HL3? Fans are Convinced That Valve Has Secret 'Upcoming Release' Due to Possible Steam Bug

Some eagle-eyed Valve fans have spotted something that might point to a possible ‘secret’ or unannounced Valve game. However, before you get your hopes up that it might be something related to a third sequel of a certain iconic FPS, we’re here to remind you that it’s not a conclusive find and that the ‘hint’ could just be a bug in Steam.

Reddit user u/Relevant_Basis5444 was among the first to notice the possible hint or leak. The Steam user was looking through Valve’s catalog of games— specifically the ‘Upcoming Releases’ section and noticed that two games are listed instead of just one. It was odd since Valve only has one announced upcoming game, which is Deadlock. Now, there are apparently two games in the ‘upcoming’ category, one of which appears to be hidden.

I could be onto nothing here but is this new?
byu/Relevant_Basis5444 invalve

As you can imagine, imaginations and expectations ran wild, with some fans aching for Half-Life 3, presuming that Valve could be working on a big surprise. However, that’s also highly unlikely as we argued here.

There has been quite a bit of commotion recently regarding another Half-Life entry ever since Valve released a special developer commentary track for Half-Life 2 games to celebrate the game’s 20th anniversary.

It’s Still There, For Now

At the time of writing though, the ‘Upcoming Releases’ section for Valve still lists two games with only Deadlock appearing and the other one supposedly being hidden. That or Valve simply doesn’t have time to fix the UI bug.

Some speculate that the other upcoming game is just a Counter-Strike 2 visual error since it replaced CS:GO. Others speculate about Valve’s numerous upcoming softwares, which show up as blank listings.

Thanks to some skeptics in the aforementioned Reddit thread though, some users checked what the ‘Upcoming Releases’ page looked like for Valve’s section on Steam, and back on December 1, 2024, the page only listed “1” Upcoming Release (Deadlock). So the change to a listing of “2” upcoming releases is recent and there’s a chance it might be deliberate as well. Don’t get your hopes up too much, of course.