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[Whompa02]

Valid points but they could still at least acknowledge it. I'm not even kidding, a simple "The team had varying viewpoints on how to continue the franchise, but we're continuing to brainstorm ideas." or "The game is currently on hiatus until we can establish a cohesive vision forward... etc" would fully suffice for me.

Complete silence is like a loved one that's gone missing, and your mind constantly races every day, "are they okay? are they alive? are they dead? where are they?!" and you never find out lol. It's maddening.

They're a public studio, at least have some dialogue with your fanbase.

exactly my view on it.

 

[Fletcher]

Yeah, but if they think that using those resources in other projects would make more profits making HL3 would be a bad decision.

Kind of. It boils down to them saying do we want to make a lot of money? Or do we want to make a lot of money?

They have enough time/resources to produce this game and keep their other plates spinning if they wanted.

I think that's why it's so frustrating for a lot of people. They are in a very unique position to actually do this thing, and have been for a while.

 

[GlamFM]

It's not just valve that doesn't want make sp FPS anymore, only Wolfenstein and new Doom (eh) are left. For what was once the top genre it's so depressing. I really want to play some these days but there is really not much to choose from that actually has decent production values too.

Have you played the Metro games?

They have both been remastered and they are dirt cheap everywhere right now.

Fantastic games.

 

[ashecitism]

I see, but what other games are they working on exactly?

Also, that assumes they can only work on one game at a time.

Dota, TF2, CSGO, Source 2 and we know L4D3, plus Steam, Steam hardware, VR. The problem is they're a small company doing a lot of things. Their beloved structure doesn't scale, so they don't expand. For a cutting edge cinematic game you need lots of resources. For example 300 people are working on UC4, that's almost as big as Valve! And as said they're doing lots of things. It also comes with a lot of work, crunch time etc. And in the end a lof of people will finish them in a weekend and not touch it again. With services they don't need to start from scratch, can work iteratively and people will play those games for a long time and spend money. Sad, but this is how it is.

 

[Obliterator]

The reason we dont have Half-Life 3, or any other significant single player game from Valve since Portal 2, is the way Valve is structured. There is no one there to make sure any of this software gets made in a timely manner and shipped. As nice as the whole "work on what you want" thing Valve has going on sounds, it is terrible for an actual pipe line of game development.

I'm not sure we will ever see a big AAA game ship from Valve again, as Im not sure the structure to pull that off exists in the company anymore

 

[Easy_D]

This sounds like an good alternative, actually.

There is a small chance that a release of HL 3 in 201X meets the expectation.
I'd guess most of the hype surrounding HL 3 nowadays is based on story conclusion. Closure. Not an actual groundbreaking game.

I personally didn't love HL 2 gameplay and prefer HL 1 + OPFORCES.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutelly loved the immersion and scenaries, and actually liked the idea of a long trip. But the shooting felt kinda weak to me. Ravenholm and gravity gun will always be a treasured memory tho.

Not saying I would prefer HL to end on a webcomic. I'd prefer an OK shooter just to feel the immersion again. But it's a realistic alternative.

Oh well.
/rant.

I think I fucking solved it. We need to go on an internet crusade to set everyone's expectations so low Valve will think there's no chance of letting anyone down. Only then will we get Half Life 3.

 

[Pooya]

Have you played the Metro games?

They have both been remastered and they are dirt cheap everywhere right now.

Fantastic games.

I've played a good chunk of Last Light, it was ok but I stopped and haven't finished it yet. It was maybe too grim all the time.

 

[dmr87]

They're a public studio, at least have some dialogue with your fanbase.

*Looks at Steam customer service*

 

[UnrealEck]

So a prominent long-time employee of Valve enters retirement and people are talking about how Half-Life 3 isn't happening. What's with all the pessimism and doom and gloom?

I don't know why people hang on to HL3 so much. I say this as a HUGE long-time fan of the series.

 

[balladofwindfishes]

2. How would releasing HL3 not be a good business decision? You know, one of their most successful franchises ever.

Well, which team do you take employees from to make HL3? Is it really good business?

- TF2 team, used to train new employees, still has a good amount of players, and makes a good amount of money. Some of the dudes on this team have started on TF and made nothing but Team Fortress for a decade or more. Dota 2 occasionally pulls people from this team for larger updates as needed. Team size is about a dozen people, a lot of which are new employees, the rest have been working on TF2 for, basically, ever.

- Dota 2 team, insanely popular game, insanely profitable game. The ROI per employee for Dota 2 must be absurd. Once a year requires an "all hands on deck" tournament, where the majority of the staff from the other games chip in to help with the event. One employee (Ice Frog) from this 20 something sized team will also not leave the team.

- CS:GO team, insanely popular game, insanely profitable. Basically the same exact situation as Dota, just in a First Person Shooter variety. I think the team is roughly the same size as Dota 2.

- Everything else. Minor security or quality of life fixes for older game servers like Team Fortress Classic, CS:Source and Left4Dead 2. These servers still get patches once a year or so.

- Steam, ever growing in size, requires large amounts of server maintenance. Along with security, support, and new features. This is likely where the majority of employees work, and is probably the hardest team to pull people from.

- Hardware, controllers, vr, etc. A lot of hardware engineers that might not have a software background needed for HL3.

- Writers, working on comics, but could easily just do whatever. Probably the most flexible employees.

- Finance, lawyers, advertisers, economists, Gabe, and everyone else basically useless for game development

Let's say mass hiring is off the table due to their culture.

From where do you pull resources to work on HL3, in a way that guarantees the ROI for HL3 will exceed that of just keeping the people on the team they were on?

They have enough time/resources to produce this game and keep their other plates spinning if they wanted.

I don't think they do. When Dota 2 started serious development back in late 2011, early 2012, TF2's updates suffered as people from the TF2 team were brought into the Dota 2 team.

Even these days, CS:GO, TF2 and Dota 2 feel stretched at times. League of Legends, Dota 2's largest competitor, gets several heroes a year. Dota 2 went from one a week, to one a month, to one every few months, and now Dota 2 gets 2-3 heroes a year.

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

Well, which team do you take employees from to make HL3? Is it really good business?

- TF2 team, used to train new employees, still has a good amount of players, and makes a good amount of money. Some of the dudes on this team have started on TF and made nothing but Team Fortress for a decade or more. Dota 2 occasionally pulls people from this team for larger updates as needed. Team size is about a dozen people, a lot of which are new employees, the rest have been working on TF2 for, basically, ever.

- Dota 2 team, insanely popular game, insanely profitable game. The ROI per employee for Dota 2 must be absurd. Once a year requires an "all hands on deck" tournament, where the majority of the staff from the other games chip in to help with the event. One employee (Ice Frog) from this 20 something sized team will also not leave the team.

- CS:GO team, insanely popular game, insanely profitable. Basically the same exact situation as Dota, just in a First Person Shooter variety. I think the team is roughly the same size as Dota 2.

- Everything else. Minor security or quality of life fixes for older game servers like Team Fortress Classic, CS:Source and Left4Dead 2. These servers still get patches once a year or so.

- Steam, ever growing in size, requires large amounts of server maintenance. Along with security, support, and new features. This is likely where the majority of employees work, and is probably the hardest team to pull people from.

- Hardware, controllers, vr, etc. A lot of hardware engineers that might not have a software background needed for HL3.

- Writers, working on comics, but could easily just do whatever. Probably the most flexible employees.

- Finance, lawyers, advertisers, economists, Gabe, and everyone else basically useless for game development

Let's say mass hiring is off the table due to their culture.

From where do you pull resources to work on HL3, in a way that guarantees the ROI for HL3 will exceed that of just keeping the people on the team they were on?

I wonder did steams success cause their organizational heiarchy? I'm guessing it did because I can't see how in the hell half life 1 or 2 got made where you can still be employed at a place even if you don't want to work on something.

 

[Spirited]

Well, which team do you take employees from to make HL3? Is it really good business?
.

You gotta remember the team working on L4D3 too.
It's not officially confirmed but we know enough to know it's being worked on in source 2.
It has probably pulled devs from dota 2 after its official release and might be the reason for so few heroes per year.

 

[cartographer]

Being transparent to your fans/community would reconfirm that Valve is still one of the best game maker, designers whatever you want to call them now imo.

If you're looking for transparency or communication then you are barking up the wrong tree. Not even the right forest.

 

[ashecitism]

I wonder did steams success cause their organizational heiarchy? I'm guessing it did because I can't see how in the hell half life 1 or 2 got made where you can still be employed at a place even if you don't want to work on something.

They always had this structure, but back then they weren't this big and didn't have this many projects.

 

[mrpeabody]

Try to look at some of these complaints from Valve's point of view.

Steam client is a bloated disaster

It needs a redesign, but you can't call it a "disaster" when it has 70% of the market.

Greenlight's a punchline of a service

Greenlight succeeds at what it was designed to do, which is provide crowdsourced curation so Valve doesn't have to pay people to do it.

SteamOS/Steam Machines/Steam Controllers are all basically DOA

SteamOS and Steam Machines are going nowhere in the market. They did give Valve useful experience in designing and building hardware, and the tech flows back to things like in-home streaming.

The verdict's still out on the controller, but now that console controllers work on PCs, it's hard to get people to try something different.

Steam sales are a shadow of their former selves

How is this a problem for Valve? Assuming you mean the discounts, not Steam revenue in general.

the winter ARG was a waste of everyone's time

I'll take your word for this one.

TF2 is made more by the community than by Valve at this point

Which is one of Valve's goals, so this is a success.

the 75% cut they take selling user-created content for their games is an absolute ripoff

Any business would kill for that margin. Even Apple only takes 30%. If it hasn't resulted in creators going elsewhere, then it's not a problem.

every new service or feature they roll out is half-baked at best

Ok I guess, they try a lot of things, some fail and others take a while to get going.

they haven't made a single player game in four years with no signs of that changing any time soon

Because it's never going to happen and the sooner people accept it the happier they'll be.

and they keep making mistake after mistake without ever learning because all their failures are subsidized by the endless cash flow that is the Steam store.

The Steam store subsidizes Valve's research projects and hardware ventures, but something has to, that's how research works.

From the outside, Dota, CS, and TF2 look like moneymakers as well. Do you have some evidence that Valve runs them at a loss?

I also don't give a fuck about Dota or CS:GO, which I fully realize is Just My Opinion, Man, but the fact that all Valve makes now seems to be microtransaction-funded multiplayer stuff makes them all the less appealing to me, especially after watching how their business model shift kinda fucked one of my favorite games of all time (TF2)

Fair enough. They took TF2 in a direction you didn't like and their other games aren't your cup of tea.

I'd almost call them the Nexon of the west but at least Nexon is prolific.

Similar in some ways, different in others. Nexon churns out MMOs and also publishes; Valve runs a handful of round-based multiplayer games and does substantial R&D.

 

[Rhys Wilde]

Really tragic that we didn't get more video game work from Marc. I love the guy and what he did with the Half-Life universe, when I heard the announcement I was excited that he was liberated from Valve and might be doing other games, but it sounds like he's moving on from the medium entirely. While that is perfectly fine, I feel like the industry is really missing out.

When I was significantly younger and was experiencing Half-Life back before the sequel came out, I emailed Marc Laidlaw with some questions relating to the game and he personally emailed me back. That left such an amazing impression on the company with me that I was a fan for many, many years.

 

[Professor Renegade]

RIP Gordon Freeman.

 

[inky]

I don't know why people hang on to HL3 so much. I say this as a HUGE long-time fan of the series.

Flagship title
Beloved series
Cliffhanger ending
Promise of a 3rd chapter

I'm not the biggest fan (played them all once or twice, loved them) and I understand. People are a bit deluded and have dumb expectations about it, but it's not hard to understand at all why people still want a game.

 

[ashecitism]

oh yeah, btw for the people hoping he finished the HL3 script or that Valve will finish it via a comic or whatever, he talked about it last summer:

 

[Uthred]

It needs a redesign, but you can't call it a "disaster" when it has 70% of the market.

You need to read what you're responding to more closely, the *client* is a piece of shit, the fact that the *service* has the lions share of the market has nothing to do with that. In fact the latter is likely an active dis-incentive to address the former.

 

[Arkam]

Yup, those (and TF2) are all the proof you need that Valve is done with "games". They are much better off with using games as conduits for micro-transactions and hats.

And Gloves! Don't forget the gloves they added to CSGO!

 

[UnrealEck]

Flagship title
Beloved series
Cliffhanger ending
Promise of a 3rd chapter

I'm not the biggest fan (played them all once or twice, loved them) and I understand. People are a bit deluded and have dumb expectations about it, but it's not hard to understand at all why people still want a game.

I understand why they want it.
I was saying the extent of it is a bit much. So much it's become one of the most well-known gaming memes.

 

[ashecitism]

I feel like if nothing new comes out or is announced with Vive's launch then HL3 and probably some other franchises are just dead.

Vive is a perfect platform them to show off Source 2 and come up with some creative new ideas and if all we get are ports and things of that nature, then that doesn't bode particularly well.

Well

we know they're working on Dota VR spectating, so that's one thing. Also they said they been experimenting (including their existing IPs) in VR and that they're still figuring out how this works and how to attach a narrative to it. Ken Birdwell specifically said HL VR would fatigue people. As in if they just copied that gameplay into VR.

“We’re still in that mode of trying to figure out what we do with this,” the developer stated on subject of the HTC Vive. “We have endless experiments, and they’re neat things, but we still have to figure out how we put this into a narrative. How do we pull the player through this immersion? If players actually did all of the actions from Half-Life in VR, they’d be fatigued in five minutes. It doesn’t mean we can’t use that fiction; we just have to figure out a new way to approach it.

So, I'm setting my expectations low.

 

[Mivey]

At this point it is probably more likely that Valve outsources HL3 to someone else. It could still make them hundreds of millions of the name alone.

 

[Nzyme32]

The reason we dont have Half-Life 3, or any other significant single player game from Valve since Portal 2, is the way Valve is structured. There is no one there to make sure any of this software gets made in a timely manner and shipped. As nice as the whole "work on what you want" thing Valve has going on sounds, it is terrible for an actual pipe line of game development.

I'm not sure we will ever see a big AAA game ship from Valve again, as Im not sure the structure to pull that off exists in the company anymore

The actual reason is simply that they don't want to do what they have done in the past with every game they make. They are also interested in games that are a service.

Does that mean the end of Valve single player only games - yes probably.

Does that mean the end of Valve narrative games - no, as suggested in Gabe's interview with Geoff Keighley

From Geoff Keighley's interview with Gabe Newell regarding Source 2:

It's to make it possible for thousands of people or billions of people to be all generating this shared entertaining universe. You can look at the properties that we have and probably say oh I would see how having a whole bunch of people extending and annotating and storytelling in this particular universe would make sense. But now that we got Source 2 out now you'll start to see us start to lay out some of the pieces so that we have this really large shared collaborative entertainment space that allows people to be as productive as they want to be in terms of building entertainment value for other people. That's something that we started four years ago. We had these ideas about how you build these large endless entertainment experiences and one of the dependencies was getting a bunch of economy stuff working there's a bunch of tools work to do, those are baked now. Now we are going start capitalizing with with how that actually translates into entertainment experiences for people.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a HL3 game that has a main Valve made story that gets added to now and then, along side a ton of community made off shoots that are more like an RPG with your own character, that are occasional brought into the main story. Sounds wacky enough for Valve to do, and it can involve hats and micro-transactions / that multiplayer aspect they love. It would also fit with the 2 leaked files split between hl3 and rpg.txt

Whatever the case HL3 is many years away. Anything like the above is more likely but probably something they would experiment with using something else rather than HL

 

[Spirited]

They should outsource half life 3 to arkane, I'm pretty sure they would stay true to the source material.

EDIT: If they would ever think about outsourcing it.

 

[kimifan141]

The dream of seeing HL3 just burnt to the ground ....

i will just hide my sadness playing complete black mesa when its out

 

[injurai]

valve will make hl3 if they have some tech or business model ready that will bring it to the next level. there's no point in making hl3 just for the sake of it, except making quick money.
this is a good thing - it means that if we get a hl3 it will probably be the best thing ever, introducing lots of new tech and gameplay ideas, pushing the industry forward again. if not, well then it wouldn't have been anything but your regular content-focused sequel that ends up hurting the brand and wasting the brains of the people working on it anyway. I expect a hl3 when/if valve makes a breakthrough in storytelling-tech. personally, I think authored storytelling is a dead end in game-dev but that's another discussion.

Yeah, I can see that. Though I think they have given up in trying to revolutionize environment driven storytelling. Pretty much everything that they were working towards they have since dropped. I've heard rumblings that HL3 won't be VR driven if it comes out, but that seems to be the next big revolution. On the other hand, I know they wanted to revolutionize performance capturing, allowing them to due Uncharted level story moments but whilst giving the player complete in-game control, and having the characters dynamical react to the player. But musings on that have cropped up for a few years.

 

[Zia]

Are Valve still actively developing SteamOS? Anyone with a Steam Machine receiving regular updates?

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Incredibly unfortunate. I stopped believing Half-Life 3 was a thing years ago but this still sucks.

 

[Nzyme32]

Are Valve still actively developing SteamOS? Anyone with a Steam Machine receiving regular updates?

I don't think SteamOS is a massive priority to them. They still update it, but quite slowly. The bigger deal for them is Vulkan, which should be out very soon. At that point they'll probably be a bit more active with it. SteamOS is clearly a very long term thing for them, rather than something they need to be too active about

 

[injurai]

Are Valve still actively developing SteamOS? Anyone with a Steam Machine receiving regular updates?

They are, the distro is mostly downstream of debian, it some sense it has many people contributing to it ultimately. The only real thing that makes SteamOS unique is that it comes prepackaged with the linux software that Valve is maintaining, and is where things are tested against. Which is why Steam is much better support in Debian/Ubuntu space. Oh and they theme the windows manager with a nice veneer.

 

[Randdalf]

Why do people think this means no more Half-Life? Valve have plenty of talented writers. People also claiming HL3 is never coming out are also being far too pessimistic, IMO.

 

[GlamFM]

At this point it is probably more likely that Valve outsources HL3 to someone else. It could still make them hundreds of millions of the name alone.

4A Games please.

 

[Otnopolit]

Why can't we just give up the HL3 dream? It's kinda telling this thread turned into HL3 speculation when the thread was made to talk about Laidlaw leaving.

HL3 could never live up to it's hype now anyway, and it's not Valve's fault. That blame, I think, ultimately falls on the fans.

 

[Lonely1]

It's not just valve that doesn't want make sp FPS anymore, only Wolfenstein and new Doom (eh) are left. For what was once the top genre it's so depressing. I really want to play some these days but there is really not much to choose from that actually has decent production values too.

Yep. The push for ESports have been more adverse imo than the whole Social gaming/expanded audience and games as service ever been, since the later seems to have the support of the gaming community.

 

[Randdalf]

Why can't we just give up the HL3 dream? It's kinda telling this thread turned into HL3 speculation when the thread was made to talk about Laidlaw leaving.

HL3 could never live up to it's hype now anyway, and it's not Valve's fault. That blame, I think, ultimately falls on the fans.

Because leaks have revealed that they are or have been actively working on it.

 

[Vinland]

If true this is definitely a loss for the gaming community. That is if retired = retired in the traditionAl sense.

Hopefully he left lots of notes on the direction HL was going. Hl3 will one day surface... hopefully

Spoiler

...please?

 

[chrominance]

Valid points but they could still at least acknowledge it. I'm not even kidding, a simple "The team had varying viewpoints on how to continue the franchise, but we're continuing to brainstorm ideas." or "The game is currently on hiatus until we can establish a cohesive vision forward... etc" would fully suffice for me.

Complete silence is like a loved one that's gone missing, and your mind constantly races every day, "are they okay? are they alive? are they dead? where are they?!" and you never find out lol. It's maddening.

They're a public studio, at least have some dialogue with your fanbase.

On the one hand: sure, yes, it would be great if developers in general kept us up to date on what they were working on. I still remember the days of .plan updates from id and Bungie and various other devs, where you could read up on the latest random thing John Carmack was coming up with or Corrinne Yu's next engine experiment (or just John Steed being John Steed). Now that everything is so much more corporate, it feels like we rarely if ever get to peek behind the curtain at this sort of thing.

On the other hand: Half-Life 3 hasn't even been officially announced, as far as I'm aware. I don't know many companies that would tell you about unannounced projects, full stop. Yes, everyone expected the game to exist, and yes, it's baffling that Valve hasn't put a sequel out despite the common reasons for sequels being canned don't seem to exist here. But honestly, I think you won't hear much about this until it's either announced or dead, and I feel like both are a long way away. Even when Gabe addressed the Half-Life 3 project in a podcast, he took great pains not to call it Half-Life 3--that's why "Ricochet 2" is an ongoing joke now.

 

[funkystudent]

I dont know why anyone would expect Valve to actually make a new Half Life now.

Losing Laidlaw is the final nail in the Half Life coffin. He is "the half life guy". Thats it. Its finished.

 

[Nzyme32]

If true this is definitely a loss for the gaming community. That is if retired = retired in the traditionAl sense.

Hopefully he left lots of notes on the direction HL was going. Hl3 will one day surface... hopefully

Spoiler

...please?

Well part of his reasoning is that he is old, and personal reasons, as well as wanting to return to self directed writing than "collaborative chaos of game development". Seems pretty reasonable after almost 2 decades at one place

 

[Theanine3D]

I do hope they properly conclude the story someday but honestly I don't expect it to happen through an actual videogame anymore. JJ Abrams is supposedly in talks to work on a Half Life movie. Wouldn't surprise me if that ends up being the route they take.

 

[rashbeep]

HL3 could never live up to it's hype now anyway, and it's not Valve's fault. That blame, I think, ultimately falls on the fans.

I think focusing resources elsewhere for almost a decade makes it kinda their fault too.

 

[collige]

Fair enough. They took TF2 in a direction you didn't like and their other games aren't your cup of tea.

Nah, I'm quite positive on Valve as a whole, but they fucked up TF2 big time. The problem is that they did a lot of experimenting on the game to come up with the current model they use fore CS:GO and Dota 2, but but then never went back to fix things after they figured out what they're doing and practically left the game for dead (no pun intended). I think the complaints about TF2 are far more valid than those about HL3.

 

[mobilesworking]

At this point it is probably more likely that Valve outsources HL3 to someone else. It could still make them hundreds of millions of the name alone.

I would be totally fine with this. Hell, Machine Games would do a fantastic job were they not owned by ZeniMax.

 

[FartOfWar]

They should outsource half life 3 to arkane, I'm pretty sure they would stay true to the source material.

EDIT: If they would ever think about outsourcing it.

I'd love to work on it.

 

[gatti-man]

Lol good luck making people who clocked 2000+ hours on dota/tf2/csgo boycott them just to hope seeing hl3 made
Get real

I've stopped giving them my money. It's not really that people should stop playing, just stop buying. I understand the argument that these games are more profitable and probably easier to make so that's where Valve is going but Half Life made steam. If it wasn't for Valve forcing steam with half life 2 it never would have taken off at all.

To me valve abandoning half life like they did makes me not want to support them as a company. It was a very natural decision and I have probably 50 games on steam. I haven't spent a penny on their platform in years.

 

[Messofanego]

https://vine.co/v/hKn79z7du2V

lmao

They should outsource half life 3 to arkane, I'm pretty sure they would stay true to the source material.

EDIT: If they would ever think about outsourcing it.

Yes. Yes. Yes! Or Machinegames.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

Dota 2 was a side project. So was CS:GO.

Isn't it embarrassing for other publishers that Valve's side projects are eating their lunch

 

[diffusionx]

Dota 2 was a side project. So was CS:GO.

I see no evidence that DOTA 2 was a side project. The whole company seems to revolve around it. The work that has been done on CS GO lately mirrors DOTA 2 in a lot of ways. It's like DOTA 2 changed the whole company, for better or worse.