An alleged Valve insider has said that Half-Life 3 and the long-awaited Half-Life 2: Episode Three have both been started and scrapped multiple times, and will likely never see release.

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GameInformer has published a lengthy interview with the insider (with a warning that, while it trusted the source, it could not verify their claims with another Valve employee), who says that, "There is no such thing as Half-Life 3. Valve has never announced a Half-Life 3."The source explains that due to Valve's approach to employee creativity, many groups of developers have begun projects that could have become a new Half-Life project, but never did - pointing out that there were three distinct versions of Half-Life 2 ready to produce before the final version was approved."Over the years," the source explains, "you’ve probably had many dozens of people within the studio as early as probably 2005 working on things that they would imagine from themselves as Half-Life 3 or Half-Life: Episode 3."When asked how close the source thought Half-Life 3 or Half Life 2: Episode Three have come to being released, they explained: "I’ve heard that some teams have had two to three people working on it, and they eventually ran into a wall, and some teams may have gotten up to 30 or 40 people before it was scrapped. [It's unclear which project this refers to, or if it's both]"Supposed clues to Half-Life 3 have been reported on for years at this point, indicating that the next Half-Life could be a VR game or feature recruitable squads of AI characters . Game Informer's source explains that potential versions of the game have been equally inventive:"Some are all over the place, from one end of the spectrum being what you would expect – a single-player narrative-focused game – to completely different entertainment ideas that are as wild as they are weird. [...] Some were bizarre, like turning Half-Life into an RTS, or a live-action, choice-driven game."Sadly, however, Valve seemingly isn't interested in working on the series for now. Half Life 2: Episode Three reportedly "isn’t sitting right with [Valve president Gabe Newell] and other people at Valve. Ultimately it just starves to death. What you have left is nothing going on with Half-Life."The upshot? "I don’t think there will be any more", says the source. "Every time a Half-Life project gets some gravity and then collapses, it becomes harder for the next one to start up."It's well worth reading the interview in full - not least for the insight into Valve's unusual approach to development - but going by what's said inside, it seems the closest we're going to come to Half-Life 3 are joke Gamescom adverts

Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and all he can think is, "what if this source is Newell-endorsed disinformation to throw us off the scent? You ever think of that, baby?". He hasn't had much sleep. Follow him on Twitter