.

image: reddit.com
image: reddit.com

At this point, there are mixed opinions about whether Half Life 3 will ever happen or not. Obviously, most people want a follow-up to one of the greatest gaming franchises of all time, and one of the pinnacles of PC gaming, but that also creates an insane amount of pressure for Valve.

Talk about performance anxiety. They could release the GREATEST game ever, and it still wouldn’t meet some people’s expectations. If it’s anything short of a masterpiece, people will act like it’s the worst game ever. It’s a tough position to be in. We’re not even really sure what the status of Half Life 3. Some people expect it to just drop unexpectedly out of nowhere with no promotion or announcement like it’s a Beyonce album.

image: valve
image: popmatters.com

“There is no such thing as Half-Life 3. Valve has never announced a Half-Life 3.” said a Valve insider in a recent interview.

But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t work taking place…

“Over the years, you’ve probably had many dozens of people within the studio as early as probably 2005 working on things that they would imagine for themselves as Half-Life 3 or Half-Life 2: Episode 3.”

According to an insider at Valve, there were multiple versions of Half Life 2 before the one we know and love today, and Half Life 3 may have been going through a similar path. They’d start with small teams of a couple people, they’d start working on it, some of those teams grew to 30 or 40 people, but they kept hitting a wall and scrapping it.

image: wikipedia
image: wikipedia

“I’ve heard that some teams have had two to three people working on it. They eventually ran into a wall, and some teams may have gotten up to 30 or 40 people before it was scrapped.”

Valve has been entertaining all possible ideas for Half Life 3, according to the anonymous insider who recently gave an interview to Game Informer:

“Some are all over the place, from one end of the spectrum being what you would expect – a single-player narrative-focused game – to completely different entertainment ideas that are as wild as they are weird. […] Some were bizarre, like turning Half-Life into an RTS, or a live-action, choice-driven game.”

Game Informer is putting their reputation on the shoulders of this insider so they must trust them, but it’s important to note that we haven’t been able to verify these rumors.

TLDR: Valve has invested a ton of time and effort into Half Life 3, they’ve tried all sorts of different things, and even scaled up close to full production, but nothing worked out and this insider says there will never be a Half Life 3.

Sorry.