Half-Life 3

Half-Life 3 is the third installment in a bestselling FPS series originating from 1998. Its status remains unclear, as it was never officially confirmed by Valve.

First rumors

The first unofficial rumors that Valve had abandoned Half-Life 2: Episode Three in favor of full-fledged Half-Life 3 surfaced in 2011. Soon later, further rumors suggested the game was in an advanced enough state for all the voice actors to have finished recording their dialogue already. Valve quickly denied these revelations.

Gabe Newell himself, one of the founders of Valve, spoke up on the matter, stating that his team was hesitatnt to report on the new Half-Life's progress, as the game was constantly evolving and chasing, therefore trying to keep up with all that was happening behind the scenes could drive players mad.

In September 2012, more unconfirmed rumors surfaced, claiming Half-Life 3 would feature an open world and would release "after 2013". August 2013 brought further revelations, claiming the game's future was put into question due to problematic motion capture technology.

Half-Life 3 as the victim of Valve's new policy

Finally, in January 2014, the news broke that Valve had decided to focus on developing multiplayer games and Steam as a platform. Although Gabe Newell didn't say it directly, it became clear to many players that Half-Life 3 fell victim to this policy. Further reports regarding the game's alleged development surfaced in May. That's when we learned that alongside the third major game starring Gordon Freeman, Valve was also allegedly creating the third installment of the Left 4 Dead series.

Reports stimulating imagination

In January 2016, Marc Laidlaw - a writer and level designer in the Half-Life series - left Valve to focus on new, independent projects. Just a few days later the internet was flooded with unconfirmed information about Half-Life 3, coming allegedly from one of Valve's employees. This leak said that Half-Life 2: Episode Three was transformed into Half-Life 3 and was to run on the Source 2 engine. The game was said to be visually impressive, have advanced AI, destructible environments and feature random events. The self-proclaimed informant also claimed the production process has gone far enough the game could possibly debut in 2016.

January 2017 brought even more information contradicting the previous leak, as another anonymous informant claimed the new Half-Life was extremely experimental, and could even turn out to be an RTS or an FMV adventure game.

Half-Life 3 and Half-Life: Alyx

Finally, in March 2020, shortly before the release of a series spin-off, Half-Life: Alyx, Robin Walker of Valve assured that the game is a return to the series, not its conclusion. Shortly later, Dario Casali spoke about what had happened to the series, blaming problems with choosing a new direction for it. The team didn't want to repeat their mistakes while creating the Source 2 engine; Half-Life 2 was developed at the same time as its own engine, making development much more complicated. Gabe Newell also had a very specific view of the franchise, believing its meaning is to present new technologies, therefore each game in the series should be groundbreaking in some way. A year later, Walker confirmed that Half-Life: Alyx was meant to lead the series out of its "narrative limbo" and its ending would matter in the context of the entire series.