New potential clues have emerged relating to the arctic map from the comic, which we previously covered. Scroll down to point 8 for an update on this.
So there’s a Steam ARG going on, right now.
We don’t usually hop on the Half-Life 3 conspiracy bandwagon, but this is getting a little interesting to say the least…
There’s something strange going on over at BlackMesaSource.com.
The website for the highly anticipated Half-Life recreation modification, Black Mesa, started showing a mysterious video the other day of an analogue TV filled with color bars, which is directing viewers to a some sort of countdown clock.
On April 23rd, Valve dropped a bombshell when they announced that community contributors on the Steam Workshop could now put a price tag on their mods. This announcement, however, came as a bit of a shock to much of the community, with many people being in disagreement with the new feature. In this article we take a look at how the community responded to the move.
Last year Valve released The Steam Discovery Update. Looking back on it, they say that the update has done marvels.
Another year has passed and Half-Life 3 still hasn’t been released.
Not to worry though, thanks to a Reddit user we now have a dedicated website to constantly check the current status of the game’s unforeseen release – HasHalfLife3BeenReleased.com.
A while back Gabe Newell stated that if The Heart of Racing charity reached $500,000+ in donations, he’d host an AMA session on Reddit. And a few days ago, they passed said stretch goal, and Gabe went on to announce that an AMA would be held on March 3rd at 1:00 PM PST.
17,000 users visited the IAmA subreddit, waiting for Gabe Newell to start the show. And they waited for a while, but nothing happened. Well, at least not for another 25 hours – then it started. Valve time, ladies and gentlemen.
Nevertheless, it happened. Erik Wolpaw, Erik Johnson, Ido Magal, Greg Coomer and Gabe Newell all sat down to answer the question that the fans might have. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting answers we got.
We’re living in a world where you can’t trust to almost anyone.
The bad thing is – if you can’t trust to your publisher or a developer even if NDA means nothing to them.
Today (or I’d say yesterday) a screenshot of email, which was sent to publishers and developers by Valve, was leaked by a Russian developer via Steam Greenlight – a system that uses the community’s help to pick some new games to be released on Steam.
Most of you can say ‘No, it can’t be true. It’s a fake’, but unfortunately – no. No it’s not.
This is, probably, the biggest leak, related to Steam that I have ever witnessed (but I’m pretty sure that I have forgotten something).
The original Half-Life was first announced in early 1997, initially set for that year’s holiday season. But one very impressive E3 1997 showing later, and suddenly Half-Life was on everyone’s radar – expectations were ramping up, and suddenly, Valve were in the center of the gaming world’s attention. And so, later that year, close to their projected release date, Valve decided that a delay was in order. Once they’d attained it, a lot of the pressure was off, and the team at Valve spent began to intensely evaluate every aspect of the game, and all of the content they had created in one year of development.
And while there had been a considerable amount of progress, and the game itself was in very good shape, it just seemed like there was something missing – as Valve engineer Ken Birdwell stated in The Final Hours of Half-Life, the game simply wouldn’t have gone “over the edge anywhere“. To Valve, it seemed like Half-Life could be a lot more revolutionary and a lot more groundbreaking. Thus, in late 1997, an entire game’s worth of content and design was completely scrapped, and Half-Life underwent a complete redesign, fully from the ground up.
What gamers eventually got one year later in November of 1998, amounts to an entirely new game (in fact, according to Ken Birdwell, it really is a Half-Life 2 of sorts). But what happened to the Half-Life that never was – the “Half-Life 0” that Valve unceremoniously threw out the door?
