Well, some months later, it appears we finally have been given just that. Read on!

Earlier this summer, we found traces of code within the Source Filmmaker that clearly indicated Valve is actively working on “Source 2“, a next-gen game engine built on Source’s foundation. While the news made quite a stir all throughout the Valve community, it didn’t have the same effect it would have had, if Valve had officially confirmed Source 2’s existence.

A week ago, on the 3rd of November, a large group of fans from 4chan’s game-centric imageboard, /v/, came over to visit Valve on Gabe’s birthday. They brought with them this absolutely colossal birthday card, as well as a very unique Team Fortress-themed birthday present: an actual real-life Mann Co Crate, which, just like the one from Team Fortress 2… was locked. The best part? Gabe had to pay $2.50 for a key. But it all paid off in the end, as Gabe “uncrated” a combat helmet, similar to the one the Soldier wears in TF2.

After the crate was unlocked, Gabe stayed to talk with the fans in Valve’s lobby, alongside his colleague, Erik Johnson. A full, 52-minute video of the birthday visit can be found on YouTube, here. We’re going to quote one of the more interesting exchanges, which you can find starting at approximately 6:07 in the aforementioned video:

Fan: Is Valve potentially already working on a new engine? Fan: Source 2? Could or… could not be? Gabe Newell: We’ve been working on Valve’s new engine stuff for a while, we’re probably just [incomprehensible, subtitled as: “waiting for a game to roll it out with”] Fan: Is it going to be more than just an extension to Source? Is it an entirely new engine? Gabe Newell: Yeah!

Quite intriguing, and strange how he was so candid about everything. Still, it’s all right there in the video, and considering what we found in the SFM files three months ago, I would dare say that Source 2 is almost certainly in development, and perhaps not so far from its launch; and this is the closest thing to a world reveal we’ll get, for a fairly long while.

According to the video’s description, there’s some more interesting stuff throughout the video, but I haven’t yet had time to take a look at everything. If you decide to watch all of it, and if you find anything interesting, then let us all know in the comments section down below! And by doing so, you will have forwarded the cause of science by more than 3 centuries; by which I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if it took Valve 3 centuries to release either Source 2 or Ricochet 2. Could be worse, though – their fear of the number 3 could drive them to delay it another century instead.

In any case, here’s the full video:

Article Sources

Slag Gaming and ValveTime.