Valve May Finally Be Working On Half-Life 3

Valve may finally be working on a third numbered entry in its Half-Life first-person shooter series, Half-Life 3.

Actor Natasha Chandel’s resume on her website includes mention of a game codenamed Project White Sands, which is in development at Valve. The project reference has since been taken down, though the original resume can be viewed here. It appears that she was hired for the role sometime during September 22, 2023, and February 29, 2024

Content creator Tyler McVicker believes that this unannounced title is in fact Half-Life 3. He noted that Valve often uses random codenames for its projects to obscure details and prevent leaks. Despite Chandel’s resume leak, he refrained from speculating on the significance of “Project White Sands” and emphasized that it is likely just a cover name.

Furthermore, he shared insights from another former Valve employee’s resume, indicating that from 2020 to 2023, extensive development work on level design, lighting, combat encounters, and puzzles for this project had been underway. Through his data mining, Tyler uncovered references to various game elements like the H suit, vehicles, off-world workers, and creatures such as Zen gorillas. According to the YouTuber, Valve started pre-production on a single-player title codenamed HLX after the release of Half-Life: Alyx. Initially, there was debate about whether HLX was a full game or just a format or engine feature. However, his investigations revealed that HLX is a non-VR Half-Life game that is currently in development.

Several years ago, Gabe Newell, president of Valve, had mentioned during an interview that the company has games in development. Regarding Half-Life: Alyx, he had said that it was great,to be back doing single-player games. According to him, this created a lot of momentum inside of the company to continue doing more of it.

The most recent Half-Life game, Half-Life: Alyx, is a available exclusively for PC on Steam, and is only playable in VR.