Those who are holding out for one more adventure with Gordon Freeman, all is not lost, as Half Life 3 may not be “vaporware” anymore.

Valve has been very busy as of late: Last week, the company brought forth the “Steam Universe”, containing three new innovative ways to experience the cloud-based platform; a trademark was also filed by Valve yesterday in Europe, suggesting that they might have another huge project for the future- Half Life 3. As this comes after a week of high-profile announcements, this could just be Valve covering their legal bases, in case an outside party were to attempt to create a Half Life title; the developer has said numerous times that a third installment of Half Life was not in-development….

….This might not be the case anymore, considering a screenshot of Valve’s internal project-management system was temporarily leaked this morning; the screenshot contains a list of Half Life 2 development groups and employees, all categorized within a group titled Half Life 3. According to CVG, the group consists of approximately 50 employees.

If the conspiracy theorists need something to chew on until Valve issues a statement, have fun with this:

 3 Announcements, Steam Controller has 3 touch-based interfaces (two trackpads and the touch-screen); 300 people will win prototype Steam Machines; Steam has 3 variations- the standard computer program for PC/Mac/Linux, the mobile app, and now the operating system; “SteamOS” has 3 vowels…

…Just something to think about.

Sources: GameInformer, CVG