Valve's Gabe Newell Jokes About Half-Life 3 In Speech
You know the old joke: "Valve can't count to three." Yada, yada. It seems Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is well aware of that joke, too. And in a speech today to Valve employees meant to celebrate the launch of the company's Index VR headset, Newell packed in some Half-Life 3 humor.
According to PC Gamer, Newell started off by detailing some of Valve's past accomplishments.
"In the history of Valve, we've had a lot of significant milestones," Newell said. "We had Half-Life, which was our first single-player game. We had Source, that was our first engine. We had Counter-Strike, which was our first multiplayer game. Then we had Steam and the Workshop ... And Index is another one of those critical milestones for our company."
And then Newell got to talking about all the progress Valve's made since. This is where he made the hearts of Half-Life fans flutter, if only for a moment.
"Half-Life led to Half-Life 2, Source led to Source 2, the experiments we did with Team Fortress 2 are what enabled us to build DOTA," Newell added. "Artifact is the reason we're able to do Underlords. Maybe someday, the number two will lead us to that shiny integer glowing on the mountain someplace."
It's a three, Gabe. It's a number three. Just say it. He can't even say it.
Newell's remark has the internet abuzz at the moment, as many try to figure out whether he was cracking wise or whether he's actually teasing something. We're inclined to believe it's just a joke at this point (that's why we put it in the headline), but who knows! Maybe there's a Half-Life 3 brewing somewhere deep inside Valve's headquarters. Or maybe it's a Portal 3? We'd take that, too.
At any rate, there's no confirmed game announcement to glean from Newell's speech. We can't say Half-Life 3 is around the corner, or that it's even in development. All we can say is that Valve co-founder Gabe Newell made a funny about a game a lot of people really hope exists somewhere, if only in his brain. And that's all we've got.