Half Life 3 release date rumors have spread around the internet for months, so much so that it’s become something of a joke to internet sleuths to decipher clues and “confirm” the long-anticipated game.
But the release of Surgeon Simulator 2013 from developer Bossa Studios this summer led many to what they thought was concrete evidence that Half Life 3 was on the way soon. The developer added a sticker to the bottom of a Team Fortress 2 figurine that many believed to be related to Half Life 3.
That wasn’t the case, Surgeon Simulator 2013 co-creator Luke Williams now says.
“The day after we released the first piece of the puzzle, we had to put our foot down and say, look, this isn’t Half-Life 3, Williams told PCGamesN .”But people wouldn’t believe us! They’d say things like, ‘well of course you would say that, wouldn’t you’. We were damned if we did and damned if we didn’t.”
The rumors built so quickly that Valve even reached out to Williams, thinking a Half Life 3 release date had been announced.
Though that Half Life 3 release date rumor has come and gone, there have been plenty of other clues about the game’s release. In October, word that Valve had filed a trademark for Half Life 3 leaked out, though it was quickly debunked.
ValveTime reported that the Half Life 3 trademark was removed from the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) website, hinting toward a possible hoax to generate publicity for the game.
Other release date rumors were generated last year with reports that voice actors were called in to complete work on the game.
Valve actor John Patrick Lowrie took to a forum to clear these rumors up, saying the production of the game was held up for several reasons, including difficulties with motion capture for the characters.
“Sorry, I’m afraid that the opposite is true. HL3 is not being worked on at this time as far as I know,” Lowrie wrote. “Right. As far as I know they are not developing HL3 now for several reasons, among them the mo-cap issue. Sorry for any confusion. What they might decide in the future depends on lots of different factors. I hope they do, personally, but it has to make sense for them.”
It has been close to a decade since the release of Half Life 2, but there is no official word on a release date for Half Life 3, or even if it is actually in production.
