Wow. Keep up the good work, Gabe!

Legit or a Ruse?

I guess there is always XCOM and XCOM:Enemy Unknown

of course. They are launching CS: GO and DOTA 2 still using the old Source this year. Any HL3 announcement with Source 2 would overshadow the other games, and it would be a commercial suicide.

2013, with next gen consoles and new source engine will be the year.

I was under the impression that CSGO and DOTA2 was being released prior to E3, even with Valvetime rules applied

E3 is near, we're almost in May.

I thought I had mastered the Valvetime Numerology. Interesting that they would put the ... prefix at the end of the sentence. Portal Map Creator?

Both the sender and recipient mentioned Half-Life3, not Episode 3. Do you think Gabe pulled a sly one to keep a secret? Afterall we know they have been working on Episode 3 since Episode 1, just they have never shown their work.

He clearly stated: "No new announcements".
Besides, he has previously said that they have moved on from the episodic model.

All well, I am at the 'acceptance' stage and now interested in Joel Nielsons webpage. It is comforting to know that as soon as he starts taking paypal orders, you can expect Black Mesa to be released 2 weeks after.

That sound interesting! I actually thought it was completely dead...
Why haven't I heard of this?

Oh boy what a surprise.

Thanks Gabe !

Technically, Episode 3 has already been announced But I'll take Gabe at face value here. This is just more evidence that EP3 was shelved in favor of HL3. At least now I won't be getting my hopes up this time around

Why Gabe? Why?

Even though your avatar is horrible, it matches pretty well with your post.

Frighteningly well

Here is a video directly from my browser of me interacting with the email in various ways..
This way, at least you will know it's not photoshopped..
There really isn't much else I can do to prove that my information is legit.

Give me your gmail password.

Nope

Well, if they give us the real answer they would have to kill us

Haha..
Will do

It's okay tabernumse, you don't have to prove anything. Much of the community remains mired in the denial stage and I don't blame them because stage two is a terrible place, where we become angry and lash out at Half-Life!

Then comes bargaining with it's online petitions and campaigns attempting to make a deal with the cruel mistress of fate that took our crowbars away. Stage four was toughest for me, when my brother found me crying before a seven foot tall mash potato effigy of the citadel.

But acceptance comes and we all let go.

You realize not one of the replies in this thread actually think it's fake, right? At least, not any after you first added your reply confirming that it was legit. Everyone started making jokes after that.

http://i.imgur.com/d7jMR.jpg

It's a no go for E3 this year.

Next someone is going to say it a bot replying

Mutiny! Throw them overboard.

Its odd that they plan on showing two games which have been exposed heavily already, and is in beta. I guess it sorta makes sense for the Big Picture Mode to appear at E3, though.

How can you generate hype thats already in public beta? What is there to show? Gabe last year mentioned E3 wasn't the right venue for Dota 2, and CSGO will most likely be a Steamworks/PSN/Xbox live marketplace game. Doesn't make sense.

There are many different groups of gamers in the world, and a heck of a lot of people who won't be aware of the CSGO or DOTA2 betas. E3 has become a focal point for game news that can reach a very broad selection of people, especially in parts of the industry that valve has limited reach into by comparison (Consoles for example).

There is a lot of Industry Business that gets handled at these conventions beyond simply announcing new titles. On the other hand, its possible that the main focus will be 'Big Picture' mode and CSGO and DOTA2 will simply be used to demonstrate its functionality, their reserved room is pretty small afterall.

Quote from Michael Abrash blog:

Then, the only things from Valve this year are Dota 2 and CS:GO. Disappointing.
Next cycle should bring some exciting times though, if recent leaked videos are truly prescient.

That's true, but Dota 2 and CSGO already have large fanbases. Also Doug Lombardi said that Valve only goes to E3 to announce new titles, so that only confuses me even more.

A new Half-Life wouldn't interfere at all with Dota 2 and CSGO, they are completely different games. Ones a single player centric game, the others are a multiplayer experience. Like I said, they have their own fanbases, the Counter Strike community is the Counter Strike Community, the Dota 2 community is the Dota 2 community and the Half-Life community is the Half-Life community. Each would market to a different kind of crowd.

And they might package them all into some sort of colored box or something crazy like that.

That's sad indeed. Still, we can dream about HL3 being released in the 2nd half of 2012