Seriously, why haven't they made Half Life 3?!

Both HL1 and HL2 (and episodic content) were successes (putting it mildly).

The general consensus is that the world would love a new Half Life game.

Why haven't they made it yet? Please enlighten my simple mind.

No hats

Valve is a company with a limited number of employees who are self-directed. They don't have to do anything that they don't want to and there doesn't appear to be a huge appetite for making HL 3 within Valve as far as we can tell. Meanwhile running Steam is many times more profitable than any single video game could be.

It's not a matter of flipping a switch from "No HL 3 to HL 3 released." The game would have to be painstakingly developed to meet an incredibly high standard (since the last two HL games helped redefine the first person shooter) and people don't want to do it (so far.)

More simply, they don't need to and they don't want to, so they don't.

Because the chances of it living up to expectations is an asymptote heading infinitely toward 0%.

Because, "Fuck it."

Dota 2

I tend to agree with what I've heard a few of the duders say; Valve isn't too interested in game development anymore since Steam has been such a huge incredible success for them.

Well, besides some fringe VR stuff and the money-train that is DOTA 2

People move on. At a self directed company like Valve you have no executive saying "Make Call of Duty: Infinite Ghost Future Advanced Man Killer." With Steam they literally have a license to print money and no stock holders to answer to. If that project doesn't interest those with the clout to champion a massive initiative like Half-Life 3 it's not gonna get done.

Some companies are REO Speedwagon. They are just gonna tour around to every state fair and fireworks show in the country and do what is expected of them and play the hits to a bunch of yokels and count their money. Some companies are Prince, they make an obscene amount of money and do whatever the fuck they want until they expire.

Because Steam is Valve's bottom bitch. Why bother spending millions making Half-Life 3 when Steam is the best at workin' the pole and bringin' in that paper?

Because the versions they've knocked together haven't been good enough?

@yesiamaduck: hot dog, we have a weiner.

also brad muir is spending too much time play testing dota 2 (i'm afraid he may be a stranger to the site now, haven't heard from him in a long time :( )

The three-hit combo that is Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike Global Offensive have provided Valve with a gravy train that they can ride without stopping for the foreseeable future. I mean, conventional wisdom would say that these games would just die out and they'd have to do something new, but Team Fortress 2 came out nine fucking years ago and people have been playing Dust since the late 90's. I can't tell you much about Dota 2 but people have been playing Dota for a very long time, too. And Valve makes tons of money on all three of these games, enough to make pretty much any developer jealous. And they don't really have to do much in the way of developing new content, just monitor the community.

Let's not forget that Steam itself probably makes them enough money to live comfortably, too.

Thinking about it as a business, Half-Life 3 isn't really a good investment. It just isn't. There's going to be a backlash when it releases because it's not going to revolutionize the first person shooter genre. And if it does revolutionize the first person shooter genre, there's going to be a backlash against it because it won't be anything like the first two. Sure, it would make a profit, but you would have to devote a few years and a lot of money, resources, and employees towards producing something that isn't going to print money like the aforementioned multiplayer games and Steam itself. It will just make a bunch of money in its first few weeks, then a year later, it will just be on every other Steam sale.

I'd love to see a new Half-Life game. I don't need it to be anything more than a very good linear first person shooter. But if I were an employee at Valve, I really wouldn't want to work on a new Half-Life game.

This is a horrible libel against REO Speedwagon. They do not want to play their hits or entertain the "Yokels."

They want to keep on loving you. It's the ONLY thing they want to do.

Now you might say "Well maybe they don't want to play the fairs and such but they want to be able to eat and pay for somewhere to sleep, right?"

WRONG. They DON'T want to sleep. They just want to keep on loving you.

They've allowed a number of games based on Half-Life 2 to either be released on Steam for free or for a price, I half expect a full blown fan game to be released and while it wouldn't be called Half-Life 3, it could be some other standalone sequel, like from the viewpoint of Barney or some other rebels.

They weren't ready. Perhaps the technology wasn't where they needed it to be. I don't believe they're that cynical about a series whose craftsmanship shows love. I believe they want to realize its conclusion/continuation and are working on it. They still make games. Portal 2 is only five years old. The Last Guardian has been teased for seven years, and for what? I wouldn't show off a barely finished game years in advance either if I were Valve. I don't think they have any obligation to continue the series. Did they sell a season pass? No.

My take? They're scared. Left it too long and the very idea of the game has taken on a mythical status. No way Valve can deliver on that, so they're not even going to try.

Edit: Or what the poster above said.

Uh, there were serious hints towards Left 4 Dead 3 and something potentially Half-Life related in those files data mined from the VR thing Valve put out earlier this year, right? They are working on something for sure.

@dookierope: that name is way better than Infinite Warfare. You should be the new team lead on that game.

@sloppydetective: me and Kotick got some long standing beef. I won't work for that dude.

@gunflame88: Due to how self-directed Valve's employees are, I'm sure that there have already been a few projects called Half Life 3 that have been started, worked on, and then scrapped.

I've not really thought about it that much....but now that I do, I guess the biggest problem might be that size of the undertaking, like other posters have mentioned.

Valve have 300-400 employees as I understand. Half Life 3 would need to be a project of at least the scope and investment of a new Halo or Call of Duty game...i.e. a huge chunk of those employees working pretty much solidly on it for 2-3 years at least.

Speaking as a (non-game) developer myself...if I have the choice of sticking to what I'm currently doing (e.g. tweaking CS:GO balancing, casually designing new pants for DOTA rhinomen or whatever the hell DOTA has in it, designing promotional Steam collectible events) which has me under little pressure with a fair amount of creative freedom and lets me go home at 17:00 each day, versus embarking on a new project that swallows up 3 years of my life, with crunch periods and loads of late nights, for no likely financial gain (for me or the company) compared to what I was doing before....well....even if I decided to take that project on, convincing half the company to do the same and get Half Life 3 made would probably be the problem.

DOTA 2 makes exponentially more money and it just never ends. Like a river of hat money which just flows into Valve on a constant basis.

The Half-Life games are just good single player campaigns that basically get you a one-time transaction when people buy the thing. Valve's big successes now all have a multiplayer focus that keeps the players as potential customers for all sorts of cosmetic items and so on as long as they keep playing the game.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 were definitely "time and place" sorts of games. A lot of the impact of HL2 was because of elements like the robust physics engine at a time when that wasn't at all common, which they used it to great effect. That stuff is obviously pretty commonplace now, so it lacks impact outside of the context of the time and place when that game was new. I respect the seamless way they present the narrative, but it also creates pacing issues that hurt it. Basically, I don't think the factors that made Half-Life 2 grab my attention at the time still have that impact, so a Half-Life 3 would need to pull a whole new set of tricks out of the bag, and I don't know what those would be. Decent 3D solidbody physics was an obvious step, it just feels like video games and the technology in them has been around long enough that those big strides have come and gone and it's just more about granular improvement now.

Sure, it would basically be guaranteed to sell well, but the profit from those one-off sales might not be all that great in the face of the constant stream of income from DOTA/TF2/CS:GO, let alone the money they get from taking their cut (I believe it's 30%) of every other item they sell on steam. Given the insane expectation people would have of a HL3, I think it does become a little less favourable for them from a risk/reward sense. Half-Life 3 seems like it would probably also mean them building a new game/rendering engine and I have to wonder how much interest they would have in that or how use they would get out of it.

I guess the thing to consider is that Half-Life 3 only gets to launch once, so while it might not be the monetary holy grail for them that it might seem, it could still be a powerful tool for them. Half-Life 2 got people using steam in order to play the game, even though people really weren't happy about that at the time. Maybe they're waiting for something they could use Half-Life 3 as leverage to get people to adopt in a similar way. That's maybe a little cynical, and maybe they're just making sure they don't go forward with something until it's something really special.

Whatever the reality, there are probably some interesting prototypes and stuff at Valve HQ. Somebody is probably doing some first person VR crowbarring right now...

Because Valve just loves watching everyone suffer.

If someone there came up with a really amazing idea for what that game would be then maybe they would do it, but otherwise it's not going to happen.

And dismiss the idea saying 'but it will sell loads!' because they could just as easily put that money and effort into something that makes even more money. Like Dota.

You wouldn't want it even if they did make it. It's been too long, there is no way it will live up to expectations if it ever came out, and it won't.

Why would they spend so much time and money on a big, single player thing that requires extensive voice acting and level design and years of work work work, when they have Dota, an almost completely self aware, self replicating machine masquerading as a game that shits more money then you and I will ever know in our existence.

Valve could go into a bunker and divert all it's time/resources into just making sure Steam and Dota never falter, and they would be set for life. Hell that's probably all they do anyway. That and buy knives.

Lots of knives.

Because Gaben is evil :)

they wanted to make new things surrounding games instead of games themselves.

Am I the only one who rather have them improving steam instead of making a new Half Life? whats the value of a first person shooter when all we know about it its that its about a scientist named Gordon and probably a boat?

They're printing money with DOTA 2. No reason to stop now until nobody cares anymore.

Reason 1: They don't need to. The revenue they get from their platform is quite enough to keep the company alive and well. The revenue they get from other games, like selling items on Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2 or DOTA 2, is a nice (big) icing that takes all pressure of them. Portal and Half Life are single player games, which puts a limit to how much they can monetize them.

Reason 2: They don't know how to. Maybe they have no idea how to continue the story after Episode 2; maybe they know the release will be an event almost regardless of what they do, so they have the pressure of blowing people's minds away; maybe they know technically it is too late: they missed the train of episodic content and they have been outperformed in most areas that used to make Half Life unique; maybe they are working hard in trying to create a technological breakthrough, whether it reading sign language for NPCs or a VR game that doesn't exhaust people after a few hours, but they know they are not there.

Reason 3: They are not into that business anymore. Remember that, when Half Life 2 first came out, Steam was barely a thing. In fact, they release the game almost specifically to push the platform. Since then, a lot has happened. Steam grew up to levels I don't think they were expecting, and now it is the main source of revenue and power for the company. The same way Epic grew from "those guys that made Unreal Tournament" to "those guys that made the engine most games use", and now the new Unreal Tournament could only exist as a fan project, Valve had a similar evolution with Steam, and now they are not in the game development business.

Reason 4: They don't want to. The bottomline is that they know the bar has been set too high and anything other than a perfect 10 would be seen as a disappointment. They are not interested in committing resources and time into an endeavor that is quite likely not going to live up to expectations; especially when those resources could be used on things that give their company a steadier revenue.

I jumped to the bottom to throw my two cents in without reading anything but this post pretty much says everything I had thought. They made games, met with success, and then tried to make a service to distribute games digitally. The service has outstripped what any single game could ever do or be and at this point the game will be a disappointment from some circles no matter what.

The single best thing they could do is release the game in a strange way or suddenly or even something weird like make it secretly available to different people spread out in different regions, something like that. Something that pumps the hype to outrageous levels with no effort and no information. Releasing normal info such as "here are our guns" videos or "Look at these character interactions!" would lower it down to just another game that can't possibly meet expectations. Whether it's good or not they have to bypass the media, bypass all the normal outlets and make it their own event.

Everyone will review it and stream it or "unpack" it after the event anyway. Doing that before hand would cheapen the effect.

I agree with most of your points besides number 4 ... Valve still has several teams of developers working for them. And while I would bet it's a rather chill job (compared to other publishers anyways) even Valve doesnt keep 100+ people around just for fun. The are probably working on one or two new games regardless of how well steam does.

I remember a while ago an employee handbook from valve was out in the open. And I remember reading it. If I recall right pretty much everyone can work at anything in the company if he/she is interested in the project (probably up to the point where whatever they are working in gets close to being a product). I would bet that nobody at Valve wants to take the responsibility of building a new Half-Life. As others said: at this point they can't win unless the make a truly amazing game that blows everyones mind ... and how good are the chances of that, it's a lose/lose proposition for them.

I understand that they don't need to make it but Half Life is their child and what made them famous. Why would they not want to finish the Half Life saga if not for the money but for the sake of giving their creation its due? I mean Yu Suzuki have been trying for years to make Shenmue 3 happen despite it being a failure. It just baffles me that they care so little about it. They already know it will sell and managing steam is something that they could hire people to do. People always say they are making money on Steam but are the HL2 devs sitting there working on discounting games on Steam or something? They could easily hire people to manage Steam while they focus on making games.

They have nothing to gain from HL3. The effort and expense required to make it would be better spent making hats for TF2 or skins for Dota. Why risk the costs of a AAA title that definitely won't satisfy people when you can churn out pointless cosmetics that sell like hot cakes for a teeny tiny fraction of the cost?

Because they need to make Half-Life 2 Episode 3 first.

In all seriousness, they probably just can't come up with something satisfying and because they are a private company which makes a lot of money they are not forced to release something they are not satisfied with. Half-Life games usually come with some sort of technological/gameplay leap and I guess they just don't have one right now.

They are also making a lot of money with DotA2 and Steam and are now well into the whole VR thing. They're not actually that big of a company so I doubt they have many people working on other projects right now.

Top marks here.

While agreeing with other answers that point out present projects like Steam, and the money making games they do have, I think @shindig's comment is a constraint, also. Not worth it to Valve, even to their very own satisfaction. Thus Half Life 3 remains the rabbit they keep in the hat. Everybody knows they be the Half life people, and sometime maybe.....

"Man, hats are great"

"Man, gun skins are great"

"Man, this WarCraft III mod is great"

"Man, money is great"

"Man, let's take half steps to reinvent gaming forever, because, you know, we keep saying, '<Something> as a service'"

"Man, too many people like Dota and Team Fortress 2, so we'll never make another single player game like Half-Life again"

Because Steam, Dota 2, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and Team Fortress 2 all exist and make more money than a Half-Life 3 ever would

Unlike most other developers Valve now runs a digital retail store, while also maintaining both Dota 2 and CS:GO which are both money makers.
Half-Life 3 is a hell of a project and a lot has changed in the first person shooter space, either they will staff up and take on the challenge at probably considerable expense to the company, or the depressing alternative for the game would be the "ip owner of a franchise" approach, and utilize the Half-Life name to promote a VR product to sell their headsets :(. Which would be a shame.

I think i share the same thoughts as a fair few other people in that they're already making it, and that at some point it will just come out with no pre-release mention whatsoever :P.

If you like good single player games I would suggest supporting Valve's competitor CD Projekt Red and their GOG platform.

So Brad Muir can retire from making games.

I dont think its simply about "hats" but rather the fact that its a lot more satisfying to create an online game that can stay relevant for years as opposed to a tight/short singleplayer experience thats over in a couple of hours. The bar for singleplayer games in terms of production value has also made these games alot more risky and they done generate that much revenue (and it would take atleast 3 years to make which is brutal if you can avoid it.).

I would expect a teamfortress 3 or similar mp game to combat overwatch as their next game if they decide to actually make games again :O

Ask yourself one question, what kind of game do you want HL3 to be? Do you want it to be just a continuation of the HL2 episodes with better grafix? It's not exactly a grand goal.

I've never wanted a company to be bought out more than Valve.

Ever since they launched Steam and DOTA 2. They've rested on their laurels and have consistently dipped in quality. Maybe a new owner would get that company back into shape. Or at the very least a new president. Gabe Newell appears to barely come into work as it is.

because they can't win

hl1 was the first shooter that did story telling good

hl2 did blow people away on a technical level with a likeble protagonist you knew but after ravenholm the game downhill as far as seeing new neat stuff goes

the episodes were well recieved but i know barely anyone that finished them or would have gotten episode 2 without the orange box existing.

in 2016 where everything looks amazing, everything has online integration and all singleplayer games are 70 hour epics what should they even make hl3 that blows people away.

since half like 2 came out all of god or war/gears came out, had enough games for people get sick of them, time to forget them and get hd remakes. putting out just another one of these would be dissapointing and costly to develop.

@2headedninja said:

An online PC platform requires a lot of developers too, and someone has to make the steam updates for the UI, joystick, big picture, etc... besides, I am sure Valve supports the idea of developers having pet project on the side (games like Alien Swarm and The Lab came from them), but most of them only remain in the prototype fase or are rolled back into other features. They have the money to allow developers to spend some time in pet projects... even if only because it keeps them motivated, or they expect some of them to be actually profitable. But games like Half Life 3, Portal 2 or even Counter Strike are not the kind of game to be developed by a few people in their spare time... they are games that need some serious commitment on the side of the company and, to be honest, I don't think Valve is into those for some time now.

There is a reason why most of the new IPs that came out from Valve proper were originally fan made mods or game concept that they bought, and then spend a lot of time polishing: they are out of the game development side, but they are still into game publishing, and they are still into software development.