Half-Life 3 Rumor Claims the Game Has Reached Vital Development Stage

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Half-Life 3 is rumored to be in development at Valve and is supposedly pretty far along. For nearly two decades, fans have been hoping and praying that Half-Life 3, or Half-Life 2: Episode 3, would one day see the light of day. While Valve somewhat made good on these requests by releasing the VR game Half-Life: Alyx in 2020, this still hasn’t satiated the desire for another mainline Half-Life game to come about. Now, it sounds as though this could finally be happening if one Valve insider has credible information.

Coming by way of Gabe Follower, it has been said that the newest Half-Life game, which goes by the codename “HLX”, has now reached the point that it’s being playtested by friends and family of those at Valve. News on HLX has been circling for years at this point, with fans continuing to wonder about the nature of this Half-Life title. Whether or not HLX is actually Half-Life 3 isn’t yet known, but the fact that the game is now being playtested suggests that it might be nearing the point that Valve would formally announce the project to the public.

Although it might seem highly unlikely for Valve to do anything new with Half-Life, the company has been shining a much brighter spotlight on the franchise in recent months. Specifically, this focus on Half-Life has been thanks to the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2. As a way of celebrating this occasion, Valve released a two-hour documentary about the creation of Half-Life 2 that also touched on some of the scrapped plans for what would’ve been Half-Life 3.

Given this willingness to talk more openly about Half-Life lately, it suggests that Valve might be trying to bring the series back in a major way. This trend combined with the fact that HLX has leaked multiple times over the years could mean that something tied to Half-Life is set to be shown off relatively soon.

Until Valve formally announces a new Half-Life game, though, it’s best to be hesitant with all of these rumors and leaks. We’ve expected Half-Life 3 to launch countless times over the years and it obviously never has. Still, we might have a new reason to hope for HL3, which is all you can really ask for at this point.