Rumor: Valve Has Been Making A Half-Life Game Since 2021, & It Could Be Project White Sands

We have quite a rumor to report on regarding what appears to be quite the dream game from Valve.

For this report, we are citing our primary source as Tyler McVicker. Previously known as Valve News Network, Valve has gone on record that McVicker does not have insider information in the company. As far as we know, McVicker has never disputed that, and has been open that what he finds out about Valve’s games comes from datamining. Like Tyler, we won’t share the identities of the people involved in this rumor, and we can verify that his information matches up to what we found on our own.

In his latest video, Tyler says that he knew about Valve making a new Half-Life game for some time now. He had been tracking data with the tags HLX, and explained that this tag started coming up after Valve announced Half-Life: Alyx, but before it released, sometime in 2021.

Tyler believes that this unannounced Half-Life game is “fully-fledged”, perhaps suggesting that it’s at least eight hours long or longer, and that it isn’t a VR title. “As he put it, something that’s too good to be true.”

Tyler was hesitant to go forward with this information, and was slowly collecting more data. However, he was suddenly compelled to share some of what he knew because of the new revelations. An actress’ website resume was updated to indicate that she worked on a Project White Sand for Valve.

Tyler pointed out that Valve has previously used codenames that had nothing to do with the games they were making. Valve is somewhat more lenient and open, and so they are more vulnerable to data leaks. This was how Deadlock got revealed far in advance; Valve invited in some beta testers who didn’t have the druthers to keep Valve’s trust. So, using random codenames is a small thing they do to protect their projects’ secrets.

Tyler also brings up another anonymized source. This person also indicated that they worked for Valve in their resume, from 2020 to 2023. They worked on level design, layouts, lighting, combat encounters, and puzzles.

Tyler found that the player character wears an HEV suit, and that they go offworld. These are the other tags that they have found, that evoke possible things, and surprises for this upcoming game:

• WORKER
• STORK
• PENTATANK
• FERAL_MANHACK
• XENAMBIENT
• XENGORILLA
• XENJELLYFISH
• XENSWOOPER

For those wondering, Tyler does claim that the Xen gorilla, Xen jellyfish, and Xen swooper are references to things that could have been in Half-Life: Alyx, but ended up getting cut.

Tyler ends this video by stating he believes Project White Sands and HLX are the same game, and that it is Half-Life 3. He claims to have more data that he is still collating, and will share an even bigger video in the future, to seemingly prove his claims.

We will leave this information at that, since if this does turn out to be Half-Life 3, Valve isn’t likely to deny it. We really just need to wait and see how this latest round of rumors plays out. If Tyler’s information is correct, Valve has been making Half-Life 3 for the last four years now. If they’re not ready to release it yet, they will be releasing it in one to two years from now.

You can watch Tyler’s video below.