It's time to dust off one of gaming's oldest rumors, but with a twist. Valve might actually be releasing a new Half-Life. Hear me out, it's not a slow news day, I promise. There is at least one source that claims Half-Life will be one of the flagship games of Valve's upcoming VR headset, the Valve Index. But here's where the twist comes in. Half-Life VR will be a prequel, not Half-Life 3.
This rumor comes on the heels of Valve's actual official announcement of the Valve Index. According to Kotaku Austalia, the full headset kit will cost $1000 US dollars and ship to buyers in June. Pieces can be bought individually if that price tag seems steep, and it's all available through Steam. The fact that this announcement was made today actually fuels the Half-Life rumor, and that's where things get interesting.
A story done by PC Gamer back at the beginning of April claimed that Valve was planning for a May 1st reveal of the Index. As we can see, PC Gamer was only off by a day (and was actually spot on if you're going by Australia time, where Kotaku broke the story). Along with the date was a reminder that Valve already spoke of three VR games in development for the Index.
PC Gamer then brings up a story from UploadVR. Last November, a source told UploadVR that a Half-Life prequel is one of the three in-development games. UploadVR had other sources confirm leaked images of the Index, images we can now see were entirely accurate. This shows that UploadVR has some good sources, perhaps good enough to provide an actual Half-Life leak.
The last piece of possible evidence is code found by Valve News Network. In a Dota 2 update of all places, they found references to a shotgun and the letters "hlvr." PCGamer does note that Valve has a habit of referencing games in other games' code, but it still strikes as an interesting coincidence among all the other potential leaks.
For now, all we can do is keep an eye on the Index, and maybe hope the price goes down at some point (seriously, $1000!?).