Half-Life 3 Hype Reaches Fever Pitch as Fans Pinpoint Mysterious Valve Announcement Window

Half-Life fans think they’ve cracked Valve’s secret code. After more than a decade of rumours, speculation, and heartbreak, there’s a new theory swirling, and this one has even the skeptics refreshing their Steam homepages. It all boils down to a tiny but curious gap in Valve’s Steam event schedule this November. According to a Reddit deep dive, that innocent-looking gap could be the signal for the most anticipated announcement in PC gaming: Half-Life 3.

Why All Eyes Are on November 18

The current theory comes from Redditor u/sameseksure, who’s been closely tracking the Steam Store’s top banner rotations. Valve doesn’t mess around with that banner. It’s reserved for major events; think gigantic Steam Sales or blockbuster launches like Half-Life: Alyx and the Valve Index.

18 November
byu/sameseksure inHalfLife

The logic is simple: Valve wants its biggest reveals to dominate the page. They’ll never let a huge sale or another Steam event split the attention. That would mean wasting the kind of reach even the world’s biggest ad agencies dream about. So, when a gap suddenly appeared in the November schedule, between November 18 and December 8, with nothing else planned, fans perked up. Could Valve be clearing the runway for Half-Life 3 at last?

This theory gets even more juice from another piece of Valve’s own messaging. The Autumn Sale, a long-standing November fixture, got pulled forward by two months to September this year. Valve even poked fun at its own schedule shift: “Yes, we are crazy, and yes we are earlier than usual, but also that’s intentional”, emphasis added. Why clear out November unless something big is brewing?

Put it all together, and the Redditor thinks it’s obvious: “So if it’s happening in November, it’ll be 18/19/20 November. Or never.”

But Is This Just Another False Dawn for Half-Life Fans?

Internet detectives have been wrong before, but this time the evidence feels more substantial. Over the past year, trusted sources, leak-hunting dataminers and even a possible voice actor, have all backed up talk of a new Half-Life game in the works at Valve.

All signs point to a project codenamed HLX. Reportedly, HLX got far enough already to be “playable, end-to-end” according to behind-the-scenes reports. There’s not much in terms of specifics, but there’s a mountain of circumstantial evidence. That’s more than fans have had for years.

Valve insider Tyler McVicker even claimed that the long-awaited sequel could drop before the end of 2025. Suddenly, that seemingly random Steam schedule gap feels less like a coincidence and more like the deliberate clearing of a stage for the big reveal.

This isn’t just a handful of conspiracy theorists. Thousands of upvotes have poured in from hopeful Half-Life fans impressed by the detective work. Even the diehards who usually roll their eyes at every rumour are admitting this makes a weird kind of sense.

If you’ve felt burned before, it’s understandable. Half-Life 3 was in development way back in 2013 and 2014, designed to be a wild mix of Left 4 Dead–style action and procedural storytelling. But when Valve’s new Source 2 engine didn’t come together as planned, the project died quietly.

So, is it finally happening? Is Valve ready to change the industry, again? Nobody outside the company knows for sure. But November is here, and this time, hope is hard to ignore.