It has been half a decade since the last Half-Life Episode was released, leaving fans with quite a big cliffhanger. Many had thought that the Orange Box was a way to release the Half-Life series in order to acquire and draw in new fans that were not familiar with the series before the big release of the final addition to the series of Half-Life 3. That day has not yet come, however, and rumors of the title bubbling up in the news once more aren’t helping.
Half-Life 3 has once again entered into the news of the gaming world this time rumors have been spreading around that SteamDB had come across evidence of the game’s existence hidden within Valve’s PC game sharing program. This evidence, however, should be taken lightly, as the evidence they have found is a package name that has been labeled “Half-Life3” and a name no matter how promising unfortunately doesn’t warrant much. It is imperative to keep in mind that developers at Steam have the ability to name their own apps/packages whatever they want meaning that this could all be a major troll by a developer.
It’s highly likely that Half-Life 3 will never actually end up seeing the light of day as Valve has already gone on record about the subject earlier this year and it’s looking quite grim. YouTube channel The Know has announced to the world that multiple sources within Valve’s company claim that Half-Life 3 will never release. There were many reasons explained in the video, but the most important one for the gaming community to keep in mind and actually care about is that Valve actually fears the potential backlash they could receive from the game. After the major backlash of Mass Effect 3’s flop, its development team was plagued with internet harassment, to the point that other workers who worked on the game were receiving death threats and bomb threats on a daily basis.
Valve uses this incident as a main pull for why they stopped all development on Half-Life 3 as they fear if it’s impossible to live up to the hype. It is entirely reasonable to fear releasing such an anticipated game at this moment because if it doesn’t live up to the hype and gamers enter into rage mode, the company could potentially be ruined. If anything not releasing Half-life 3 is the only smart move for the developer to do; they don’t need the money, they don’t answer to anyone, so pressure to release the game is non-existent, as they literally have no reason to. Because of the way gamers have acted in the past with other titles released that did not live up to the hype, the rest of the community is now being punished for their childish behavior.
We don’t blame Valve if they decided to never release Half-Life 3, as the future of their company and its employees along with their current position in the industry is far more important than a single game release. Valve has developed and released other titles that exist within the Half-Life universe such as Portal in the past, so this maybe the only way gamers will experience the world of Half-Life, and if so, we’re okay with that. Valve is a great game developer that can craft a great story coupled with engaging gameplay, so this incident should act as a lesson to the community. It is one thing to debate or lash out by writing to developers in a non-threatening manner about your complaints about a game, but an entirely different matter to threaten them, especially with the type of world we find ourselves living in today.
