It turns out a mysterious Half-Life 2 update was actually just a clever ruse from a young lesbian couple.
We want to believe in Half-Life, we really do. Half-Life: Alyx has brought more excitement to the Half-Life franchise than anything in recent memory. A surprise update last September made us all think that something big was on the way. The fabled number was thought to be just around the corner.
Which is why almost anyone can get away with a hoax like this one. We’re all just so desperate for more Half-Life, we’re willing to believe anything.
This latest rumor started on Twitter, as so much fake news does these days, from @JaycieErysdren. A game developer by trade, she certainly has the knowledge to go digging around in Half-Life 2’s 15-year-old code and mess things around, like adding the Fisherman from the second episode to the ending of the original game.
To add some credibility, Jaycie got her friends to also throw out a few videos and pictures of this mysterious new update. All of this combined managed to convince quite a few folks that Half-Life 2 had received its second update since last year.
Sadly, this wasn't to be. Anyone with an installed copy of Half-Life 2 could tell that there wasn't an actual update, and since the Half-Life series has been free to download since January, there are plenty of folks with the game installed to verify.
Less than 24-hours later, we got an admission from Jayce that this was just "a dumb meme I made" and not a real thing at all. It also turns out that one of her friends sharing a different video is her girlfriend and was in on the joke from the beginning.
However, some folks are less than amused. The r/HalfLife subreddit community got so angry that they banned both of them just for providing that glimmer of false hope. That’s how badly people want new Half-Life content.
You’ll all have to wait for Half-Life: Alyx, which arrives in March.