I’ve been working in the games industry for a good few years now. I’ve been following its movements and inner workings since I was a kid, and honestly, it’s one of the only subjects I can confidently say that I feel well-versed in talking about.

Now, I just did all that dumb build-up to justify what I’m about to say next; I genuinely never thought the day would actually come when Valve openly and transparently discussed their plans for the sequel to Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

Heads up in case you were unaware, Half-Life 2 turned 20 years old recently.

To celebrate this, Valve is giving away Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast away for free on Steam – alongside a big old update for Half-Life 2

There’s a whole bunch of stuff in there about the cancellation and the unreleased prototype of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (which, hey, we’ve also written about!).

As far as Half-Life 3 is concerned, Gabe Newell himself had some interesting stuff to say about it towards the end of the documentary.

More specifically, he revealed why we’ve never seen a follow-up to Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in the first place.

“That’s copping out of your obligation to gamers, right? Yes, of course, they love the story. They love many, many aspects of it. But sort of saying that your reason to do it is because people want to know what happens next,” he teased

“We could’ve shipped it,” he continued, “It wouldn’t have been that hard… My personal failure was being stumped. I couldn’t figure out why doing Episode 3 was pushing anything forward.”