[Update 2: Leveraged has given his final statement on this subject. He states that the informant never actually told him Gabe himself had given the go-ahead, and that that was a mere assumption on the informant’s part. Perhaps Gabe’s e-mail reply (in which he debunked it) did have some truth to it, but avoided the larger question. What a mess!]

[Update: Apparently, Gabe Newell has partly debunked this rumor through this e-mail. Well… back to work, everyone!]

Imagine an average morning for Vic. It’s a lot like your average morning, until the point at which I proceed to check out LG and get started on some work. That seemed like the case this morning, even with Dom’s newest article, until I stumbled upon something that made me look at all those hints we’ve been getting regarding the possibility of a new Half-Life, in a whole different light. Read on!

Alright folks, all aboard the hype train it’s about to leave the station! I’m going to attempt to get the true meaning out there, so to speak. After hearing about the now infamous Steamcast Tweet, I wanted to get a serious insight into what’s really going on, after looking at my Steam Friends’  list who would be better to ask than Brad from Steamcast otherwise known as Mimaz98. To make a long story short, it seems like the information is very possibly true. After a discussion about possible strange Half-Life references showing up on the official TF2 blog, I did a little bit of investigation myself. Brad had noticed that the image used on the official post It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Australian Christmas was originally of an Aurora Borealis effect on a starry sky. The image has since been, inexplicably, changed to The Engineer standing in front of a warm Christmas fire.

Here’s the part this no longer becomes wild speculation…

For the Spike TV Video Game Awards, each company with a character that’s been nominated for the “Character of the Year” award has to create two shorts using in-game content. One for their nomination, and one as an acceptance speech in the event that they win. Sadly, while he was nominated for the award, Wheatley did not win CotY. But Valve have released their never-before-seen acceptance short, and it includes a very interesting hint that indicates we might be seeing something big on the singleplayer front from Valve in 2012.