Everybody panic: A Valve developer said "HLX" in public

In the panel video, fellow panelist and Valve sound designer David Feise can be seen mumbling a sarcastic “nice work” to Morasky after the HLX codename slips out of his mouth. Later, while the audience is clapping at the end of the Q&A session, Feise leans in to Morasky and appears to say, “Good job—you only said HLX once!”

When are they gonna get to the HLX factory?

An official utterance of the “HLX” shibboleth is of course a good sign for those looking for any sign of the franchise continuing beyond 2020’s Half-Life Alyx. But the question of when Valve will make its next Half-Life project official still looms large.

Remember, it was just under a year ago that journalist Mike Straw was adamant that Half-Life 3 would be a Steam Machine launch title. Now that the Steam Machine launch has come and gone without even a nod toward an announcement, we can understand why Valve watchers would be more gun-shy than usual over any new rumors.

Longtime Valve watcher Tyler McVicker—who said Half-Life 3 was in the “final stages of development” and suggested a 2026 announcement was “likely” last year—admitted in a recent video that he now doesn’t believe that HLX is being announced this calendar year. But he also pointed to recently increased coding activity within Valve (as measured by externally viewable internal “commit” numbers) that something big might be coming sooner than later.

One thing is for sure: Whenever Half-Life 3 finally is announced and released, it will have to be truly incredible to make up for the loss of the long-running metagame of speculating about its mere existence.