Fourteen years after the release of "Half-Life 2 Episode 2," fans had one question on their lips: when will "Half-Life 3" be released? Yes, Half-Life came out in 2020: indeed, a virtual reality-only experience called "Half-Life: Alyx" set before "Half-Life 2" was released in 2020, but the percentage of gamers with hardware capable of running this title is small! Given that only a small percentage of gamers have the hardware to run the title, it didn't quite scratch everyone's itch. [According to Tyler McVicker of the Valve News Network, there is good news and bad news: Half-Life 3 is not currently in development, but the company is working on another spin-off.

Let's start with the bad news: In a video titled "What is next for Gordon Freeman - The State of Half-Life," McVicker pulls no punches about the limited prospects of Half-Life 3 coming soon. He adds, "

"No, I don't think so.

"No, at this point there is no major development team working on anything other than some software specifically tailored for the hardware," he explained.

"Right now, Valve is trying to get Steam Deck out, and as many have observed, Steam Deck has been much more successful than originally anticipated, so Valve is putting a lot into it.

"There's no traditional mouse-and-keyboard first-person shooter stuff going on at Valve," he concluded.

Nevertheless, a small footnote has been added at the bottom of the screen to temper this a bit: "There is a very minor group working on HL3 at the time of recording." So there is a bit of hope for the long term.

So what is this "Half-Life" spin-off? Well, certainly not: it's Citadel, which McVicker says is a "nostalgia-fest" designed to showcase the capabilities of Steam Deck: a Half-Life-based FPS/RTS hybrid based on cooperative play.

What would it look like? It's like Left 4 Dead meets Alien Swarm meets RTS meets Half-Life. Many of the team are moving to support the final push of Steam Deck, which is apparently what we should see over the next 18 months to two years.

Supposedly, there was originally supposed to be an optional VR component, but that seems to have been dropped as Valve seems to be losing interest in VR in general. On that note, McVickers is also pessimistic about the future of HLX: HLX is a project to make VR titles like "Half-Life: Alyx" for weak standalone hardware. He believes that the project is just getting started and will suffer from "winter break syndrome" after the long break.

Much of this is due to Valve's unusual structure, where employees have some freedom to choose what they work on, as discussed in a recent Reply All podcast that examined Team Fortress 2's so-called "bot crisis." It is all described in black and white in the company's freely available employee handbook.

This makes it difficult to know exactly what Valve will do next, which is good news for those still waiting for Half-Life 3. However, at least for now, the next big release is likely to be Half-Life, but it won't be the game you might expect.