Valve"s venerable Half-Life franchise is finally returning to life later this year in VR form, with Half-Life: Alyx slated to arrive as a full-length Half-Life 2 prequel. However, Valve may not be done with just reviving one of its popular series, as another Left 4 Dead could be crawling out of the company.
Today, the China President at HTC Alvin Wang Graylin tweeted out some slides from a presentation he held at the GoldenV Awards in Beijing, mostly regarding the future of VR. Although most of the points are rather standard - like predicting limited 5G impact in 2020 for VR and VR-based remote work kicking off - there is a single point that may have spilled the beans on Left 4 Dead 3.
"Valve HL Alyx / LFD3 will drive consumer and AAA studio interest," says the bullet point. While the line specifically doesn"t mention VR, it"s obvious that in this context Graylin is mentioning the game alongside Alyx because it should at least have some VR elements.
Unlike Half-Life though, the Left 4 Dead series has always been a cooperative multiplayer venture. This could be a virtual reality implementation similar to games like Payday 2, where both desktop and VR players can be in the same lobby without restrictions.
Valve and HTC"s VR divisions have always worked closely together. HTC"s headsets are all powered by SteamVR, and before the Index came along, the full brunt of Valve"s VR focuses were on the HTC headsets. A very recent leak from the Valve News Network (not associated with Valve) also said that Left 4 Dead 3 is back in production at the studio.
As always, until Valve comes forth and officially announces Left 4 Dead 3, take this piece of news with a grain of salt. Even if the presentation is accurate, there"s still time for Valve to shelve the project.
Source: Alvin Wang Graylin (汪丛青) (Twitter)
UPDATE: Valve has now released a statement to IGN denying all of the recent rumors regarding Left 4 Dead 3:
"We’ve seen rumors to this effect for the last couple of months. We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dad [sic] next opportunities a few years ago. But we are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven’t for years."
"It’s clear some people are having fun creating misinformation to spin up the community and other outlets," Valve continued. "Unfortunately, for now a new L4D game is not something we’re working on."