Reddit user Relevant_Basis5444 caught changes to Valve’s Steam page, hinting that Deadlock might not be the only upcoming title the company is working on. In a post on Reddit, Relevant_Basis5444 caught the fact that Valve’s Steam Page lists two titles as upcoming releases, despite Deadlock being the only one visible.

While one could chalk this up to a simple display error on the Steam page, it could also hint that Valve has yet another title that it is gearing up to release.

Considering the company is Valve, quite a bit of speculation revolves around the possibility of a new Half-Life game in development. A sequel to Half-Life 2: Episode 2 has been one of the largest subjects of conspiracy when it comes to Valve making new titles, and the fact that the company has largely focused on multiplayer games since then has done little to quell speculation.

For context, the last major single-player title released by Valve was the VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx. Since then, the company has been working on several projects, including ongoing support for Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, and more recently, the alpha test release of shooter MOBA hybrid Deadlock.

Half-Life: Alyx itself, while being a prequel to Half-Life 2, also ended up fuelling quite a bit of speculation because its ending has major implications for the entire Half-Life setting, and especially the ending that was originally set up by Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

While Valve itself has been characteristically quiet, rumours from a few years ago indicated that the company wasn’t focusing on a Half-Life sequel and instead was putting all of its efforts at the time behind the Steam Deck. Reports from 2020 also revealed a few cancelled projects from Valve, including Half-Life 3 and even Left 4 Dead 3.

More recently, Valve has been constantly working and iterating on its next competitive multiplayer title Deadlock. A combination of hero shooters and MOBAs, Deadlock pits two teams together, each tasked with taking out the other’s base. While the game is still early in development, it has been getting constant patches and updates for balance tuning.

Valve Software may have returned to the Half-Life franchise with this year’s Half-Life: Alyx. However, in the years between it and Half-Life 2: Episode 2’s release, it cancelled Half-Life 3 and two other VR-based projects for the franchise. This was revealed in The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, an interactive book available on Steam by Geoff Keighley.

Half-Life 3 was being developed on the Source 2 engine with plans for procedural generation mixed with hand-crafted story beats (thus increasing replay value). Despite even scanning Frank Sheldon, whose likeness is used for G-Man, Source 2 still being in the works led to the game’s cancellation. The two other VR_based projects, codenamed Shooter and Borealis, were also interesting. The former was more about compact fights and would have been included with The Lab before being cancelled.

Borealis, on the other hand, would have focused on the mysterious ship from Half-Life 2 and taken place throughout the Seven Hour War, and before Half-Life 2: Episode 2. It was being led by writer Marc Laidlaw but was also cancelled. Interestingly enough, even Left 4 Dead 3 was planned at some point and would have been an open world title in Morocco. Again, due to Source 2 still being in development, the use of “hundreds of zombies” simply wasn’t possible.

It’s well worth checking out the entire book on Steam to learn more about other Valve projects through the years. What does the future hold though, especially with the success of Half-Life: Alyx? Stay tuned for more details.

At long last, Valve have returned to mainstream development with Half-Life: Alyx, which is also the first new Half-Life game in over a decade. Reception for the game has been incredible, and if Valve have anything to say about it, this is not going to be their last Half-Life game by any stretch of the imagination. But what about their other properties?

The likes of Portal and Left 4 Dead are beloved properties that – much like Half-Life (and even its episodic releases) – don’t seem to know how to count to three. There have, however, been plenty of leaks, and more than a little speculation, about new projects for both. Portal VR was something we all heard about quite often before Half-Life: Alyx was announced, while Left 4 Dead 3 and Left 4 Dead VR have both been the subjects of leaks as well.

And speaking recently to IGN, Valve programmer Robin Walker talked more about both. As far as the supposed Left 4 Dead 3 leaks are concerned – which emerged when assets from a supposed new Left 4 Dead project got out – Walker explains that that was only stuff Valve was working with to test out its tools while making the Source 2 engine, and that that was never really something that materialized as an actual new project for them to work on, echoing similar statements made by the developer not too long ago.

“We used parts of a Left 4 Dead level as the first bit of level geometry to start building in Source 2, so a bit of that got out,” Walker said. “It was essentially a rendering test, and people thought that meant we were working on Left 4 Dead.”

“We built lots of different things as part of building technology in Source 2,” he continued. “There were groups here who would generate a product in mind that would attempt to be a target for Source 2, and so a couple of those were Left 4 Dead-related things, but none of them reached the point where we were like, ‘now this is a product team that we’re going to build a big product around.’ They were more tools for moving Source 2 forward.”

About Portal and the possibility of a VR project, Walker explained that that was something Valve did toy around with when exploring options for what to adapt into a VR game- but when they realized that the restricted movement that VR requires would get in the way of several core gameplay features and mechanics of Portal, they quickly dropped that, before moving on to Half-Life.

“We [looked] at our various IPs when we started… before we selected Half-Life… which is a really standard thing for us to do,” he said. “When you’re trying to explore something new, of course you start with ‘What are all the tools we’ve got from the past that could help us rapidly learn here?’

“So we looked at various IPs and, yep, Portal was one of them, [but] we didn’t get very far in that. It was pretty clear when we looked at Portal as a whole… If we can’t do player movement, not as a result of their choice, but by launching them… momentum…standing on things… all that sort of stuff… then a whole swath of Portal’s puzzles… the whole back half of Portal, or more… goes away, and we’d need some alternative thing.

“The whole point of using existing IPs is to get a head start on trying to understand and learn, and if we start by taking away one of the most interesting things from the IP we’re looking at, then it doesn’t seem like we’re making a good choice there.”

Well, hopefully Valve will find a way to bring both franchises back in the near future. After seeing Half-Life make its grand, long-awaited return, that doesn’t seem like such a distant possibility anymore, so fingers crossed.

Half-Life: Alyx, meanwhile, is available now on PC, and compatible with various virtual reality headsets, including Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality.

Valve has largely stepped away from game development over the last few years to focus on maintaining their PC client, Steam. Even though they’ve said they’re going to be actively developing games with greater frequency in the near future, the only recent project over the last decade they have had much more direct involvement in is the card battle game, Artifact. But it seems like we got a peek at a project they were working on, with new screenshots from their cancelled co-op zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 3 surfacing.

In an unusual circumstance, Tyler Vickers, a YouTuber who runs the Valve News Network channel, has obtained the screenshots. You can see his video about it below, where he covers the screenshots and how they were obtained. If you want to see all of the screens without Vickers’ commentary, they’ve also been uploaded via here.

The screenshots in question are associated with tech demos for Valve’s VR projects, as well as the Source 2 engine, which leaked prematurely and included information that presumably was not meant to be seen by the public eye- such as clear references to Left 4 Dead 3. The actual screenshots show a level that based on its layout appears to be designed for single player play, based on a Middle Eastern theme, built using DUST 2 assets and resembling concept art for Left 4 Dead 3 that has been seen previously.

Based on the information gleaned from the assets, it appears the game was going to have eight heroes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, resembling heroes in a hero shooter. Four were going to be new, and four would be returning from previous entries. The project would go on to be cancelled in 2017.

It’s not much, all things considered, but it gives a bit of a glimpse of what one dusty level of Left 4 Dead 3 would have looked like. Whether or not Valve will ever revisit the series, or any of their legendary franchise, is anyone’s guess.

Valve can’t count to 3. That’s why we’re still stuck on Portal 2, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, DOTA 2… you name it. But it appears as though one of their year long teases may finally be bearing fruit- in a tutorial for the Destinations Workshop Tools, Valve’s Tristan Reidford has posted an image hinting at the third game in the co-op zombie shooting series being in development at Valve, and coming out soon.

The eighth image in the tutorial shows a very tantalizingly named Left4Dead3 folder in the navigation pane on the left hand side, alongside other current Valve projects, such as virtual reality. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that nearly 24 hours after the community noticed the tease, the picture was replaced by a poorly Photoshop’d version to remove the Left 4 Dead 3 reference.

If this is true, then we may expect a Left 4 Dead 3 coming out soon, eventually. And considering that all the leaks and teases indicating at it coming out were always accompanied by the nugget of information that Half Life 3 was also in development… no, I can’t permit myself to hope like that.

I can’t!

[Thanks NeoGAF]

Counter-Strike creator and former Valve Software developer Minh Le confirmed in a Twitch interview that he had seen concept art and images for something that “could be in the Half-Life universe” and said that it was indeed related to Half Life 3. Then again, according to Le, Half Life 3’s development is “old news by now”.

“I think it’s kind of public knowledge that people know that it is being worked on, so if I was to say ‘yeah, I’ve seen some images’ like some concept art of it that wouldn’t be big news.

“I guess I could say that I did see something that could be in the Half-Life universe. I mean it wouldn’t surprise anyone if I said yeah they’re working on it. To go out on a limb, I would say I did see some Half-Life 3 concept art.”

As for the “new Left 4 Dead”, Le revealed that, “It wouldn’t be any news if I said ‘yes, I saw it’ and it looks great. I was really excited when I saw that, like ‘wow, this looks great’.”

Regardless, this doesn’t mean we’ll be seeing either game any time soon. Keep believing though and let us know what you think in the comments.

(Source)

If you haven’t heard of Ricochet, we don’t blame you. The “game” has long been seen as a code name for Half Life 3 – which makes sense since it’d be weird if Valve spent time developing a franchise that isn’t Half Life or Left 4 Dead or Portal. After all, those all have in-built audiences that would assure success.

However, it’s being speculated that if Ricochet 2 does exist, it’s actually meant for a completely different purpose: to debut the new Source 2 engine. It’s being considered as a sort of test run, but we won’t know for sure till it’s out. While it might be odd to consider a game which most players have never heard of, it’s possible that Valve is just going with the franchise that has the least amount of expectations.

Now here’s the weird part. There’s also the belief that Ricochet 2 IS Half Life 3 and that sooner or later, Source 2 will come to light by way of an announcement. Valve could just go the other way and introduce Source 2 first, but then, considering how Half Life 2 and Source debuted together, it’s likely the same situation could repeat.

Will Half Life 3 really use Source 2, is there actually a sequel to a game most people haven’t played which will showcase the same? Only one of those seems likely, but we’d love to hear what you think below.

Remember when images of Valve Software’s Left 4 Dead 2 recreated using the Source 2 Engine has been leaked by renowned NeoGAF insider CBOAT? It now seems that there is indeed more going on at Valve that goes beyond the usual Steam Machines, SteamOS and what have you.

A new image posted on NeoGAF indicates some of the files for a Source 2 director. See anything you like in that list?

Along with Counter Strike 2, Left 4 Dead 3 and Dota references, you can plainly see the initials “HL3”. There are only two folder directories – perhaps an indication of just how much work has been done? – but Lord knows it’s better than nothing.

Which is pretty much what Valve has offered us regarding Half Life 3. There has been winks and nudges, along with outright admissions that the developer doesn’t want to rush the third game. But the evidence continues to mount that Valve is doing something with the game. What could it be? Stay tuned.

A screenshot was leaked showing off some of Valve’s own upcoming Source 2 engine. The shots were from Left 4 Dead 2, but are being rendered in the Source 2 engine, meaning they look infinitely better than the do in the actual Left 4 Dead 2 game.

But the implications of this are not that Left 4 Dead 2 is getting an update to the source 2 engine—no, what it really implies is that this is our first glimpse of what we can expect to see from Left 4 Dead 3. It’s possible that some levels will make a return, but the gameplay and enemy mechanics are sure to be completely overhauled and updated.

There’s still no word on the official release for Left 4 Dead 3, and no reason to believe that we’ll be seeing one soon. But as these screenshots are a leak and not an official release, it stands to reason that Valve will soon come out with an official statement regarding what exactly we are seeing and what we can hope to see in the near future.

Via: Neogaf

Of course, the goal with Portal 2 was to take it beyond the confines of a simple puzzlers into a full-fledged video game. With that objective complete, what could be next? This seems to be the issue with Half Life 3 – the second game introduced open world elements, vehicles, an epic scale, a sprawling narrative with memorable side-characters, new mechanics especially in the area of video game physics and much more. What could possibly be next for that game?

Both games may be wanting for a direction but at this point it boils down to which one would be more feasible. Do you expect Valve to bring out Portal 3? Or do you desperately want Half Life 3, even it means waiting for who knows how much longer? Let us know in the comments below…though at this rate, we might as well start asking for Left 4 Dead 3.