As Gaben put it in the recent valve doc, moving the story forward wasn’t a good enough reason to put out a new Half Life. The series has always been about pushing technological innovations, and they just felt stumped on how HL3 was going to do that.

People like to claim valve doesn’t do anything anymore, but I legitimately feel like PC gaming is the best deal for gaming right now, handily beating out console and mobile, and that is in large part due to valve.

Their flat internal structure hasn’t been perfect, but on the bright side it didn’t result in them pumping out what the gaming industry would have viewed in retrospect as yet another obligatory entry in an FPS series. Valve’s intention was to let smart people solve hard problems in the gaming space, and IMO they have always done that, it just so far hasn’t resulted in a HL3.

This is actually the first time I’ve heard a rumor like this. Usually the rumor is that Valve will start development when they feel like it, not that it has already been made.

Yeah, however, leaks around this have been a bit more believable than before. Can’t remember the specifics, but more concrete stuff has been found by datamining (iirc) deadlock and paying attention to steamdb, with less reliable leaks ranging from the game or assets (again, iirc). So, there’s a fair chance this is real.

However, HL3 has been real multiple times before, it has been cancelled many times apparently, only to be taken up again later on.

Fact remains however, that Valve have been working continuously on an appid that isn’t deadlock for some time now, and there’s plenty of noise around them working on a new half life.

That actually hypes me up more than HL3