During a recent developer panel focused on video game audio, longtime Valve composer Mike Morasky mentioned two of the company’s games while answering a question: Dead end and “HLX”. The problem: One of them, HLX, is not the name of an officially announced Valve game, but instead fans believe it is the internal, non-public codename of the yet-to-be-announced game. Half-life 3. Oops !
On October 21, as spotted by longtime Valve journalist Tyler McVicker at GameSoundCon, Valve sound designers David Feise and Carlye Nyte were part of a panel discussing how sound and music work in Source 2. Mike Morasky was also on that panel. And when asked about Source 2’s open, flexible audio system and how it connects to other parts of the engine, Morasky had this to say casually:
“And actually, I think Dead end has its own version of HDR. You know, HLX has its own version, so on.
Unless you’re someone who’s followed the last few years of Valve datamining and leaks, you’ll have no idea what HLX is because it hasn’t been officially announced, teased, or even talked about by the company. Fans only know about HLX from over five years of mining other Valve games for updates on the progress of what would be the game’s next mainline entry. Half-life series and which would be Half-life 3. So hearing a Valve employee casually say “HLX” on stage in front of people and cameras is a little wild.
And it seems Morasky wasn’t supposed to say HLX on stage, because right afterward you can hear Feise, the man next to him, apparently muttering sarcastically, “Nice job.” ” Oops! Valve should have been prepared for Morasky to spill the beans, as he already made a mistake and mentioned working on more than one. Half-life game, which is strange, because he is only officially credited with working on Half-life: Alyx in 2020.
At this point though, I can’t blame Morasky for just openly saying HLX. The codename has been circulating online for years; fans have put together a comprehensive chart listing everything we know about the game and how it works (which is a lot), and many community members openly reference HLX in forums and posts. I guess Morasky kind of forgot that HLX isn’t actually a publicly announced Valve project.
My guess is Valve will ignore this incident, or maybe Mike or someone else will try to suggest he was talking about this. Half-life: Alyx and poorly spoken. But at this point, it seems very likely that HLX, a.k.a. Half-life 3is so far along in its development and has been around for so many years that it simply forgot it was still a secret. In 2025, McVicker reported that HLX was playable from start to finish, so the game is much further along than some might think, I think.
Could Half-life 3 will it be announced later this year? All eyes will be on The Game Awards in December. Valve owes Geoff a trailer, after all.
Gn tech
