Valve Files ‘Half-Life 3’ Trademark, Could A New Game Be On Its Way?

Valve filed for a trademark for Half-Life 3 in Europe last month, according to the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, the European Union’s trademark and designs registry.

Patent and trademark firm Casalonga & Associés filed the trademark on Valve’s behalf on September 29. According to Polygon, the trademark covers “computer game software, downloadable computer game software via a global computer network and wireless devices,” and other services. There is no equal trademark on record in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Valve became famous for the original Half-Life in 1998. The company released Half-Life 2 in 2004, with two more sequel episodes released in 2006 and 2007. Since then, there has been speculation that Valve would eventually release a third installment, but the company has yet to confirm plans a new game.

In fact, in 2011, Valve writer Chet Faliszek denied rumors of an alternate reality game (ARG) leading up to an announcement for Half-Life 3 after fans picked apart Wheatley’s (Portal) acceptance speech at the VGAs.

“You are being trolled. There is no ARG. Wheatley’s speech was set in Portal 2 fiction – that is all,” Faliszek wrote in a Steam forum There has been no directive from Gabe to leak anything. That is all false.”

Half-Life 3 isn’t the only game Valve may be working on. In August, a group of Dota 2 players visited the company’s Bellevue, Washington, office and were allowed to take pictures during the tour. One player spotted a change log history for August 5 that showed an entry for “L4D3.” The entry read, “[Source2] Restored L4D3?s devtest unit test. Ran locally 6 times without an assert.”

Last November, studio head confirmed that Valve was developing a Source 2 engine, and that they were “waiting for a game to roll it out with.” That game could be Left 4 Dead 3, or even Half-Life 3 (Half-Life 2 ran on a Source engine with Havok Physics).