"Loose Talk has learned that there won't be any game from the franchise in 2010, and what will finally come out is still unknown," reads the self-proclaimed "rumors and scuttlebutt" column in the February 2010 issue of Game Informer. "Will it be Half-Life 2: Episode Three? Or will it be a full-on Half-Life 3?"

The last Half-Life entry, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, arrived in October 2007. Since then, Valve has described Episode Three--the final entry in the Half-Life 2: Episode trilogy--as "a more ambitious project" and teased "the next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between Half-Life 2 to Episode One, and Episode One to Episode Two," later telling Shacknews "Freeman's not done...stay tuned for more."