Valve recently said outright that they have no VR titles in development.

https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-no-first-party-vr-game-in-dev...

They also said there was nothing coming for SteamDeck in terms of better hardware about a week before they launched the OLED.

OLED has the same HW as the LCD, with only very minor differences

Did they? AFAICT what they actually said was not to expect a faster Steam Deck any time soon, which was true, because the OLED version had basically the same performance as the original and in the two years since they still haven't released anything faster.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23884863/valve-steam-deck...

Maybe they finished it...

From interviews with the Alyx devs, it really sounded like the only reason they didn't call it HL3 was fear of not living up to the name.

Given the org structure at Valve, it's going to take someone with massive hubris to say "I can be the one to lead the HL3 project."

That or Gabe getting off his megayacht to lead it (or tell someone their project is worthy of being called HL3).

They decided to make it a prequel for fear of not living up to the name, the decision was made much earlier. If you're at all familiar with the contents of Alyx and the Half-Life franchise it wouldn't have made any sense to call it HL3.

Ah, haven't gotten the chance to play it yet. But the same implication - we'll need someone at Valve with a big enough ego to take up the mantle.

I don't think that's how the people at Valve think. These people usually have lifetime dreams to work at Valve well before they do because they admired those early games so much, which if you know the story were held up to very high standards internally and repeatedly. They spent their lives being hyper critical of their own craft and admire Valve because they don't a release subpar product as a rule. So collectively they'll have a LOT of collective ego tied up in whatever that product is, but it's not like "I own this", that would be highly anathema.

I think that fits with how they think. HL3 has mythical status. We've already seen Valve devs make a major game in the HL universe and intentionally avoid "making HL3" due to this mythos. It takes a lot of confidence to say "Hey guys, I'm putting together the team to make Sistine Chapel 2."

(To be clear, I'm not saying it's a matter of ownership and personal brand. But someone needs to start the project and form a team around it. I don't think they're worried about personal brand, it's more an issue of reverence for the franchise.)

In a narrow sense, it did move along the story point at the end of HL2 (I won’t explain how because there’s no way to do so without massive spoilers). But yeah, it would be weird to call in HL3 just because of that.

pretty sure they don't have a totally flat org structure anymore but I might be wrong

I believe for the next Half-Life, latest rumors indicate it is actually back to 2D. During the press event last month, they were also pretty clear that no VR game is currently in development at Valve.

A huge missed opportunity imo, but maybe playing HL3 on a theater sized screen is nice enough.

Some rumors from ~1yr ago indicated they were looking into making it an asymmetric co-op game where one player would be Gordon Freeman on PC and one would be Alyx in VR. Of course, they could have dropped that by now.

I'm sure they've tried making it hybrid, aka VR optional. I'm curious if they'd be able to make it work. If not, I don't expect a VR only HL game again.

Calling Half-Life 2D somehow feels right and wrong at the same time but I get what you mean.

Seems unlikely with the steam machine coming? I haven't heard any sign of it specifically being frame only

Leaks disproved this in 2023. HLX is a single player non-vr PC game.