It’s A Little Late for Half-Life 3 Gabe
(*sigh*).
It’s a little embarrassing to report on this but everyone else is doing it, so…
I will have to give this Half-Life 3 rumor a little more credence than would be my usual want.
Mike Shapiro has never blue balled his audience before and he sure as hell wouldn’t have posted this without Valve’s explicit permission.
I had wondered when I saw that Valve had put so much effort into their documentary on the twentieth anniversary of Half-Life 2. It was a little out of pattern for them.
Valve had previously made a documentary about the 25th anniversary of Half-Life 1 in 2023. Then followed it up with a bigger documentary last month on Half-Life 2’s 20th.
Now with Valve, I had half figured it was just a vanity project. But with any other company, I would have automatically assumed that this one-two punch was trying to breathe life back into a moribund brand.
I now suspect that is what was going on with Valve. One thing is for sure, you don’t bring in actors until the last minute, which means this project is in late development. Assuming it’s for real.
The Half-Life 2 documentary had something rather interesting that I hadn’t known about. If it hadn’t been for one French paralegal Steam wouldn’t be here today. The Indie Revolution we are seeing now would never have occurred and PC gaming could easily have died out. Everyone was predicting that console gaming was the way of the future back in the mid-2000s, all the data said so, and without Steam they would have been right. PC gaming would be nothing but a niche hobby for Doom modders.
Back in 2000, Valve’s French distributor Vivendi was screwing them out of the money they were owed in the Korean market. There were letters and phone calls. Finally Valved sued.
And was nearly destroyed for their impertence. Vivendi decided to go nuclear on this upstart company that had dared irritate them. They countersued, it was pure lawfare, it’s the same shit Disney does when they are pissed at someone. Just keep piling legal procedural delays until the company goes bankrupt from legal fees and then seize the company and its assets.
Things were looking very, very grim for Valve. They were swamped with every kind of lawfare tactic and it was obvious this little studio with only one game under its belt was going to go under.
At one point Vivendi buried them under 10,000 legal documents all in Korean. They had one Korean intern on staff so they put him to work digging through the mess. A couple of weeks later this intern walks into Gabe Newell’s office with a piece of paper and a shit-eating grin on his face. This document, which Vivendi had already submitted to the court in evidence, (so there was no way they could pull it or even object to it) clearly and explicitly detailed the evidence that Vivendi had destroyed.
Vivendi’s case was thrown out and they had to make a big payout to Valve. It was this infusion of capital that allowed the house that Valve to construct a new electronic distribution and purchasing system called Steampowered.
PC gaming is alive and well today because of one French clerk’s screwup.
