Valve Artist Says He Was in the Room “Where They Make Half-Life 3”

Speaking on the Russian CG Voices podcast, first spotted by Reddit user Stannis_Loyalist, the artist revealed that he was in the room where Valve is working on Half-Life 3, and although he didn’t see any actual development in progress, he did see computers and whiteboards. Evgeniy hasn’t clarified exactly when this occurred, making it harder to piece together a clear timeline of HL3’s production, however, since he’s been employed at the studio since February 2023, it’s almost certain that this happened sometime within the past two years.

Even more interesting is Evgeniy’s mention that, to his knowledge, this isn’t Valve’s first attempt at Half-Life 3. This implies that there may have been who knows how many previous attempts to create the long-awaited third chapter of the legendary FPS series, suggesting that all the recent rumors about “HLX” shared by Tyler McVicker and Gabe Follower likely only refer to the latest version of the elusive title.

While a Valve employee publicly admitting that Half-Life 3 is indeed in the works is huge and provides gallons of copium to those still waiting for the game, there are, unfortunately, a couple of flies in the ointment. Besides the fact that Evgeniy doesn’t appear to be working on HL3 directly and could’ve made a mistake, he also mentioned that even though the studio is making the game right now, there’s no guarantee it will ever see the light of day.

According to Evgeniy, Valve has high standards, and if the game doesn’t meet them, the studio can easily freeze development and cancel the project altogether. He pointed to Deadlock as an example, where Valve allegedly overhauled the game’s art style despite the original one being nearly finished, emphasizing that Valve is “very rich” and, unlike many of its peers, can easily afford to do that without any financial pressure.