Watch Gabe Newell Avoid Talking About ‘Half-Life 3’ for Almost a Decade

The wait for Half-Life 3, the sequel to Valve’s 2004 groundbreaking first-person shooter Half Life 2, has gone on for so long that it’s become an ongoing gag in gaming culture. Consider, for instance, the Twitter account with almost 40,000 followers that merely asks if it’s out yet. Its arrival once seemed like a sure thing, but as a YouTube video combining many of Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s video interviews on the subject demonstrates, that hasn’t really been the case for about eight years.

Half-Life 3 itself isn’t just a wishful flight of fan fancy. Valve long ago acknowledged its existence, even to the point of describing the basic outline of its plot in a 2006 interview with Eurogamer.

“Half-Life 3 is about the relationship with the G-Man and what happens when he loses control of you, when you’re not available to him as a tool and how he responds to that, and what are the consequences of that,” Newell said at the time, adding that he planned to release the game in an episodic format.

Half-Life 3 Episode 3

Sadly, in case you didn’t already know, we haven’t heard a peep about Half Life 3 since 2014. But we can keep believing, right?