Half-Life 3 rumoured as one of The Game Awards megaton announcements

Do we dare believe? (Valve)

Valve fans already believe Half-Life 3 is in active development, and now it’s rumoured that a big reveal is just hours away.

While a handful of games are set to make an appearance at The Game Awards 2024 tonight, like Borderlands 4 and Mafia: The Old Country, there’s so far nothing particularly mind-shattering on the docket.

There have been surprisingly few rumours of any major reveals and yet insider reports have hyped up this year’s event as one to watch, with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier promising two announcements that’ll have viewers crying ‘Holy s***.’

It’s difficult to tell what he could be referring to, but one new rumour that’s since made the rounds, and one that would certainly fit the criteria, is that Valve will finally announce Half-Life 3 during the event.

This doesn’t come from any of the usual rumourmongers, but rather one Nima Zeighami, a former Apple employee who currently serves as vice president of product at tech company Infinite Reality.

‘The rumour I heard, and I am not kidding here, is that [Valve president Gabe Newell] will be there to announce Half-Life 3,’ Zeighami wrote on X in response to Schreier’s comments about The Game Awards.

Amusingly, Zeighami admits he doesn’t believe it himself, but he must do to some degree, if he felt comfortable making such a claim in public. He’s also clarified that he was told this in-person by someone ‘really well-connected in the games industry.’

X post about rumour of Half-Life 3 being announced at The Game Awards 2024 — Such a reveal would make huge waves throughout the wider gaming community (X)

Ever since Valve released Half-Life: Alyx in 2020, there has been renewed optimism that Half-Life 3 would actually come to pass. In fact, it’s believed Valve is actively working on the sequel right now, thanks to datamined information found in other Valve games.

Tyler McVicker, a Valve insider who’s repeatedly insisted Half-Life 3 is in development, has chimed in to say he’s not personally heard of any such announcement.

However, in his latest video, he posits that Valve does at least owe The Game Awards organiser Geoff Keighley something, since it initially meant to show off Half-Life: Alyx at the 2019 Game Awards, but pulled out mere hours before the event started (something that often happens with such events, if you ever get upset at rumours not panning out).

Opinions from fans are unsurprisingly all over the place. Over on Reddit, some are daring to believe a Half-Life 3 reveal will happen tonight, while others are far more sceptical. One user, Audens_, calls it ‘the fakest leak,’ whereas RJE808 thinks such an announcement could serve as the big closer to the show.

On a related note, fans have also noticed that the dedicated website for Valve’s SteamVR software has come back online after being blank for months. And for some reason, the website title temporarily read ‘Half-Life.’

This added further fuel to the Half-Life 3 fire, but some think this was simply a mistake that has since been corrected. According to Reddit user Left4pillz, the official Half-Life website had its title changed to ‘SteamVR,’ suggesting all that happened is someone at Valve accidentally swapped the two websites’ names.

We’ll find out for sure tonight, with The Game Awards due to start at 1am and end around 4am GMT.