With the introduction of the first ever Steam Awards on the PC gaming catalog, fans of Half-Life 2 are using the “We Didn’t Think of Everything Award” as a means of protesting to developer Valve that they want a sequel.
The We Didn’t Think of Everything Award will be decided based on the games nominated by the community, and the custom award they think that game to be worthy of. On the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 page on Reddit, community members are putting together a movement on social media that will garner lots of votes under the special category of “Game That Deserves a Sequel.” Half-Life 2: Episode 2 released back in 2007 for the previous generation of consoles, as well as Windows, Linux and Apple Mac. It has a large cult following, and so far has received over 6000 votes in this custom category.
Valve are often tight-lipped on the issue of a Half-Life 3. In an interview with the Washington Post in 2014, co-founder Gabe Newell seems to say his company are focusing primarily on the Steam platform and its hardware. He does bring up Half-Life but only in terms of it being something that it was a project they could have continued to churn out sequels for, at the beginning of Valve. Instead the company moved (successfully) towards multiplayer games, which at the time were not as popular with gamers. Reading between the lines of that makes it difficult to imagine Valve are planning (or working on) on a sequel to Half-Life in the near future.
The fans will have their voices heard loud and clear if this movement gains momentum however. Half-Life 2 winning one of the coveted 9 gongs in the inaugural Steam Awards would send a clear message to Valve that if they do revisit the world of Gordon Freeman, G-Man and the Combine, then Half-Life 3 would be a big commercial success.