Valve is gearing up for a big announcement later today, according to several insiders, and a new Half-Life is at the top of fan wishlists.
The mysterious nature of Valve means the company is constantly shrouded in rumours and speculation – especially as it makes so few new games nowadays – but those whispers have notably accelerated over the past year.
Several insiders have claimed Valve is working on a new VR headset, previously codenamed Deckard but now believed to be called Steam Frame. It’s tipped to launch this year but there have also been rumours of a new Steam controller and, despite being a pipedream for decades, growing credence to the idea that Half-Life 3 actually exists.
Valve hasn’t confirmed any of these rumours, but insiders claim the company is preparing for some sort of announcement this week – more specifically, later today.
What is Valve’s Steam Frame?
As outlined in a comprehensive Reddit post encompassing all the Steam Frame rumours, claims around an announcement today began with leaker Brad Lynch, aka SadlyItsBradley. In a post on Discord, Lynch claimed he was ‘told by a few sources’ to ‘keep an eye out on this week’, naming Wednesday, November 12 specifically.
Lynch was referring to the reveal of the Steam Frame, but last week, he shared an AI mock-up of the rumoured new Steam Controller ‘trained on a real image of the new controller’ in a post on X. ‘I was not going to post the original one just in case it reveals any sensitive info from the source,’ he clarified in the caption.
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Since then, several other insiders have chimed in about a potential Valve announcement later today. Leaker Kurakasis has alluded to it on X, while YouTuber Moore’s Law Is Dead has explicitly said: ‘If you’re a fan of @valvesoftware, check the news in around 16 hours…’
If his estimations are correct, and based on the time of the tweet, that would mean a Valve reveal would take place around 6pm or 7pm in the UK.
It’s unclear if Moore’s Law Is Dead has any knowledge of what the announcement is, but a reply on X suggests otherwise. When a commenter proposed it will either be ‘something unspectacular or something incredible’, the YouTuber replied: ‘Yes, one or the other for sure lol’.
While all signs point to it being related to the Steam Frame, many fans are hoping for a Half-Life connection. Valve’s last VR headset, the Valve Index, launched in June 2019 and was followed by the release of Half-Life: Alyx in March 2020.
Does Half-Life 3 actually exist?
The prospect of another VR headset has fans hoping for a new Half-Life game to coincide, or land shortly after, its launch. Valve has explicitly said that it sees Half-Life: Alyx as the ‘return to this world, not the end of it’, and rumours suggest it has been working on another Half-Life VR game, alongside the long-awaited Half-Life 3.
It’s best to take anything Half-Life 3 related with a pinch of salt (it has been rumoured for decades, after all), but there have been a lot of rumoured new projects at Valve HQ lately.
Talk of a Steam OS console, codenamed Fremont, has been gathering traction, while rumbles of Team Fortress 3 and Left 4 Dead 3 have also been around for some time.
Valve’s mysterious third person shooter, Deadlock, hasn’t been officially announced either, even though invite-only player tests took place last year. All of these could be on the near horizon, but the Steam Frame looks like it’ll be the first priority.
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