Half-Life 3 Is Not Coming Anytime Soon, If At All

Every so often new rumors start-up to suggest that Valve has finally begun work on their long-awaited Half-Life 3. The next installment to the Half-Life franchise has laid dormant since Valve began focusing on hardware and tech, starting with the Steam store on PC. Despite new rumors suggesting that Valve might have finally gotten around to the game, new suggestions, yet again these rumors are a false flag.

Youtuber Tyler McVicker, in a recent video, detailed what Valve is currently working on. According to his source at Valve “There is not a major development team working on anything outside of the few pieces of software specifically tailored for hardware.”

As the source states, this is at least in part due to the Steam Deck that is currently slated to release in 2022. As the source stated, the Steam Deck is currently the main focus of the company. McVicker stated:

Right now, Valve is trying to get the Steam Deck out… Valve is throwing a lot at it. Half-Life 3, any kind of traditional mouse and keyboard first-person shooter at Valve, is not taking place. If it is, it’s a very small group of people.

It isn’t all bad news however as McVicker also touched on Citadel, a game that valve is developing with the Steam Deck in mind. It is based in the Half-Life universe and will play as a cooperative shooter. He discussed the game by saying:

Citadel is a Half-Life-based, FPS/RTS hybrid, that is cooperatively based. Think about Left 4 Dead, Alien Swarm, and an RTS, and Half-life all having a baby. It’s being created with the Steam Deck in mind due to how the game is supposed to be controlled. Originally there was supposed to be a VR asymmetrical cooperative component, however, due to Valve’s lackluster view on VR in the current day, it’s very possible that it’s set aside.

Before adding that “Citadel is very much in development.” Valve boss Gabe Newell has taken a hard stance on not commenting on the state of franchises such as Half-Life or Portal and in recent years has continued this trend, saying:

I’ve successfully not spoken about those things for a long time and I hope to continue to not talk about them until they are moot questions. The nice thing is, by not answering those questions, I avoid the community coming up with new, equally-difficult-to-answer questions.

Fans of the franchise recently got a VR spin-off entitled Half-Life: Alyx which was extremely well received. McVicker is perhaps best known for leaking info about that game before it was announced. Despite this track record, it is impossible to say if Half-Life 3 will see the light of day until Valve makes an official statement one way or the other, which seems unlikely at this point.

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