Valve is sending out mixed signals regarding a possible Half-Life 3 announcement during the upcoming E3.
It all started a couple of weeks ago when the lovely people at the notorious 4Chan compiled a (not so) polite letter to Valve's CEO Gabe Newell, protesting the long wait for Half-Life 3. Surprisingly enough, Newell replied to the letter on the next day, telling the 4Chan community: "I don't suppose it would ease your wrath if I told you we're announcing all of your favorite things at E3 2012?"
(You can see the 4Chan letter as well as Gabe Newell's reply in the screens tab, but keep in mind that the letter is not exactly polite.)
When pressed for clarification, Newell hinted that the reveal would involve "something with a 'three' in it."
Even more, after Newell's reply Valve's "Doug Rattman" Twitter account started tweeting after a long period of silence. The account's first tweet was "It Begins," followed by a series of tweets containing unexplained numbers such as "PET - 42.0 | 26.0 | 20.6 | 11.5 | 28.1 | 33.4 | 27.8 | 2.5 | 16.7 | 39.5 | 17.8 | 6.0 | 36.1 | 44.3 | 40.5 | 17.0 | 40.9 | - Connection Lost." Needless to say, swarms of fans and geeks are trying to decipher the messages, but until now there has been little progress. Still, it is safe to expect that Valve will release more clues near the official announcement, accelerating the decryption process.
Problem is, 4Chan's collective email and all these events were set off as a response to video Valve released at the Spike Videogame Awards ceremony. After analyzing every single frame in the video, fans found several clues and hints about Half-Life 3, and this was what riled them up and kick-started the aforementioned events.
Sadly enough, today Valve writer Chet Faliszek put it bluntly that those clues were not intentional and that fans have over-read into the video. "You are being trolled. There is no ARG," he said. "Wheatley's speech was set in Portal 2 fiction -- that is all. There has been no directive from Gabe to leak anything. That is all false. I just want to say this so there is no confusion. This is the community trolling the community nothing more. While it is nice to see people excited about anything HL, I hate seeing people be trolled like this."