Dataminer: Valve has begun active testing of Half-Life 3 and may soon announce the game

Dataminer Maxim Poletaev, known under the pseudonym Gabe Follower, shared his findings in a new video regarding Valve’s secret game codenamed hlx – a potential Half-Life 3.

Image source: Valve

According to Gabe Follower, in recent months Valve has begun actively testing hlx – not only company employees, but also their relatives and friends are involved in the tests.

As a result of such playtests, Deadlock radically changed its style twice, and Half-Life: Alyx had to be postponed for a year to completely rework the plot. For hlx, according to the data miner, an important stage has arrived.

«If [hlx] survives the New Year holidays and no serious problems arise during testing of the game with a close circle of people, then development will continue at the right pace and an announcement in 2025 may be quite possible,” says Gabe Follower.

What’s new Gabe Follower found about hlx in the Source 2 code:

• New mentions of mechanics with navigation in conditions of altered gravity (in the air, on the surface or under water);
• New mentions of an advanced hair system – changing color, number of strands, physics simulation, shadows and other parameters;
• First mention of the Mesh Shaders model (geometry processing) – added to improve performance and graphics;
• New parameters and properties of materials – this time in connection with burning objects and surfaces (for example, for flammable materials);
• Integration of CUDA cores (hint of ray tracing support?) and DLSS scaling technology.

The data miner recalled how in the Half-Life 2 mode with comments from the developers, a Valve employee promises to solve the design problem in future games of the series, and noticed references to the franchise in the latest issue of the Team Fortress 2 comic.

Amid all this, Valve continues to actively hire specialists (level designers, animators, concept artists, 3D artists, etc.), including newcomers and industry veterans, as well as those who have previously worked at the studio.