If you regularly frequent Reddit, or NeoGAF, or Kotaku‘s tips inbox, you’ve probably seen people talking about Half-Life 3 today. Don’t get too excited — Valve’s next shooter hasn’t been announced yet. But there are a lot of rumours floating around.
It started yesterday, when a user on the gaming message board NeoGAF discovered that Valve had trademarked Half-Life 3 in Europe over the weekend. Trademark registrations aren’t exactly reliable indicators that news is coming, but crazed Half-Life 3 fans will happily gobble up any morsel of information that could be connected to some sort of Half-Life-related activity, so it became big news, even finding its way to the front page of Reddit (which, funnily enough, knocked NeoGAF down for a large chunk of yesterday afternoon).
The trademark is certainly worth a “hmmmmm” — why now? If they’re just protecting copyright, wouldn’t the Half-Life trademark suffice? Is the U.S. government shutdown really just an ARG for Half-Life 3?
(We reached out to Valve yesterday for comment, but we have yet to hear back.)
Overnight, more news dribbled out, this time in the form of what appears to be a leaked page from Valve’s JIRA database. JIRA is a project management software that companies use to track bugs and keep track of who’s doing what — and in this case, the “what” appears to be Half-Life 3, among other things (like Left 4 Dead 3, which a tour group may have inadvertently leaked earlier this year).
There have been JIRA leaks before, but between last week’s big Steam announcements and the trademark registration yesterday, the chaos is gathering.
Also, today is October 2. Tomorrow is October 3. Tomorrow will be the third day of the government shutdown. In the year 201… 3.
Half-Life 3 confirmed.
Image by Ivan Bakula
Comments
13 responses to “Here’s Why Everyone’s Talking About Half-Life 3 Today”
I do love the scribbles on the board in the header pic. And Jason’s bit at the end.
So its just a project in the works. That’s all that has been confirmed. Probably been a project in the works since half life 2 or even before the half life 2 release.
I hope one day its just randomly on the steam store. No announcement, No hype train, just BAM!
The third page in the steam store popup the day it’s out.
That would be the most wonderful thing ever. It’d be like a surprise Christmas.
(Edit: I mean, people would still complain, obviously, because… Internet. “I didn’t get enough advance notice to book time off work!” or, “But I’m on holidays in another country and now I won’t be able to world-first the achievements!” But y’know. Ignore them like all sane people do anyway.)
I reached out to Jason to tousle his hair and caress his arm, while explaining how cringeworthy the expression “reached out to” is when employed by journalists in place of e.g. “contacted”.
Contacted implies a response though. You wouldn’t say that SETI contacted alien life, they’ve just been reaching out.
“attempted to contact”. And no, you wouldn’t say SETI had been “reaching out”.
Good point, SETI is passively listening. Voyager probe instead?
Also you did say “contacted” not “attempted to contact” in your original comment.
I imagine the reporter grasping the air towards the direction the person they are ‘reaching out’ to. No wonder they hardly ever get a response.
All I’m going to say is that the Steam Machines need a launch.
I agree with matt. Timed exclusive to steam box confirmed.
Steam Machine is an OS on a PC though so PC timed release.
Maybe Linux version THEN windows version perhaps?