Half-Life fans are in a frenzy over the prospect of a Half-Life 3 announcement that there's (almost) no good reason to believe is happening
Half-Life 3 fever has once again broken out across social media, and the Half-Life subreddit is full of both earnestly hopeful and sarcastically dismissive posts about the supposedly imminent announcement of a sequel to Valve's landmark 2004 shooter—probably the most speculated-about game ever not to exist.
You might think that all this anticipation was prompted by some big leak: Did dataminers finally discover definitive proof that Half-Life 3 is coming soon? Well, people claim to have found definitive proof of Half-Life 3 in every other Counter-Strike update, so probably, but that's not what prompted this week's hype. For the most part, the evidence in support of an announcement happening today seems to be:
- Valve announced Half-Life: Alyx on November 18, 2019
- Today is also November 18
- Half-Life 1 released on November 19, which is also a date in November
- Half-Life 2 released on November 16, and that, too, is a date in November
- Geoff Keighley posted a ???? emoji
Don't cancel your dinner plans, in other words.
Although… whether or not it announces it today, I do think that Valve probably has a new Half-Life game in the works. The developer put a lot of effort into celebrating the Half-Life 2 anniversary last year—with Gabe Newell very lightly teasing that there's more to be done in the series—and the ending of Half-Life: Alyx (spoilers!) clearly sets the stage for a new Half-Life game.
It would also make sense for Valve to launch its new Steam Frame VR headset and Steam Machine PC next year with a bundled game or two, an idea that has contributed to this week's Half-Life 3 speculation.
Pick up that Fell For It Again Award from r/HalfLife
Valve is unpredictable. Sometimes it gives press a heads-up about announcements, like when we flew out to Seattle recently to check out its new hardware, but sometimes it just puts up a blog post on a Friday afternoon, or doesn't make an announcement at all: Valve didn't formally acknowledge its new game Deadlock until after it already had an active subreddit full of playtesters talking about it.
Things do tend to leak in advance, though. I heard rumors about the Steam Frame months before it was announced (though not the new Steam Machine), and we were watching Deadlock videos well before Valve acknowledged it, but I haven't yet heard anything convincing about whatever the next Half-Life is or isn't, or when it'll be announced.
It could be that I'm just out of the loop, or that Valve is extra dedicated to keeping this secret a secret—or it could be that the internet has worked itself into a frenzy because it's November and sometimes Half-Life things happen in November, and that's really all it takes.
Honestly, I can't confidently commit to any possibility. Valve does have a sense of humor and isn't beholden to public shareholders, so I could see it aligning an announcement with the theories of internet numerologists just for the hell of it. But it also tends to do things when it wants to, not when anyone else wants it to—Valve Time, we used to call it.
PC Gamer readers are equally stumped about whether we are or are not in fact nearing a Half-Life announcement. Yesterday, I asked everyone to estimate the probability of Half-Life 3 being announced within 12 months, and the answers were all over the map, although "100%—it's happening" is currently in the lead.
Here's that survey again, if you want to toss your prediction in: