Earlier this week we speculated that Half-Life 3 was never going to happen.
Now there appears to be some hard evidence of that supposition… maybe.
It has been noticed online that the owners of the domain 'Half-life3.com' have allowed it to expire.
The domain, registered in 1999, previously redirected to the official Half Life 2 website. Now it simply turns up an "Under Construction" message, which is typically displayed when a domain is either expired or simply points nowhere.
As Air Herald, who noticed the change, point out, this doesn't necessarily mean that the domain has expired or changed hands.
In fact, according to Whois.net, the domain is registered until at least 2016 though the name Valve (who developed the previous Half-Life games and also - presumably - the mythical third instalment) aren't listed as the registrants. Yes, the same info appears on the domain 'steampowered.com', which Valve does own, but that's not quite the same thing.
So what happened here? Well, either Valve intentionally redirected this domain to nowhere, never owned it, or are about to redirect it somewhere else.
It could mean some kid registered it in 1999 and forgot about it. It could mean aliens registered the domain and got bored of waiting for the new game, just like everyone else. This could literally mean anything.
Theoretically it could also mean that a dedicated Half Life 3 website is about to be launched.
Look, this is clearly not confirmation that Half Life 3 is finished (in either sense). But in the vapid wasteland that is the world of Half Life 3 news, it's something. It's change. It's… is it better than nothing?
We have no idea any more.
Finally, since it is has now been 15 years since the website was registered:
1+5 = 6
6/ 2 digits = 3
Half Life 3 confirmed