A Valve employee has said "HLX" on stage for the first time, the internal name of the project fans believe is the next Half-Life. On 21 October Valve composer Mike Morasky was answering a question about audio in Source 2 at a GameSoundCon panel and named two of the studio's games in passing: Deadlock and HLX. The colleague sitting next to him whispered "nice work" straight away. Valve hasn't announced anything or commented.
What Morasky actually said
The panel was called "Valve's Approach to an Open and Flexible Audio Engine", with Valve sound designers David Feise and Carlye Nyte alongside Morasky. He was explaining how the engine decides how many sounds can play at once and brought up Valve's HDR audio system: "I think Deadlock has their own version of HDR. You know, HLX has its own version, so on and so forth." Tyler McVicker, who has tracked Valve leaks for years, spotted the clip first, and Kotaku, PC Gamer and VGC followed.
- What HLX is: the string first turned up in early 2024 in data from a Counter-Strike 2 update. It looks a lot like HLVR, the working name of Half-Life: Alyx.
- Who Morasky is: the composer behind Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2. His only official Half-Life credit is Alyx from 2020, but he has slipped before about working on more than one Half-Life.
- What's missing: nothing says HLX is Half-Life 3 specifically, and there's no word on platforms or timing.
Why it's still worth a look
The word on its own proves nothing. Everyone who follows Valve has been typing it on forums for years. What's interesting is that Morasky put HLX next to Deadlock, talking about it as a live Source 2 project with its own audio setup rather than a line in old files. And his neighbour's reaction didn't look like "what's he on about".
I wouldn't plan the holidays around it. The last new Half-Life came out in March 2020, and Valve is known for sitting on projects for years and sometimes quietly burying them. Still, after this slip the chance of Valve confirming HLX itself is a little above zero. While you wait, you can play the other game from that sentence: our guide to Deadlock invites explains how to get in.
Sources
Kotaku, 22.10.2026: the panel line-up, Morasky's quote, David Feise's reaction. PC Gamer, 22.10.2026: the panel title and the history of the HLX string in Counter-Strike 2 files. VGC, 23.10.2026. Recording of the GameSoundCon 2026 panel on 21.10.2026, clip shared by Tyler McVicker. Images: the Half-Life 2 and Deadlock Steam pages.
