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Gabe Newell is acutely aware of how frustrating the studio’s lack of news on Half-Life 3 is for fans, the Valve boss has said.
In an interview with Penny Arcade, Newell said that after the notorious development delays of Half-Life 2, the developer was wary of hyping up a new title too early on.
“We’re acutely aware of how much we annoy our fans and it’s pretty frustrating to us when we put them into that situation,” he said.
“We try to go as fast as we can and we try to pick the things that we think are going to be most valuable to our customers and if there’s some magic way we can get more work done in a day then we’d love to hear about it.”
He added: “Part of the reason that we backed off talking so much about what was happening in the future is that when we’ve done that in the past, you know, with Half Life 1 it was a year after we originally said it would be.
“With Half Life 2 basically if you go and read the forum posts it apparently took us fifty or sixty years to get done so we’re trying to be careful not to get people too excited and then have to go and disappoint them.
“So we’re sort of reacting in the other direction and saying ‘okay, well let’s have things a little more baked before we start getting people all excited about it.’”
Half Life 2 was originally released in 2004, whilst Valve originally planned to create three episodic sequels set after that game’s events.
Episode Two came to market in 2007, and Valve has remained tight lipped since on whether it would be making another episode or full sequel to the blockbuster franchise.
