Regarding the development trends of "Half-Life 3", Valve is as secretive as the mysterious G-Man in its game. Over the years, countless canceled project versions have made the company wary of the word "official announcement." However, this does not mean that Valve is completely turning a deaf ear to the outside world - on the contrary, they have even begun to make fun of players who are keen on mining data.
In the Source 2 engine updates of Valve's games such as "Dota 2" and "CS2", strings pointing to future projects are often hidden. From "Neon Prime/Citadel" which later evolved into "Deadlock", to the final "Half-Life: Alyx", relevant information has been leaked.
Just last weekend, Valve sent a teasing signal to these data miners through a "Dota 2" update.
After players dug up reference information about the upcoming "Dark Carnival" event in the update file and posted it to Reddit, Valve quickly updated a variable name in the background: "m_bHackWhyAreYouGuysReadingOurVariableNames" (Chinese meaning: "Why are you reading our variable names?") This move quickly sparked heated discussion in the community.
Valve certainly knows players are following these clues, after all, Half-Life fans have been "unpacking" and leaking information for two decades. A massive fan-organized infographic detailing every Half-Life-related clue extracted from Source 2 updates over the years.
Still, even the mountain of evidence cannot silence the skeptics. Last year, various sources claimed that Valve would use the announcement of "Half-Life 3" to build momentum for three new pieces of hardware - the Steam Frame console, Steam Machine and the new Steam controller. However, as of today, the new Steam controller has been released in May, and the Steam Frame and Machine have also been put into storage for sale, but there is not even a hint of official news about "Half-Life 3".