On Monday, June 13, a Steam forum user named Ryuuk posted a thread titled “Half-Life 3 is officially confirmed” on the Halfe-Life 2 official boards. In the thread, he claimed to be a freelance artist, whose recent studio work lent him the opportunity to see the resume of a former Valve programmer.
” Mike Dussault, a long time programmer at Valve, recently left the company. I didn’t know him until last week,” said Ryuuk in the post.
“Let me introduce myself. I’m a freelance artist. I do contract work for a studio in Seattle, through the internet. They have a client access system on their site. I came across Dussault’s resume, while browsing the files section. Now, I know you’re all curious about Valve’s in-house development, but I’m only going to talk about the Half-Life series.
“According to his resume, Episode Three was put on hold when Valve decided to move away from the episodic model in late 2007, right after Episode Two’s release. He was a technical adviser on a cancelled Half-Life title, made outside of the company. Dussault’s work on Half-Life 3′s world programming, and the scripting system (between 2008 and 2010) is also mentioned in the resume.”
What makes this thread more than it seems, is that it was deleted shortly after post time, and Ryuuk was permanently banned from posting again on the Steam forums.
Half-Life 2: Episode 2 released in 2007. In March, this year, Valve PR boss Doug Lombardi said they “are not done with Gordan Freeman’s adventures,” quite yet, adding that they “have nothing other than that to tell you today,” but to “hang in there with us.”
Thanks, Lambda Generation.
Update 6/16/11 9:21am: Valve’s Doug Lombardi issued a statement to Game Informer. “This is fiction (aside from the fact that Mike D is a real person).” There goes that, then.