It seems like the game development team atValvehas a new game in the works. The company is perhaps best known in recent years for Steam which launched in 2002 and has become the largest digital game distribution platform in the world. Initially it only offered games developed by Valve but before long the company began publishing third-party software on the platform.Valve has continued to develop and publish its own gameson the platform, most of which have enjoyed long-lasting success and critical acclaim.Some of Valve’s most coveted franchises includeCounter-Strike,Dota,Half-Life, andPortal.It is something of a running joke among fans that Valve has some kind of aversion to the number three since as of writing the company has not produced a third mainline game for any of its beloved franchises. That said,Valve seems to have left some references aboutLeft 4 Dead 3in the game files of the recently launchedCounter-Strike 2limited play test.RELATED:Steam Deck Getting Popular GameCube and Wii EmulatorThe revelation thatValvehas been working on an unannounced project comes thanks to the eagle-eyed Faizan Shaikh, who noticed that two of Valve’s employees (one of whom has left the company) mentioned an unannounced project on their LinkedIn profiles with “ambitious, never-before seen gameplay” that contains some kind of puzzles. Fans of Valve’s games will immediately think about thePortalfranchise for its puzzle-oriented gameplay, but with Valve’s legendary aversion to third entries it could easily be something brand new and unprecedented by fans.
It would be advisable for Valve fans to temper their expectations since the company has been known to abandon projects rather than release products that would potentially disappoint players. TheHalf-Lifeseries alone has had a number of canceled projects, includingHalf Life 3which was supposedly abandoned due to the Source 2 engine having stability issues at the time.Left 4 Dead 3was also abandoned due to stability issues with Source 2, so it could be that the aforementioned references to the game inValve’sCounter-Strike 2limited testdatamine is residual information from the canceled project.
Then again, with the release ofHalf-Life: Alyxand the advent ofCounter-Strike 2,it seems likeValve is finally confident with the Source 2 engine. However, unlike most video game developers, the company is not reliant on releasing video games to generate revenue thanks to the Steam platform’s overwhelming popularity. Regardless, the prospect of Valve being more confident in its engine is exciting; fans might finally get new entries in some of the most lovedValvefranchises.
