In an AMA (ask me anything) on reddit – on the subreddit The_Gaben – Gabe Newell was asked the following question by reddit user japasthebass:
“Any chance of a new IP that takes place in the half-life/portal universe? I feel like there’s a lot of story left to be explored there. Thanks!”
Gaben’s answer was simple, “Yep.” While the response resulted in a flurry of upvotes, gold distribution and hype trains being fueled, Newell continued to hush any talk of anything involving the dreaded number three. When asked what the status of Half Life 3/Half Life 2 Episode 3 was, he simply stated that “The Number three must not be said.”
The mere fact that the president of Valve even wrote the number three satirically – even in lettered form – was enough to please the redditors, as a lot of other questions were directed to other Valve related subjects and products. A large talking point for Newell revolved around improving Steam’s customer support.
“We are continuing to work on improving support. Since the last AMA, we’ve introduced refunds on Steam, we’ve grown our Support staff by roughly 5x, and we’ve shipped a new help site and ticketing system that makes it easier to get help. We’ve also greatly reduced response times on most types of support tickets and we think we’ve improved the quality of responses. We definitely don’t think we’re done though. We still need to further improve response times and we are continually working to improve the quality of our responses. We’re also working on adding more support staff in regions around the world to offer better native language support and improve response times in various regions.”
For more information on the Gabe Newell AMA, check out the link above and stay tuned to the sight for all your Valve, Steam and gaming news!