Why Half-Life 3 speculation is reaching a fever pitch again

The more than two decades since Half-Life 2s release have been filled with plenty of rumors and hints about Half-Life 3, ranging from the official-ish to the thin to the downright misleading. As we head into 2025, though, we're approaching something close to a critical mass of rumors and leaks suggesting that Half-Life 3 is really in the works this time, and could be officially announced in the coming months.

Kyle Orland at Ars Technica

We should all be skeptical of anything related to Half-Life 3, but there's no denying something's buzzing. The one reason why I personally think a Half-Life 3 might be happening is the imminent launch of SteamOS for generic PCs, possibly accompanied by prebuilt SteamOS PCs and consoles and third-party Steam Decks. It makes perfect sense for Valve to have such a launch accompanied by the release of Half-Life 3, similar to how Half-Life 2 was accompanied by the launch of Steam.

We'll have to wait and see. It will be hard to fulfill all the crazy expectations, though.