With the 27th anniversary of Half-Life’s release – November 19 – having come and gone without any announcement from Valve, the rumour mill has still continued to buzz about a potential new title in the franchise being unveiled soon. In the latest set of reports, Insider Gaming’s Mike Straw has taken to social media to note that his sources indicated an announcement would be happening before the end of 2025.
In his series of posts, Straw also confirmed that he was still working on getting as much corroborated information as he possibly could about Valve’s rumoured announcement. “We’re all trying to make sure we do this right, and we don’t want to give a date or information that we haven’t been able to verify was at least a plan,” he wrote.
“As I said in the past, I was told it’s not supposed to be there,” he posted in response to a question about whether Half-Life 3 would be unveiled during The Game Awards 2025 in December. “So, unless Geoff managed to get them to agree to something, I still think it’s a stand alone.”
Rumours about Half-Life 3 having been in development, as well as its announcement happening this year have been going around for quite some time. Earlier this week, industry insider NateTheHate had noted that he had also been getting similarly conflicting information about Valve’s plans from his sources. In a series of social media posts, he noted that he was “Working to get consensus on info and extract the truth from it all.” In his posts, he also said that one source indicated that the announcement was going to happen on November 19.
Straw, for his part, has previously indicated that Valve’s announcement was happening “soon enough”. While he didn’t reveal too many details about this, he did say note that people should “Just be ready.”
Earlier this year, Valve insider Tyler McVicker had reported an update to the Source 2 engine that indicated that development on Half-Life 3 – reportedly codenamed HLX – had been continuing to the point where it had reached final stages of development. Code for the game engine seemingly had references to the thumper machines, which were last seen in Half-Life 2 and its episodic sequels that were used to drive away hostile antlions. This reference was assumed to have been a direct message to dataminers.
Similarly, updates to the game engine from last month had indicated that Valve was getting ready to make an announcement soon. These updates focused on bringing in some automation to free up system resources used by the engine. These resources can then be re-used for other parts of running the game. Along with this, the engine’s sound and liquid simulation systems had also gotten upgraded. These features were noted as being unlikely to be used for Dota 2 or Counter-Strike 2. Rather, they were believed to be used for HLX.
While the rumour mill about Half-Life 3 might all sound like a wild goose chase, check out our thoughts on whether or not there is a chance that Valve might actually make an announcement soon.
